Vonage is a company, not just a stock

It's Rule Number One for people who pick stocks for a living: Don't confuse a company's stock with the underlying company or its products. Great companies with terrific products can have stock that's too expensive or misses the boat in some other way, like not paying a dividend or lacking voting rights. That's why, when all is said and done, Vonage's customers may simply not care about the company's bad month on Wall Street. The carrier's problems today are the same they were before it IPOed: a highly competitive market in the middle of a price war that may have no bottom. But Vonage's strengths, even as it makes inevitable missteps in its efforts to move beyond the home and SMB markets, are the same, too: a well-known brand in a rapidly growing market. And the IPO did, after all, give Vonage one more thing that most of its competitors don't have: hundreds of millions of dollars in breathing room.

For more information about Vonage:
- read this article in InformationWeek