Conceivably, the legal problems could disappear very quickly:
1. If earnings are spectacular for Q2 -- and I expect they are -- and the market reacts positively enough to the news to drive the stock price to 17+, the lawyers are going to have a tough time making a case. (A decent statistician could make a good argument that current price suppression is the lawyers' fault.)
2. If earnings problems from prior years are timing issues (which effectively over capitalization of expenses is), then earnings could effectively be made even better now as there will less capitalized expenses to amortize now. I'm guessing that as of Q1, the possible timing issues relating to revenue recognition have already been resolved, otherwise we could see a boost in revenue. If these are the primary issues, then how are shareholders really hurt? True, the buy decisions were impacted by incorrect data, however, the same errors may improve current financial results.
VARL can help itself considerably this week by releasing a statement about its expectation to report record revenues for Q2. (Naturally, this is my expectation, and if accurate, this is what I believe Mgmt should do.)
In regards to Dogman's questions about 10 lawsuits, I would expect that these would all be folded into 1 lawsuit, if they ever made it to court.
FWIW
Jeff |
