The canary in the coal mine has a tough, thankless job. The poor bird can only get killed if the early warning system works at all.
That's what happened to storage networking specialist Brocade Communications Systems
Yeah, that happened at the very peak of the recent market panic, but Brocade suffered way more than rivals NetApp
So when the company reported full results last week, most of that pain should already have been priced in. But even though the final $503 million in revenue and $0.09 of non-GAAP earnings per share were above the midpoint of the new guidance, the canary died again.
To be fair, Hewlett-Packard
All of that said, Brocade keeps skimming near multiyear lows. Even without obvious growth catalysts or buyout potential, the stock looks priced for absolute misery at just 7.4 times forward earnings with hardly any shorting activity at all. It takes a patient investor to profit from a mispricing like this one, but at least the downside is nearly nonexistent. And how many stocks (or bonds, gold bricks, cash wads in your pillow) could you describe that way nowadays? Spoiler: not many.
Brocade is a bit player in the "big data" trend. Teradata