Boy I see I travel up to Chicago for the week and ol' LONE slips in a release behind my back. Oh well, that will teach me. Chicago is great fun, especially because thanks to my new handy dandy laptop, I can still find out what is going on during the evening hours.
So we seem to have a positive consensus for the release. For what it's worth here's what I see:
Not sure the exact terminology of what they are doing with NAIL, but it appears that they are letting loose of it. Searched the insurance commissioner site for a definition, but couldn't come up with it. I'm assuming they are giving it over to the commissioner and letting him do with it what they will. Kinda like Conestoga I assume. The more I think of it, though, I doubt they can just walk away. I would think they would have to buy out or sell the policies or something. Not really sure, but that's a helleva question.
NAIL was profitable the last reported:
“According to the audit, NAIL sustained a loss of $532,000 for 1997 and a gain of $162,000 in 1998 through June 30, 1998. MSLIC was not consolidated into the audit in 1997, but the audit for 1998, through June 30, 1998 put MSLIC at breakeven.”
life1.com
They continued to book some pretty good business:
“Maryland Southern has received contracts for ERISA Trust Health Plans that are anticipated to add fees in excess of $4.6 million per year, and NAIL has received contracts for Stop-Loss coverage in excess of $40 million on an annualized basis.”
AND IN REFERENCE TO THIS BUSINESS
“Combined income for National Affiliated Corporation (NAC) is projected to be $7 million annually. Forty percent of this income is projected to be recorded in 1998.” life1.com
So if I do my math on that business, the NAIL part was worth $2.4 million a year.
Without recent financials it's truly hard for me to make a decision on whether this was a good move or not. I know that they have looked for several years to depart from this subsidiary. When I posted some time ago about choosing which spin-off you keep and what you sell; I was specifically talking about me personally letting go of this one if it was spunoff. (their rating stinks) At least that was my plan from the get go. Looks like LONE has taken care of that decision for us. Course I think it is cheaper for me to sell any stock I received in NAIL compared to getting rid of the business for LONE . . . maybe not.
As far as the other half of the release . . . I think it is fantastic. From what I can dig up on Katrina Montinola this is a great move. It's a pretty unique name so I'm assuming my search refers to all the same person . . . again, maybe not. It appears she graduated from GA Tech in 1988 alumni.gatech.edu
She spent quite a bit of time at Oracle and was a major influence in their organization. Here is one link, but there are others where she gave technical presentations, published articles, etc. 209.86.235.238
Looks like her last job as late as May was with chemconnect.com Can't really tell what she did there although their online want ads have a couple positions listed.
Couldn't find anything about her dealings with Pointcast but I assume that was between 1996 and before she started at chemconnect. But managing the group for corporate applications is powerful in my opinion. I think Pointcast is superb.
All in all I want to reserve judgement until we get one or preferably two things: What companies will encompass the reverse merger and LONE financials.
Just one temporary windy city man's opinion. |
