Geospatial Stocks Shake Stock Market Worries…But It’s Getting Harder to Tell

The geospatial technology stocks seem unphased by the malaisse on Wall Street. Last week’s crash and Monday’s "dead cat bounce" has left many of the geospatial stocks the way they were. But it’s getting harder to understand the health of the industry. Garmin (GRMN) once again shrugged off worries and surged nearly 6.5% on Monday due probaby in part to a small blurb in Barron’s about the company’s rising earnings potential. The short mention was more of an "I told you so" as the publication had profiled the company back in February 2006. Big money managers hate to miss it big so they jump in when the stock takes a breather.

Trimble (TRMB) remained flat over the last few days, seemingly unaffected by any news and continuing to march to its own drum.

Intermap Technologies (IMP.TO) is the sleeper in the group. Traded on the Toronto Exchange, not many investers have probably heard of the company but its stock is up 17% this year.

GeoEye (GEOY) has slipped over 10% in recent weeks. But this company’s stock won’t soar until its bird flies. Don’t expect it to slip beyond its trading range between $20-$24 until GeoEye-1 launches.

But as more companies are acquired (Intergraph by private investors; MapInfo by Pitney Bowes; Tele Atlas by TomTom), it becomes increasingly difficult to grasp what investors think of geospatial technology. Of course you have seen NAVTEQ’s (NVT) fortunes zoom as well on the news that Tele Atlas was bought. Are they next? And what happens if they are absorbed by a much larger company that is peripheral to the geospatial market…like Pitney Bowes’ (PBI) acquisition of MapInfo. We added PBI to our stock ticker on the Directions Magazine home page but with a market cap of over $10 billion, what part of that stock price reflects the fortunes of the geospatial software solutions division? Likewise with Oracle or Microsoft or Google. As Adena and I discussed in the podcast today there is a lot of cross pollination going on between the big guys and everyone else. There are fewer and fewer "pure plays" in the geospatial business anymore.

$15 million for deCarta

Update: 9 am EST - now PR posted on our site.

deCarta, a North American supplier of software and services for the Location-Based Services (LBS) industry, today announced the close of a $15-million Series C-1 expansion round of funding led by existing investor Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). Other existing investors, Mobius Venture Capital and Cardinal Venture Capital, were also participants in the round.

- GPS Business News (no sign of this on deCarta website, the wire, etc., 8 am EST)

Podcast: TomTom to Snap up Tele Atlas: Monopoly or Better Data?

This week Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg explore Monday’s announcement of the planned acquisition. Will regulators let it through? Will the combination of TomTom’s Mapshare and Tele Atlas’ prowess at maintaining spatial databases mean better data delivered in more timely fashion? What will investors receive? And, how are geospatial professionals impacted?

The podcast is 18 minutes long (~ 6 Mb) and was recorded on July 23, 2007.

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NAVTEQ’s Stock Zooms 20%+ on News of Tele Atlas Acquisition

NAVTEQ’s (NVT) stocks is up over 20% on news of the acquisition of Tele Atlas by TomTom within the first hour of trading on Wall Street. Various analysts have ugraded the stock. This assumption here is that NVT now becomes a takeover target as well.

TomTom to Acquire Tele Atlas

Dutch navigation systems company TomTom (TOM2.AS: Quote, Profile , Research) plans to buy its main map supplier, Tele Atlas (TA.AS: Quote, Profile , Research), for 1.8 billion euros ($2.5 billion), hoping tight integration of maps and products will give it an edge over competitors.

Tele Atlas is ok with the offer, a 32% premium on its stock price. The companies expect to use the in-car devices in consumer vehicles to capture new data (TomTom MapShare-like?) and provide on the order of daily map updates in time.

Tele Atlas could lose some clients in the online market, but some 40% of revenue in the second quarter was from TomTom.

- Reuters

Q&A
Conference Call - Today 10 am eastern
Press release

Seeking Alpha says this move should put NAVTEQ into play with likely buyers including: Microsoft, Google, Nokia. And, the article re-iterates something we’ve said before: "I think TomTom’s aqcuisition of Tele Atlas shows that the navigation device makers have realized that the companies that control the mapping business will control the whole PND business."

The AP notes:

Tele Atlas has deals to provide information to TomTom, Qualcomm Inc. and Nokia Corp., while Garmin, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and AOL’s MapQuest use mostly Navteq. But the bigger companies use at least some information from both, and analysts say they have an interest in ensuring neither Navteq nor Tele Atlas becomes too dominant at geo-mapping information.

The Guardian Unlimited notes the recent deal between TomTom and Vodafone to capture data from phone users.

Last month Vodafone and TomTom announced plans to cooperate on a new service that would integrate information from Vodafone’s network with TomTom’s navigation database. Phone signals from Vodafone customers would be used to measure the speed of the cars in which they are travelling and the number of customers on a given road, giving a rough idea of traffic congestion and enabling users to dodge jams. The service is expected to launch next year.