Sphere 3D Corp. (NASDAQ:ANY) was once the best performing stock in recent TSX Venture history. It ran from pennies in 2013 to above $12 in 2014. Since, its shares have been grinding lower, touching down at just $0.11 a few weeks ago. On Thursday the company exploded, gapping up 58.47% on over 60 million shares traded.
Sphere 3D Surges in June Stock Challenge
Sphere 3D remains a micro-cap tech stock with a market cap of just $26 million. The tech stock had an intense loyal following for many years; so, it comes as little surprise member ‘mountaineer78’ selected the company for June’s Stock Challenge.
Sphere 3D is a story we have followed on and off for many years at Pinnacle. In a 2014 article titled Three E’s of Tech Investing, we wrote about what was driving capital into tech stocks on the TSX Venture:
“The Three E’s
The investment community in 2014 has been rewarding technology startups that can deliver, at minimum, one of what we have dubbed the Three E’s:
1. Entertainment
2. Efficiency improvement
3. Enable (the enablement factor adds a new technology to an old which allows it to perform tasks that would otherwise be impossible)”
Also, from that same article:
“A few junior tech stocks which have dominated liquidity and/or returns in 2014 on the Venture include *Sphere 3D, *POET Technologies, *Slyce and *Vogogo; what these companies have in common is that they aim to harness at least one of the Three E’s with their technology in various markets.
*We have no vested interest in any of these companies”
Click here to read the Three E’s of Tech Investing.
Small-Cap Tech Stocks Struggle to Transition to Profitability
Sadly, as is the case with so many high-flying small-cap tech stocks, the four companies above have come way off their highs of just a few years ago. Since, many of these companies failed to transform potential into profits. The lesson found is that the transition from the lab to manufacturing and revenue is a difficult one.
Sphere has had setbacks and delays, depending on how you look at it; however, the company continues to advance its suite of products. On June 14th, Sphere 3D announced it had launched its HVE NVMe appliances.
Sphere 3D reported that,
“The amount of data being stored and accessed continues to increase and the demands for faster processing, larger-capacity memory, and storage grow with it. Whether utilizing applications that leverage large quantities of data such as video or imagery, or legacy structured and unstructured data from financial, healthcare, and government verticals, the need for immediate access to this data is placing significant pressure on infrastructure in the data center to try and keep up. NVMe, often referred to as “Flash 2.0”, can be utilized for executing heavily loaded or mission-critical business applications and is a key component of future data centers.”
Click here to read the entire press release.
Sphere’s HVE NVMe appliances combine proven virtualization solutions with state of the art, best of breed hardware to support next-generation Cloud requirements. The company explains that, “HVE takes pride in providing solutions and engineering appliances that can handle all types of workloads including desktops, servers, databases, and operating systems.”
Click here to learn more about HVE.
June Stock Challenge Update
Pinnacle member ‘mountaineer78‘ selected Sphere 3D for June’s Stock Challenge. He is now running away with the Challenge, about 20 points ahead of second place. mountaineer78 finished Thursday with a 71.33% return. Member ‘tjfeld’ is in second with 53.35% return. While, ‘DoingtheDeal‘ is in third with a 31.15% return. The herd is behind him with 4th through 20th ranging between 21.90% and 7.24%.
There are six full days remaining in June’s Stock Challenge.
