We’re back from our meeting we had with Konatel Inc (OOTC:KTEL) over the weekend, where we were able to introduce a panel 5 of the company’s top decision makers who were able to go into great detail about their roles. After having held this event, we’re more confident than ever that we made a great decision to follow through with what we feel is a very unique way to connect shareholders with management. It gave the execs a chance to address tough questions in a more intimate and casual setting, over a round of golf.

There was a good amount of optimism within the company’s 2021 10-K and 2021 Q1 communications about the prospects of a post-pandemic normalization, which led to our favorable take on the valuation on what we thought was a reasonably valued stock with some upside if certain things played out: “VIDE is trading at 0.7x TTM price to sales multiple which we believe is not that unreasonable if the company can reach consistent profitability, considering the positive growth outlook management has communicated for the remainder of its 2021 fiscal year. We also like management’s shift to focus on cyber security which could also be a reason to assume that shares could eventually trade at a price to sales multiple well in excess of 4x.” Long term price appreciation never materialized, but to be fair, as seen below, the company’s fiscal 2021 results did actually come in at an aggregate year over year increase, sending the stock to a brief high of $3.10. You could say, if just for a short moment, that the results supported the company’s outlook. However, investor conviction in the stock waned almost immediately, with the price settling back to its pre-financials levels.

We’d like to visit another story that could just as well have been part of our last weekly segment to prove that some management teams just get it right. We wanted to offer it up as another example of an almost perfect implementation of the use of capital, be it raised funds or cash on hand, to grow a company in an accretive manner through acquisitions.  It’s basically a testimony on the fiduciary responsibility of public companies to handle the funds the way a public company should, as expected by shareholders.. The company in focus today is UFP Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:UFPT). The Company is a designer and custom manufacturer of components, subassemblies, products and packaging utilizing highly specialized foams, films, and plastics primarily for the medical market.

CNBC, in true brand-name mainstream media format, makes it perfectly clear that it will take the negative over the positive…it just makes for better provocative investor banter and retweet fodder. It’s not the only outlet that does this, but we’re going to use them as the example of their complicit omission of any positive comments that might come out of a source that screams fire on a regular basis…say those of, for example, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon. Like him or not, Dimon is a provocateur in his own right. And CNBC likes that. We’d venture to say that the cabal of mainstream outlets breathlessly run with replays and snippets of his interviews and conference call commentary because it will invariably fit the expected narrative

Knowing that some of the inflation indicators that investors fixate on are lagging indicators, we want to beat the market to the punch. Accordingly, we have to be prepared by continuing to look for Tier One Quality microcap companies or maybe even ugly companies that might turn into quality selections, and in particular dissect Q3 press releases, earnings conference call transcripts and SEC filings that might unveil clues of softening inflation that could lead to the Federal easing interest rate hike goals. Who knows, moves by the Fed might happen sooner than later, surprising the market. We’ll be monitoring supply chain commentary as well as commodity price action, mainly in the food area and other hot pockets in the inflation number cited above.