From BARRON'S:
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Strategic partners such as Nokia, Motorola and America Online have agreed to buy into the deal at $15 a share in a private placement of an extra 15 million shares. This partners' tranche represents an additional $225 million for Palm and presents great profit potential for the partners.
"The selected institutional investors are getting a big chunk of scarce shares [generally unavailable to the public] and stand to make a large windfall from the expected immediate appreciation of the stock in the marketplace," says Samuel Hayes, professor of investment banking Harvard Business School.
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Hmmm... so what are the implications put forth here by Barron's Jack Willoughby? That Nokia, Motorola and AOL are in the IPO to profit on the stock movement upwards? How - by flipping the shares? Of course, they'll have a paper profit but is Willoughby stating by implication that these companies are NOT buying into PALM because of the technology? Yes, indeed, the exhaustive due diligence by these giants does NOT match the analytical powers of the Barron's staff! Only Barron's can see through the smoke & mirrors to arrive at the TRUE conclusion that the emperor has no clothes!
P'shaw! The reality is that Barron's was snoozin on this COMS/PALM story all along and had to do something. Suppose you're the editor, do you put out yet one more "Yeah, RahRah, me too..." article or try to seem especially insightful by publishing a snide, naysayer piece? As if the researchers & reporters at the New York Times, Business Week, Bloomberg, Red Herring... have been scammed by the hype and climbed mindlessly onto the PALM bandwagon? But the all-knowing Barron's slices to the core of the situation and only they can accurately assess the fact that COMS/PALM is overblown.
In essence, this is contrarian journalism delivered in a snide fashion (both of their COMS/PALM articles in this issue are). And to add to the irresponsible nature of their reporting, in the cover story they make strongly negative proclamations about COMS/PALM followed by the statement that COMS/PALM did/could not respond to Barron's inquiries on these issues due to the pending IPO!!! What?! They slam the defendant, don't allow one sentence of rebuttal and then proceed to their next level of journalistic dismemberment! Why was Barron's SNOOZIN on this story? They should have done the analysis weeks ago so that an OBJECTIVE, COMPREHENSIVE article of this type would be possible, i.e., where PALM/COMS WOULD have been able to offer news of the latest developments and alliances in response to Barron's questions!!!
And the snideness of Jay Palmer in his cover story? He states that "the New York Times slobbered all over the offering, cooing, 'The PALM deal has almost everything an investor could want in a new issue'". When was the last time you read the verbs "coo" and "slobber" in a Barron's cover story?
Am I missing something here? I mean, I'm not a journalist but this drivel seems to be slammed together in a manner totally lacking in integrity.
Of course, these articles especially upset COMS longs but removing that factor, any objective criticism of what Jay Palmer and Jack Willoughby have written would have to cite the points I'm raising. The journalistic standards at Barron's are obviously slipping!
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