Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of Move (NASDAQ: MOVE) initially dropped around 12% Wednesday morning after the online real estate specialist announced the acquisition of FiveStreet for an undisclosed sum. However, Move quickly recovered and is currently trading up more than 2% as of this writing.
So what: With Move's relatively small market capitalization of around $700 million, it's not surprising to see some volatility surrounding such an announcement, though it appears to be more a knee-jerk reaction to the uncertain acquisition terms. Even so, FiveStreet provides a solid lead consolidation and response tool for real estate agents and brokerages, and appears to be a shoo-in with Move's existing real estate-centric businesses.
In fact, as this morning's press release also pointed out, FiveStreet already interfaces with Move's "Top Producer" CRM platform, and they've already started integrating it with Move's own similar "TigerLead" system.
Now what: Remember, though, shares of Move are up nearly 140% so far this year after riding a wave of optimism after beating expectations on both revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share last quarter. Still, while the stock may look expensive -- it's trading around 186 times last year's earnings -- there's no reason it can't keep rising as long as the company continues to maintain that earnings momentum going forward. However, with small growth stocks like these, it's also important to keep in mind any earnings hiccups along the way could make another steep pullback just as possible.
