Mark Cuban's Mama

Mamma.com (Nasdaq: MAMA), the company that bills itself as "The Mother of All Search Engines," also claims that it is the premiere metasearch engine and integrated advertising solutions provider. It now also claims Mark Cuban as an owner.

Cuban, perhaps most recognized as the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, is also known on Wall Street for making billions unloading Broadcast.com on Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) at the height of the Internet boom. He now owns in excess of 5% of Mamma.com.

No stranger to publicity, Cuban will as gladly team up with Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC on a reality show as work at a Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) Dairy Queen to make amends for an offending remark. Still, it is his Broadcast.com roots and the "dot-com" at the end of Mamma that caught investors attention.

For all that, Mamma.com, formerly knows as Intasys, is tiny with just 8.8 million fully diluted shares. With $4.5 million in cash and no debt, it's also a pure-play metasearch engine and online direct marketing services company. In October, the company said its pure-play status "should benefit by having more visibility and recognition from both the financial community and the industry specialists."

And benefit it did. Mamma.com's stock charts a 52-week range of $1.90 to $15.80 a share -- with most of the top end occurring this month. The stock exploded when the company announced earnings and affirmed its business focus. In a frothy reaction, the stock flew from $3.91 on March 1 to $15.80 on March 3.

Just when the excitement over Mamma.com and Digital Arrow had settled down, in walks Cuban. From its close of $7.86 yesterday, the stock soared to $10.48 in early trading. In fact, in the first two hours of trading today, 15.1 million shares changed hands -- more than twice the total shares outstanding. So much for buy-and-hold investing!

Clearly, Cuban's investment lends some legitimacy to this tiny company. Unfortunately for us non-billionaires, there is plenty of competition from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL, AskJeeves.com (Nasdaq: ASKJ), and even Stocks 2004 recommendation FindWhat.com (Nasdaq: FWHT).

True, Cuban is not known for making bad investments, but he does have the resources to speculate. With nine-month revenues of just $5.9 million, Mamma.com trades at more than 10 times sales. That's rich -- and maybe suitable for Mark Cuban. Whether it's suitable for ordinary investors is another question altogether.

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Fool contributor W.D. Crotty loves speculations but this one is too rich even for his blood. Even as an information technology consultant, W.D. feels the long-term prospects for this company hardly justify its rich valuation, although it has excellent products. He owns stock in Disney and Berkshire Hathaway.