Nuance (NUAN) – A World Leader in Voice Recognition

With many early-stage disruptive technologies, it’s tough for retail investors to find pure-play stocks to invest in. They can either wait for IPOs, or just buy shares of Google and pretty much invest in every technology known to man. Voice recognition is a disruptive technology that isn’t exactly early stage, but the applications for it are beginning to emerge everywhere with Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s Siri being two very good examples. Most people probably don’t know that the company that provides the voice recognition technology that powers Apple’s Siri, Nuance (NUAN), is a publicly-traded stock and a world leader in voice recognition.

About Nuance

Nuance started out in 1992 with a core business in optical character recognition (OCR) and document imaging. Over the years they have made strategic acquisitions and investments to complement and broaden their portfolio, including entering the speech and natural language market which is the space in which they operate today. With a market cap of just over $4 billion, Nuance hasn’t exactly been wowing investors lately. If you have held Nuance shares for the past 5 years, you’d be down -25% on your investment so far. A cursory look at revenues and profitability over the past 5 years tells a story of slowing r