Before I get to ripping Tim's projections to shreds, I want to give him his props. This is the man who told me to buy Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL ) at $12 roughly one year and nearly 50% ago. He's the brains behind Motley Fool Rule Breakers picks Secure Computing (Nasdaq: SCUR ) and Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM ) , which combine for a good 334 percentage points of market outperformance. Weighed against those two brilliant calls, the 33% worth of market underperformance his re-recommendation of Taser (Nasdaq: TASR ) has racked up hardly even registers. With a .667 batting average and an average gain of 100 points on these three picks, Tim's putting better-known stock pickers such as Jim Cramer to shame on CAPS.
Unfortunately for Tim, we're not talking about Secure Computing or Akamai today. We're talking Taser -- and on Taser, Tim's dead wrong.
You see, in September 2005, he predicted sales growth of "between 30% and 40% annually for the next five years." Taser racked up 30% in 2005 all right -- negative 30%. It followed that up with 12% growth in 2006. So far, Taser's making very little progress towards what Tim hypothesized would be a "$4.3 billion global market opportunity" in 2015.
Not that it matters, because $4.3 billion was a pipe dream anyway. You see, because Taser's product aims to provide a safer alternative to handguns, its potential market cannot be much bigger than that of the handguns it seeks to replace. And according to a recent filing by Smith & Wesson (Nasdaq: SWHC ) , citing both its own research and a 2005 excise tax study by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, the non-military market for handgun sales in the U.S. is currently $626 million. And yes, that includes police departments.
Granted, the global market is bigger than that. But like S&W, and like Sturm, Ruger (NYSE: RGR ) , Taser makes essentially all (87%) of its sales within U.S. borders, limiting its potential market. Long story short, there's a whole lot less of a growth story here than Tim thinks.
But no matter. Taser wasn't really growing anyway.
The Duel's not done yet! Go back and read the other arguments, make your own case in Motley Fool CAPS, then vote for the winner.
Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position, short or long, in any company named above. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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