Force Protection, Inc. Announces Move to NASDAQ Capital Market Wednesday January 10, 7:42 pm ET
LADSON, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Force Protection, Inc. today announced that it has been approved to list its securities on the NASDAQ Capital Market. The armored vehicle manufacturer will retain its FRPT trading symbol. The Company's NASDAQ listing will be effective and commemorated by Force Protection at an Opening Bell Ceremony in New York City on January 18, 2007.
"We are extremely excited about this move," said Force Protection CEO Gordon McGilton. "The NASDAQ listing is the result of our on-going efforts to provide what we believe will be a more stable investment opportunity in our Company."
Force Protection, which has traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board since 2003, has experienced substantial corporate growth in the past year. Partnering agreements with other leading defense industry manufacturers such as Armor Holdings and BAE Systems, as well as a recently announced joint venture company with General Dynamics Land Systems, have been made to merge Force Protection's proprietary designs with the manufacturing capacity necessary to meet increasing demand.
Shareholders do not need to take any action as a result of the NASDAQ Capital Market listing. Company stock certificates will remain valid.
Force Protection's Buffalo and Cougar mine-protected vehicles have been deployed with U.S. and Allied forces since 2003.
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Just got back from my local BMW dealer... looking at a nice 550i... told him that if all comes together, I'll be paying with cash in a few months.
C'mon FRPT, hit $30!
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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StockMarketNewsAlert.com Issues New Trade Alert for Force Protection, Inc.
StockMarketNewsAlert.com Issues New Trade Alert for Force Protection, Inc.
2007-01-11 10:26 ET - News Release
BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 11, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- StockMarketNewsAlert.com issues New Trade Alert for Force Protection, Inc. (OTCBB:FRPT). According to M. D'Alonzo at First Equity Group Inc., recent news flow from the company has been very positive, "The company announced that it has been approved to list its securities on the NASDAQ Capital Market. The armored vehicle manufacturer will retain its FRPT trading symbol. The Company's NASDAQ listing will be effective and commemorated by Force Protection at an Opening Bell Ceremony in New York City on January 18, 2007."
"We are extremely excited about this move," said Force Protection CEO Gordon McGilton. "The NASDAQ listing is the result of our on-going efforts to provide what we believe will be a more stable investment opportunity in our Company."
Force Protection, which has traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board since 2003, has experienced substantial corporate growth in the past year. Partnering agreements with other leading defense industry manufacturers such as Armor Holdings and BAE Systems, as well as a recently announced joint venture company with General Dynamics Land Systems, have been made to merge Force Protection's proprietary designs with the manufacturing capacity necessary to meet increasing demand.
Shareholders do not need to take any action as a result of the NASDAQ Capital Market listing. Company stock certificates will remain valid.
Force Protection's Buffalo and Cougar mine-protected vehicles have been deployed with U.S. and Allied forces since 2003.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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UPDATE 1-RESEARCH ALERT-Citigroup ups targets on defense firms FRPT not mentioned.. yet... but look at SBSH.. on the bid buying all day.
Jan 11 (Reuters) - Citigroup raised its price targets on aerospace and defense companies, including Boeing Co. (BA.N: Quote, Profile , Research) and General Dynamics Corp. (GD.N: Quote, Profile , Research).
Defense companies will again have strong earnings growth this quarter, the brokerage said in a research note.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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...(MRAP) vehicles; demand from the US armed forces has been so high that ...
With annual sales of $10 million in 2004, Force Protection Inc of South Carolina was doing fine; but in 2005 sales shot up to $49.7 million and the 2006 figure is expected to reach $180 million.
The eighteen-fold increase in sales in two years was down to the company's developing proprietary designs of Mine Resistant Ambush Protection (MRAP) vehicles; demand from the US armed forces has been so high that it has not been able to build them fast enough and has even had problems buying enough of the appropriate steel. To solve its problems, FPI is joining forces with the defence giant General Dynamics to bid for an initial $770 million contract from the US marine corps; as a result, the corps is expected to spend several billion dollars in acquiring new equipment over the next few years.
The main source of these developments is the enduring problem of roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. In effect, crude but clever devices produced from redundant ammunition in back-street workshops and costing a few dollars to make are creating a multi-billion dollar market for American arms companies.
The other side
Diyala, Haifa Street and Force Protection Inc all, in their different ways, illuminate the problems that the Bush administration now faces, primarily in Iraq but increasingly in Afghanistan:
Diyala is a specific reminder of the consistent failure to train Iraqi forces that, from an American perspective, are reliable Haifa Street means that the US forces are now going to be engaging much more in precisely the form of urban counter-guerrilla combat that they sought to avoid in the first weeks of the war (March-April 2003) the Force Protection deal is a formidable reminder of how the world's most powerful military is being held down by crude and very low-cost forms of asymmetric warfare. http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/bush_surge_4239.jsp
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Force Protection Industries Inc., Ladson, S.C., is being awarded an estimated $9,379,370 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for 15 Joint Explosive Ordnance Disposal Rapid Response Vehicles (JERRV) with associated manuals, deployment kits, and training. Vehicles will be deployed to and supported in Iraq. Work will be preformed in Iraq, and work is expected to be completed April 2008. Contract funds will not expire by the end of the current fiscal year. This contract is a sole source award based on an urgent and compelling need for the government. The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Va., is the contracting activity (M67854-07-D-5015).
