Taser has my attention again

My not-so-diversified portfolio has received a bit of a beating lately.  Last week I closed my positions in Intel and sold off part of my Marchex position (after a nice 34% run up in 6 weeks) so I’m sitting on a bit of cash.

I hadn’t intended on buying anything right away.  Having just shy of 25% of my portfolio in cash seems like a prudent idea right now, but my position in Taser has grabbed my attention lately and I’m thinking about adding to it. 

As I’ve discussed before, Taser makes (usually) non-lethal stun guns for use by law enforcement, the military and, increasingly, the general public. 

A recent announcement by the company has caught my interest and has me seriously considering adding to my current position.  I’ve been trading Taser on and off for the last few years and their stock certainly fluctuates.  Right now, its around $10.30/share.  I’d be comfortable buying it here, I can’t see it dropping much below $10 or so and I’d expect it to get to $12ish without any problem over the next few months.

The recent TASR announcement that has me interested is: Sports Authority will begin selling Taser’s in 138 of their stores.

This is potentially a big deal.  The Sports Authority will be their largest consumer retailer.  The company’s bread and butter is 100, 200, 300 orders by law enforcement and military organizations around the world.  They are penetrating the local police forces, the forces are starting with a hundred or so units to evaluate with the hopes that they’ll buy more as officers become used to using them and learn their benefits.   The Taser C2 (consumer version of the Taser) only debuted in July of 2007 and contributed just under $4 million in revenue for all of last year.  At $300-$350 retail per unit, that isn’t a ton of units.  With a large retailer such as The Sports Authority signing on, I could see consumer sales increasing dramatically and also the potential for other large consumer chains to jump in as well to remain competitive.  This deal is nothing but good news for Taser.