George: There is nothing you and I can do to change the details of the deal between OPEN and BORL. You think it is a bad deal for BORL, and I actually think that having sold to 300 customrs in the Fortune 500 type of market, makes OPEN a greater expert at marketing in this market than BORL. It also provides fertile ground for the canneling of additional productss (from BORL' suite of great tools).
The question is, if you cannot influence the deal, do you think that in the next few months you would be able to get more than $9/share with or without an acquisition of BORL by a third party.
If you think the OPEN deal kills any such future acquisition, then put your money somewhere else. I think that OPEN is going to start contributing mightily to BORL bottom line within two quarters, and the market will react far ahead of this fact being evident to everyone. If BORL is taken out at a premium (my estimate at least $15/ share, but that is kind of low since the insiders at BORL do not have many options deep in the money at such a price), good! If it is not, within six months, the market will recognize it as a value play (probably the reason ML got into it) and the price will drift up to about 13-15, bringing my OPEN shares to about 8-10. So, even at these levels (5.5) Open is still a pretty good buy (and since the arbitrage situation is no longer there, BORL is just as good a buy).
Zeev
PS George, maybe we should address a direct note to Honig (since this board was quite for a month, he may not be following it anymore) and ask him straightforward whether he sees the poor recent performance of both BORL and OPEN as a simple temporal abberations. He should know what kind of "pending" orders are in the pipeline and the reasons some of these have been delayed. It is quite possible that the pending acquisition is itself a cause for the delay. It is also possible that he will not tell us anything. |
