ClickSoftware: A Great Product That's Hard To Sell

Credit must be given where credit is due and this time round the company worthy of credit is ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CKSW). I’ll start with the fact that after its disappointing results for 2005, the stock fell from $2 to $1.4 in February-March. It then began to climb steadily and has been doing so ever since. ClickSoftware develops and sells software for labor force, service system and cost optimization.

These are big words and I would have thought that industrial and commercial sectors would grab such products. After all, which factory doesn’t want to streamline, improve and reduce its costs? But despite ClickSoftware having an interesting product range, these systems are not easy to sell, since a company that orders ClickSoftware’s systems is, in effect, admitting that it is not functioning efficiently enough for shareholders. And what manager would be willing to admit something like this? Only a good one, and these are naturally in short supply. So to sum up, ClickSoftware produces excellent and essential products that are not easy to sell.

ClickSoftware’s sales for the second quarter of 2006 increased by more than 30% compared with the corresponding quarter last year, and by 23% on the first quarter, a performance that is better than most of the companies that have so far published their reports.

The company also moved to profitability, posting profit a of $500,000, or earnings per share of $0.02. ClickSoftware chairman and CEO Dr. Moshe Ben Bassat is quite right to be happy with these results, and more importantly, he expects growth to reach 25% in 2006. Let’s hope he’s right.

Of course, ClickSoftware is not covered by analysts, which is unfortunate since this company has a lot of potential and it’s a good idea to get in with such companies when they’re small and grow together with them.

All I can say is that time is on ClickSoftware’s side, since as far its customers are concerned, this is a very similar field to that of Retalix (Nasdaq: RTLX). What’s more, the customers will eventually see the light, swallow their infantile pride, and ask for help.

Published originally by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006. Republished on Seeking Alpha with full permission.