Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVID)

Avid had serious cash-flow issues late in 2Q 2012, leading to selling off several key brands at fire-sale prices to raise cash. Avid has "focused" on professional audio and video production--but has inflamed the professional musician community by laying off the entire development team of one of their most profitable units, Sibelius Software. Avid sacked CEO Gary Greenfield in early February--and announced in late February (the day before the scheduled release of FY 2012 results) that Avid was going to miss reporting, and would take an unspecified amount of time to "evaluate" how they had accounted for things like software defects and product liability.

The company has been characterized by repeated re-organization plans, and repeated layoffs of high-dollar tech employees--but is in a high-tech business. Too many MBAs, not enough engineers or musicians--they're not a good investment.

old-school brand. No longer relevant

Avid's executive staff is seriously out of touch with the market in which Avid operates. This is only becoming more and more clear as time goes on.

Best of Breed. Apple bowing out of professional market and going after the bigger prosumer market. Creates big opportunity for Avid and they know it. Development and marketing departments firing on all cylinders.

Possible Google Buyout.

Avid's innovation is unprecedented. The face of high end editing is going to change rapidly with their leadership.

digital media

Avid Technology will play a major role in the upcoming years in the digital TV industry. More and more companies want to expand their HDTV reach and come up with new channels or improve the content on the current ones. I believe this company has room to grow and will outperform in the next 12 to 18 months.

New leadership.

Beaten down. Intense competion, but still has huge installed base of committed users - I know , I am one of them.

new management, good market position within sector= value at this price

Quality control issues will hurt their hardware business, while apple will provide for their software buyers in their stead. the stock is overvalued at this time.

Nice support at $36 for entry. AVID got slapped for revenue slowdown before new software release. It is a sign that studios are awaiting the new release and demand will be there.

Avid has been shafting its users for a long time. Its professional tools are becoming commodity items. Content creation is entering an age where it will be everywhere, and easily implemented. Avid is not Microsoft owning a proprietary file format to lock in customers. Think paper not word docs!

Growth is not being priced in because of short-term setbacks. High takeover probablity as well.

insider buying

Undervalued

AVID recently got some attention from a big hedge fund and completed a ~5% stock buyback that has lifted the stock from its summer decline, but I think there is more hype than hope over the next year. Low profitability offsets AVID's technological successes - this company may be a nice acquisition target in a couple of years, but I don't see it improving its business practices enough to deliver near term performance.