GeoEye Beams a 'Buy' Signal to Investors

Editor's Note: With this column, TheStreet.com is pleased to debut Eric Jackson. Our newest contributor has led online activist campaigns in the past, and will share his latest investment ideas with our audience. As always, let us know what you think.

I built a position in satellite company GeoEye(GEOY Quote) over the last couple of months.

Initially, I wasn't anticipating launching an activist campaign aimed at the company, which provides space-based imagery to government and commercial customers. The stock has gone up 62% in the past year, and GeoEye seemed well positioned to announce a very positive quarter and year-end results, which it did last week.

I was attracted by the stock's incredibly low valuation relative to projected earnings and peer comparisons. Trailing P/E sits at a paltry 12.66, whereas larger competitors Orbital Sciences(ORB Quote) and Trimble Navigation(TRMB Quote) have trailing P/Es of 25 and 29, respectively. What's more, GeoEye is expecting to increase earnings by 20% per year for the next five years.

However, the market was cool to last week's results even though fourth-quarter EBITDA doubled to $15.9 million from $7 million in the previous year and revenue rose to $45 million from $42.2 million a year earlier. Why?

GeoEye has not released full EPS numbers, as it is waiting for the IRS to rule on how to account for an acquisition it made in 2007. The company promised to release complete numbers before filing its 10-K, which is due at the end of March. The delay is not entirely management's fault, as it is waiting on the IRS. However, the company could have anticipated the snag and should have clarified sooner.

Activism is not just for broken companies. It can be equally important for solid but undervalued or overlooked companies. GeoEye is a perfect candidate because it's been overlooked.

Therefore, I recently launched an activist campaign aimed at raising the value of GeoEye, using the tools of the Web. As I emailed a letter to GeoEye's Chairman, Lieutenant General James Abrahamson, and its CEO, Matthew O'Connell, I posted it to my blog, inviting comments and suggestions from other shareholders.

Reaching out to shareholders of Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) and Motorola(MOT Quote) in two campaigns I ran over the past 15 months, using blogs, YouTube videos, wikis, polls and Facebook groups, was particularly helpful in disseminating my message and soliciting suggestions from an army of similarly frustrated shareholders. I hope the same will happen with GeoEye and in future Web-based activist campaigns.

GeoEye is much smaller (with a $500 million market capitalization) and less well-known than Yahoo! or Motorola. Furthermore, I don't believe it requires a major reshuffling of the board or management. This is a solid company.

The stock's price has appreciated 62% over the last year, as the company has delivered operationally for investors and started to be more widely followed by a larger institutional base.

The board and management team have also shown that they can plan ahead and do the right thing for shareholders. Earlier this year, one of GeoEye's two satellites in orbit (the OrbView-3) failed. For most small companies with poor planning, this would have been disastrous. However, GeoEye had appropriate insurance in place. That settlement ($20 million) on the aging satellite ended up being more positive for shareholders than if the failure hadn't happened.