PatP was able to find one company that Mr. Garnett has filed SEC documents on behalf of, Alphacom, Inc.(ACCI) They expect to have their IPO next month.
Copyright 1999 Crain Communications, Inc.
Crain's Cleveland Business
August 02, 1999
SECTION: News; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 621 words
HEADLINE: VIABILITY OF ALPHACOM HINGES ON IPO PLANS
BYLINE: JENNIFER BEAUPREZ
BODY:
It's the typical Internet story. While surfing the web in his Akron basement, Robert Snyder came up with an idea for high-speed wireless Internet service. He formed a company and two years later he plans to sell stock worth $25 million to the public.
With investors entranced by Internet stocks, it may not matter that the company, AlphaCom Inc., has just 17 employees and last year lost $1.8 million while posting sales of just $122,068.
Mr. Snyder's Internet dream calls for AlphaCom to sell 5 million shares of stock for an estimated $5 a share, according to a prospectus filed July 23 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But unlike successful Internet IPOs, such as eBay Inc. and Drugstore.com, AlphaCom has no investment firm underwriting the offering. The company warns possible investors that despite having no experience in the field, it plans to sell the shares to the public itself.
If the stock sale goes through as planned, AlphaCom, with 17.1 million shares outstanding, would have a market value of $85.7 million.
A stock sale also would mean a big payday for Mr. Snyder, who intends to sell 150,000 of the 4 million shares that he owns in conjunction with the offering.
Mr. Snyder, the company's chairman and chief executive, also would get a $200,000 cash payment if the offering is successful, according to AlphaCom's prospectus.
The IPO payoff could help Mr. Snyder out of a financial bind. AlphaCom's prospectus discloses that Mr. Snyder has a federal tax lien filed against him, which could cause his assets to be seized by the IRS, including AlphaCom stock. Mr. Snyder declined comment last week on the federal tax lien, saying it was a personal issue. The prospectus didn't identify the amount of the lien.
Mr. Snyder also didn't want to talk about one of his past business ventures.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court records identified him as a co-owner of a telecommunications company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1993, but Mr. Snyder said last week he only worked for the company, Communication Systems and Services Co., which installed telephones.
Under SEC rules, Mr. Snyder would not be required to disclose his role with Communication Systems in the prospectus because the company filed for Chapter 11 more than five years ago.
According to the prospectus, Mr. Snyder started five companies in manufacturing, sales and network marketing before getting into the Internet business.
'I was hearing 'www' for months and months," Mr. Snyder, 54, said last week. "I went to the doctor's office, people are talking about it. All I could read about was the World Wide Web and then the World Wide Wait. Where there's
something moving like that, there's opportunity."
So Mr. Snyder and his younger brother, Dennis, sought out people who had ideas for solving the Internet's traffic jams and put them in "practical form," he said. The result was AlphaCom, founded in December 1997.
The company offers high-speed Internet access and sells wireless Internet modems, compression software, video electronic mail and videoconferencing products. The company also wants to partner with radio station operators to use
radio waves to provide wireless Internet service.
The company has grown to the point where it needs at least $5.75 million in capital to survive, according to the prospectus.
'If unable to raise these funds, we will not remain as a viable going concern and investors may lose their entire investment," the prospectus said. The company presently has at least 60 investors.
Most of the money raised in the offering would go to working capital; $2 million would be used to retire debt and $3 million will go to research and development.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: August 02, 1999 |