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Local Companies Protecting Our Troops Thursday, Jan 11, 2007 - 06:13 PM
Corey Broman-Fulks Send e-mail
Count on 2 News
Two local companies are doing their part to protect our troops fighting overseas. One of which is Force Protection in Ladson. They build large trucks which can withstand bullets, roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices or IEDs. Wayne Phillips is a retired marine colonel now working for force protection. "There's nothing better out there that protects our marines and soldiers than this," he says. The company builds several types of trucks; among them are the Buffalo, which is the biggest, the Cougar, which is more agile, and a new prototype called the Cheetah, which is the smallest, just bigger than a Chevy Tahoe. Each vehicle is several feet off the ground which is much higher than a humvee. Also, the hull of the trucks is made into a v-shapewhich allows the force of a bomb detonation to go around the truck. "It's pretty impressive the beating they can take," Phillips says. "It shakes the marines and soldiers up inside, but it does a pretty good job of saving their lives." Everything about the truck is designed to keep our troops safe, from the frame to tires and the glass. Phillips says there's a Buffalo in Iraq which has been hit by an IED 60 times, and after some minor repairs, it's still on the road. "We have wonderful stories from moms and dads and soldiers and marines almost daily letters thanking the people who work here for saving their lives," says Phillips. Also,Spawar in North Charleston builds an IED jammer. They're placed in humvees and send out a signal that stops IED's from exploding. As for Phillips, he says he still has friends in Iraq and hopes they're riding in his trucks. Right now,Force Protection can build about 40 trucks a month at their plant in Ladson. But, they are teaming with another company,General Dynamics, in hopes of building several hundred a month around the country.
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Force Protection gets Nasdaq listing Ladson company builds armored vehicles for U.S., British military Friday, January 12, 2007
Following closely on a year of spectacular growth and soaring stock market gains, Force Protection Inc.'s shares are poised to make their debut next week on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The Ladson-based maker of armored military vehicles said Wednesday it has received approval of its application to list its stock on Nasdaq, where it will be included in the Nasdaq Capital Markets index.
Gordon McGilton, Force Protection chief executive, said in a statement that the company is "excited about this move."
"The Nasdaq listing is the result of our ongoing efforts to provide what we believe will be a more stable investment opportunity in our company," he said.
Previously, Force Protection's shares were listed on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, a price quotation servic eoperated by Nasdaq for companies that are traded by a limited number of investment firms. About 3,400 stocks are listed there. Last month, Force Protection was No. 1 among those stocks ranked by the dollar value of shares traded, averaging $20.5 million worth of shares changing hands per day.
Despite the Bulletin Board's secondary status as a stock market, Force Protection last year managed to post one of the biggest percentage gains of any stock in the United States. Its share price skyrocketed from 78 cents on the last trading day of 2005 to $17.41 at the end of 2006, a 2,318 percent jump.
Its stock closed Thursday at $19.98, up $1.36, or 7.3 percent, following the announcement of the Nasdaq listing.
With that increase and a near-doubling in the last year of the number of shares of its stock available for trading, the company's market capitalization, the total value of all of its shares, now tops $1.3 billion, making it the Lowcountry's biggest public company by that measure.
The company's operations also have expanded at a rapid clip as orders for its blast-protected vehicles pour in. Employment has more than doubled from about 325 at the end of 2005 to about 750 today.
Those workers are turning out more than 40 of the company's Buffalo, Cougar and Mastiff vehicles per month, another big jump from the 10 vehicles it produced in all of 2004.
That growth didn't occur without a couple of bumps along the way. In August, Force Protection agreed to pay $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit brought by two former employees alleging that it delivered defective vehicles to the U.S. military and fired them for complaining. The company denied wrongdoing but agreed to the settlement over an accounting technicality.
And in December, Force Protection said a review of its past financial statements turned up items related to stock compensation of executives that would require it to restate some of its past financial filings. It provided no timetable for when it would finish making the restatements, which it said it expected to amount to no more than $3.75 million.
Force Protection's vehicles have been used by U.S. and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since July 2003.
"The main thing it will enable us to do is build more trucks and save more lives," spokesman Tommy Pruitt, said of the listing.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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MORE GOOD NEWS COMING I was watching the Discovery channel yesterday when they gave the previews of some up coming shows. Next Tuesday at 9.00 pm Discovery Channel will be putting on a documentary about the new vehicles the military is buying to save lives in Iraq. They didn't mention FRPT by name but you know what vehicles they are talking about. They put this on TV tuesday night and then we go to the Nasdaq on thursday,could you ask for a better scenario.I'm sure the people in Congress will here about this and nobody is going to vote against saving military lives.Democrat or Republican Up we go!!!! Sorry shorts.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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Spare Parts, Services, and Upgrade Kits (SunTrust Report)
In 2006, FPRT projected it would generate $42 million in revenue through its Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) business which is responsible for order fulfillment on spare parts, contract services and maintenance and training, and the deployment of field service representatives. As FRPT production rates increase, the ILS business should see strong growth since it is somewhat tied to the cumulative number of vehicles in use. Going forward, we forecast the ILS business will grow from $42 million in 2006 to $77 million in 2007 to more than $200 million in 2008. Our estimates do not include the potential impact of upgrade kits.As mentioned, the sophistication of the explosives used in IEDs continues to increase with more and more IEDs making use of shaped charges that are extremely effective at penetrating armor (shaped charges are used in anti-tank missiles, for example). As such, we see a strong opportunity for FRPT to use its expertise in blast mitigation technologies to develop and sell armor upgrade kits for its vehicles to more effectively counter the increasing sophistication of IEDs. Although we do not yet know what pricing could be for these kits, we note that the military has invested hundreds of millions of dollars for armor kits for Humvees, FMTVs, and heavy tactical trucks. We would not be surprised to see these kits generate $50 million to $100 million in revenue over the next two years.
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