Quest Products Corp. (OTCMKTS:QPRC) Spikes on Pumps, Barely Any Info

On Friday morning stock pumpers were out in force, inviting their subscribers to buy into Quest Products Corp. (OTCMKTS:QPRC). Obviously, enough people decided to ride the pump, as the ticker moved more shares in a single session that it did over the last three full months. QPRC stopped 205% up by the closing bell.

There was a large volley of email pumps hitting our database, the first coming through at the opening bell. Within 15 minutes the pump emails stacked to more than a dozen. This appears to be the only reason QPRC got moving after spending many days with zero shares traded. Why people decided to buy into the pump before doing any research whatsoever, though, remains unclear.

Here is QPRC in a nutshell. A pink sheet limited info company that last filed a financial report back in 2003. This is not a typo, this is actually more than a decade ago. Trying to find information on QPRC‘s current outstanding shares, float or market cap also proves difficult. The company’s OTC Markets page returns “Not available” on all three of those. On the other hand, pumpers eagerly offered a “rumor” that QPRC had a float of 7.4 million shares. With 7.2 million shares traded on Friday, this seems a highly unlikely possibility. Then again, your guess is as good as ours, as nobody knows the exact number.

One could try looking at the company’s underwhelming financials reported back in 2003 but those are completely irrelevant today. QPRC did file an NT 10-K that went public in late March, stating it intends to file a composite report for 2003 through 2012 and a separate 10-K for 2013. Somewhat predictably, this is still not done due to a ‘lack of resources’. The same filing states that QPRC expects to report a loss of $863 thousand on revenues of $75 thousand, possibly referring to the 2013 annual.

Considering the pumps constituted an offer to trade completely blind due to the lack of any and all current information on QPRC, it’s no wonder things played out the way they did intra-day. The pump was front loaded and there was a significant gap up at the open. Following the usual life expectancy of most pumps, QPRC spent most of its time past the first 15 minutes of trading going down.

Those who bought at or near the spike and held, losing money in the process, would do well to conduct their own due diligence next time a pump email lands in their inbox, touting a company with very low liquidity, no filings for years on end and an unclear share structure.