The company’s shares closed at $14.37 on Friday, down from a peak of $22.29 reached in October 2003, but still vastly ahead of the $1.20 mark the shares were trading at before the company made its claims about Linux and launched a $3bn lawsuit against IBM Corp for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract.

The company’s share price has been boosted by the company’s improved financial performance from the SCOsource intiative, as well as the potential benefits that could be accrued from a positive outcome in its lawsuit against IBM, and threatened litigation against companies running Linux.

SCO has itself admitted that it cannot guarantee revenue levels from SCOsource this year, however, and that, combined with increased legal protection for Linux users from Linux vendors and supporters, has lead Decatur Jones Equity Partners LLC to cut its predictions for the firm.

The analyst firm cut its previous SCOsource revenue estimate of $7m by over 90% to just $625,000. Decatur Jones also cut its earnings per share estimate for the firm from a profit of $0.20 to a loss of $0.43, and its target share price from $8 to $5. The analyst firm’s underperform rating on SCO is unchanged.

Factors influencing the moves include the legal indemnification schemes offered to Linux users by Novell Inc and the Open Source Development Lab, which the analyst firm believes will increase the likelihood of end users standing up to SCO.

Decatur Jones expects SCO’s legal fees to increase given that it has also launched a slander lawsuit against Novell and is defending itself against litigation by Red Hat Inc, which is seeking a declarative judgment that its Linux variant does not infringe SCO’s intellectual property.

SCO has already admitted that it is unable to predict revenue from SCOsource during 2004 but has said it expects revenue from SCOsource in the first quarter to be minimal. Total revenue for the first quarter ended January 31, 2004, is expected to be between $10m and $15m, flat with the same quarter last year, which was before the company launched SCOsource.

While some SCO investors might be looking for long-term gains based on a potential $3bn windfall should it win its case against IBM, Cornet also questions this strategy.

If an expected $45 stock price is two years away, but that expectation may drop to single digits at any point in the interim, why assume the risk and hold the stock today when fundamentals like cash per share and revenue growth will get worse before they get better?

The $45 figure relates to the target put on SCO’s stock price in November 2003 by one of the few other investment firms covering the stock, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc, following suggestions that the company was about to launch litigation against Linux users.

That litigation has long been threatened by SCO, which sent letters to companies running Linux in late December providing notice that it believes them to be in infringement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire