On Friday December 5th, 2008, uWink (NASDAQ: UWKI.OB) made an “odd lot” tender offer to purchase all shares of its common stock held by persons owning 99 shares or fewer on the close of business as of December 1, 2008. The offer is valid until 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, January 15, 2009.

This offer is designed to reduce the number of total shareholders of uWink’s stock to under 500, whereby uWink would then deregister their stock from the OTC/Bulletin board and spin off their technology licensing business as a dividend to existing stockholders.

As I just wrote about last week, uWink has serious liquidity issues and is taking an unprecedented step to take themselves out of the stock market, and make the company look more attractive for possible investment for the two separate entities that they will become: one a restaurant company, and one a software and licensing company.

As a result of this tender offer and the uncertainty surrounding the company and our investment, I am downgrading uWink to a HOLD.  I’ll break down my reasons within this post and explain in more detail what exactly is going on.

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It’s been about two months now since I advocated selling your full position, if you had one, in SoundBite Communications (NASDAQ: SDBT), a provider of on-demand customer contact solutions.

In those couple of months I’ve had time to reflect upon what went wrong with my investment thesis in SoundBite, what I learned from the debacle, and how I can apply those lessons going forward.

My hope is that by sharing these insights with you, you can also strengthen your investing parameters and better understand what goes into my criteria for selecting companies for inclusion into the PeakStocks.com portfolio.

The bottom line is that I goofed with SoundBite, but it doesn’t have to be a lesson lost, and one that we can all benefit from in the long run to become better investors, regardless of your investing objectives or experience.

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They say that good things come in small packages.

While that might be true of AuthenTec’s fingerprint sensors, it sure wasn’t true with the nice little “Business Update” that AuthenTec provided on Sunday evening or their nice little share price after the close of today’s market.

AuthenTec (NASDAQ: AUTH), the world’s leading provider of fingerprint sensors and solutions to the PC, Wireless and Access Control markets, dropped a bombshell on all of us late Sunday night in announcing that they were lowering Q3/2008 and full year revenue and earnings forecasts, as well as announcing the loss of a customer that will represent over 35% of their revenue in 2008 and 2009.

In addition, AuthenTec held a conference all with analysts on Monday morning before the market opened to discuss the lowered forecast as well as the customer loss, in what is a highly unusual occurrence, which shows the severity of the situation.

Needless to say, Wall Street was none too pleased sending shares down over 60%, and frankly, neither am I.

What this calls into question now is our investment thesis.

Has it changed such that an investment in AuthenTec is no longer warranted?

What follows is a summary of AuthenTec’s “Business Update”, conference call highlights, and my take on the company’s future prospects, and my investing thesis.

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That’s it, we’re done.

It’s time to liquidate your entire position in SoundBite Communications (NASDAQ: SDBT), a leading provider of on-demand customer contact solutions.

What I heard on today’s conference call, coupled with the Q2 results and forward guidance leave me little choice but to cut-bait and put our money to work in a better company, with better prospects, better management, and better fundamentals.

What follows is a summary of SoundBite’s earnings announcement, conference call highlights, and my reasons for selling my shares in the company.

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AuthenTec (NASDAQ: AUTH), the world’s leading provider of fingerprint sensors and solutions to the PC, Wireless and Access Control markets, released their Q2/2008 earnings and held their analyst conference call Monday, July 28th after the market closed.

AuthenTec’s ability to consistently deliver results and beat analyst’s expectations both on the top and bottom line continue to bolster my faith in the company, their management team, and continued execution.

An investment in shares of AuthenTec, especially at today’s prices, are warranted, and their latest conference call and earnings announcement do nothing but crystallize my investment thesis.

What follows is a summary of AuthenTec’s earnings announcement, conference call highlights, and my take on the company’s latest quarter and results.

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There’s nothing that I could say to start off this post that would clarify AAR’s position in their market right now better than what CEO David Storch said to start the 4th quarter and full year 2008 earnings conference call:

“Based on questions we have been receiving over the last several weeks, we believe the market may not fully appreciate the spread of business we have here at AAR.

In many quarters we are merely seen as an airline aftermarket provider. While that was more true earlier in the decade, today AAR is a much broader company servicing a wider customer base.”

Therein lies the beauty of the diversification in AAR’s business, and their ability to leverage that business, even in tough times like now, to come out stronger and better positioned to take market share from competitors, as well as capitalize on their growing revenue to defense and overseas customers.

AAR Corp. (NYSE: AIR), provides products and services to the aviation, aerospace, and defense industries worldwide.

In this post I’ll be breaking down their full earnings release, as well as analyst conference call, and round out my post with the reasoning behind my upgrade.

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While a rising tide lifts all boats, the opposite also holds true.

Such has been the case with PeakStocks.com portfolio recommendation AAR Corp. (NYSE: AIR), which provides products and services to the aviation, aerospace, and defense industries.

Lately the words “aviation”, “aerospace” and “defense” have been about as popular as uttering the phrase “oil prices are higher”.

You can’t always escape the boom or the hammer that befalls a certain industry or sector, even if it appears that AAR is more protected from these concerns than other companies within its industry.

As a result of this and AAR’s upcoming earnings release in about 2 weeks, I am downgrading AAR’s shares to a HOLD if only temporarily, and for new money, until we get more clarification as to what’s going on with the industry, the companies that depend on AAR for business, and AAR’s business prospects for their 2009 fiscal year.

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AuthenTec (Nasdaq: AUTH), the world’s leading provider of fingerprint sensors and solutions, released their Q1/2008 earnings and held their analyst conference call Monday, April 28th after the market closed.

As a result of AuthenTec’s latest earnings release as well as rapidly accelerating business trends, which go way above and beyond my expectations, I have upgraded my opinion on AuthenTec from a HOLD to a BUY.

What follows is a summary of AuthenTec’s earnings announcement, conference call highlights, and my reasons for the upgrade.

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After tearing through AuthenTec’s (Nasdaq: AUTH) latest 10-k filing, doing some number crunching, and evaluating both the overall market and the semiconductor sector, and recent company developments at AuthenTec, I have changed my investment thesis to a HOLD for the time being.

If you own shares in AuthenTec, as do I, hang onto them.

If you don’t own shares, nibble at today’s prices, but be advised that a stagnant or declining share price could be in the cards for the next quarter or two.

Here’s Why: Read the rest of this entry »