The Misfits: Ubiquiti Inc. (UI)

Investor interest in Ubiquiti is a sliver of what it used to be. Perhaps those investors should have stuck around.

The Dispatch of the Messenger, François Boucher, 1765, oil on canvas (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Investors lose interest in companies for many reasons.

More often than not, they move on because a company fails to deliver on its promises of generating returns. Or the comapny has delivered great returns and has matured into a slower growth business.

But what about companies where investors lose interest because the company stops talking to its investors?

There aren’t a lot of examples of this, but Ubiquiti (NYSE: UI) is one of those rare birds. The network hardware manufacturer used to get a lot of market buzz, but interest in the company has pretty much fallen off a cliff. The thing is, despite investors losing interest and Wall Street analysts all but giving up on covering this comapny, the stock has continued to deliver market-smashing returns.

The reason why investors lost interest is one of the more interesting corporate stories out there.

Let’s dig in.