KOSS Stock – The Road Behind / The Road Ahead


KOSS Stock - The Road Behind / The Road Ahead

This post sets up some illustrated charts that observes the trends in KOSS over the last 4.5 decades, with an emphasis on the last 2 years. I apologize in advance if my technical analysis is incorrect or inexact. I am not a trader, but am learning how to read charts.

For Fibonacci levels, I decided to use a 0-based fibonacci retracement levels that converge to 0. I used the squared versions of these ratios as they allow for infinite levels converging to 0. I stopped at 0.008, but you could continue infinitely towards 0. The KOSS stock had some big highs and some big lows. Bulls have sent this high and bears have tried to send it to zero. Who is right? Where will this road go?

Fib Levels (square-root) converging to 0)

infinitely many levels to short to 0

Let’s get to the big narrative. Koss, as a family run company, began way back in the late 50s (https://koss.com/pages/koss-history). It looks like they were listed by NASDAQ in the 70s.

Here is a monthly chart of the growth of the company stock on NASDAQ from April 1972 to today. (I removed some of the fib levels to make it easier to see the price below $4

zoomed out chart

34 years of growth

While the first 20 years on the public market, the stock price was sideways, beginning in late 1992 and ending in the beginning of 2006, KOSS increased from $0.50 to $15.00

1972-2006

What comes up? Probably gonna come down

A big reversal in 2006 changed this from winner winner chicken dinner to leftover chicken nuggets.

end of the bull run

14 years of decline

The death spiral had taken the company full force. I haven’t looked at the financials, but it’s pretty clear that someone was looking at the bones of this carcass to see what they could harvest. A brutal 14-year decline bled investors dry. This probably looked like a sure thing for bears. A couple of years of net losses. Short the company into the ground, try to bankrupt, perhaps offer some loans with warrants, make the company go bankrupt, acquire their valuable IP, if you they bankrupt you don’t have to return a single share.

But could Koss recover?

In March 2020 (you remember that month, right?) it hit a low of $0.80 at the beginning of the pandemic, but then something interesting happened.

https://preview.redd.it/0yk32kxa8zj91.png?width=2745&format=png&auto=webp&s=c7f831c139e738f230ee9f0e8b13821d01d40e5f

In one week, the price bounced all the way from $0.84 to $2.55. Maybe there is some life in this old company. Volume increased from about 30-50k per week to 2M that week. Keep in mind the float is in the 4M share range as a majority of the company is owned by the Koss family. a Net loss of .46M would shroud the year, but a different direction was emerging.

https://preview.redd.it/5gqq62tepzj91.png?width=2740&format=png&auto=webp&s=093907f1ddbe814f308d82fbb9310eafeee09414

We all remember that something happened in the beginning of Jan 2021. Shorts were losing their shit. Weekly volume jumped from 25k to 91M! At the peak the price had rocketed to over $127. Someone (or maybe several somebodies) were obviously over-leveraged. Many things could be said on this, but i’ll just highlight high short % on 1/25/21

https://preview.redd.it/z4e5676apzj91.png?width=1902&format=png&auto=webp&s=7967102e1046c65e381e155986afd67d7fffa0b5

As I have looked over the last 18-month chart, I am struck by how much this looks like a Wyckoff accumulation schematic. It appears that we are in Phase C/entering Phase D. Volume is really low (just like it was in early 2020). There are emerging narratives around Koss and patent income. It appears that composite man is on the cusp of pushing this thing back up the creek. Sign of strength would be $20+.

https://preview.redd.it/22rwh66quzj91.png?width=2933&format=png&auto=webp&s=0018e1b4dd9c8c523791fb79136ce7e4de088c5f

https://preview.redd.it/bnyljusxuzj91.png?width=1950&format=png&auto=webp&s=7f42d7896c87001fb7d7b4d1115f31d150293663

I’m not sure how high composite man will take this, but according to WhaleWisdom (https://whalewisdom.com/stock/koss) there are very few institutional investors in this play.

https://preview.redd.it/xm2m1p0qwzj91.png?width=1695&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba333507bbcaf80f73d2dbd88898eda34e5fb700

Note: the previous listing is a little confusing around the Koss family holdings. This is a little clearer (maybe)

https://preview.redd.it/lb6g3pg8xzj91.png?width=1692&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c67de559f609b90120db2f3e2a37f4e85199d6b

Fundamentals

I was looking at the recent financials and a couple of things caught my eye. First, in the past year the company was able to raise over 4.5M from the sale of stock. Second, they generated 2M in income from investing in the previous quarter due to life insurance on the founder, who passed away last year (that’s the big yellow bar on the Q3 2022 chart).

https://preview.redd.it/bt8jflwkczj91.png?width=1670&format=png&auto=webp&s=91e0a7553e1c0008ee274c180e12a8e675c2c4b1

Assets are going up / liabilities are going down

https://preview.redd.it/qnccjnbhkzj91.png?width=1645&format=png&auto=webp&s=35658d73415e94874afe9724ea4ecac788c946ac

Net Debt went from +2M in 2018 to latest -7.40M. This shows that there is good liquidity currently for cash flow.

https://preview.redd.it/nnbvpnqdlzj91.png?width=1662&format=png&auto=webp&s=3173b639786a67d9090e791cd1b73511a440378b

The liquidity for KOSS stock (9.15M shares outstanding, but over half locked up by insiders) combined with the increasingly better financial situation, makes this interesting for me. short borrow fee rate consistently around 20%. short interest (if you believe what is being reported has been up to 735k as of 3/31/22. days to cover has been up to 8 as of 6/30/22.

The Road Ahead?

Something is still brewing. It could be big. This is a family business. They have been working hard to make great products and don’t want to hand over their company to some vulture shorts or to a corporate takeover.

Technically speaking, this is a stock with low liquidity, no options derivatives to manipulate through synthetics, fundamentally a good balance sheet and a potential path to new income through licensing patents (strong narrative). there are some question marks, but the technicals looking like a massive breakout is on the horizon. 🎧

https://preview.redd.it/sv66v5hp5zj91.png?width=1450&format=png&auto=webp&s=d41977f4736f8a00d260de822029a95d40e8ffc7

submitted by /u/blocktator to r/KOSSstock
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