CriticalControl profits from niche markets

Article Excerpt

CRITICALCONTROL SOLUTIONS CORP. $0.78 (Toronto symbol CCZ; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative) (1-877-215-5883; www.criticalcontrol.com; Shares outstanding: 46.6 million; Market cap: $36.4 million; No dividends) sells software and services that help businesses better manage, access and store their information. CriticalControl gets about 60% of its revenue from clients in the oil and gas industry, followed by government (20%), health care (10%) and finance and retail (10%). About 45% of Alberta’s provincial-government ministries are clients. The company estimates that 85% of western Canada’s oil and gas firms use its products. CriticalControl has two main divisions: Energy Services, which provides 63% of CriticalControl’s revenue, helps oil and gas companies manage a wide variety of data, such as production volumes and flow rates from wells to processing facilities. The Service Bureau Operations division (37% of revenue) provides registry services that include managing land titles, statistics and motor-vehicle information. This division also converts older paper and microfilm documents to electronic records. U.S. diversification began in 2009 In November…