Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Would you be a Fool to buy Ancestry stock?

Just a few months after the world's leading subscription genealogy website Ancestry.com (Nasdaq ACOM) went public, The Motley Fool bestowed a dreaded one star ranking on the stock.

The rating is developed from 145,000-plus investors participating in the Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free online investing community. 

For more on the rating and facts about the stock read the article 1-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: Ancestry.com in MSNBC's web site.

3 comments:

Cyndi Beane Henry said...

Does that even sound right?

I know several people [me... and I live in rural USA] who purchase yearly subscriptions to Ancestry just to find maybe that one or two rare documents a year, and they wouldn't trade their membership for anything. And now that NBC has joined with them, not to mention everything that Ancestry is tied up with, does an expected fall sound plausible?

While I don't have the funds to allow me to invest, I would think stocks could only rise, and not fall. But then... that IMHO.

Thomas MacEntee said...

I read the Motley Fool report and I fear that their analysts don't know the genealogy industry very well.

They fail to realize that the search is "never exhausted" and that people stick with ancestry.com and other sites as long as new resources are digitized, indexed and made available.

The truth of ancestry.com's subscription business model is this: getting the newcomer to stick around longer than 3 months. There is a seriously large "churn" rate if you look at the amateur genealogist compared with those who have been with ancestry.com a year or more: those who are a bit more serious about their genealogy research almost always re-up with ancestry.com each year.

Unknown said...

I am a professional genealogist, and I love Ancestry.com. It is a wonderful site with a lot of information, including, but not limited to pictures, documents, census reports, wills, birth and death records etc. It is wonderful!