ZERO - From The San Diego Union-Tribune
Ambitious Australian company blows into town
July 12, 2000
by Don Bauder
A company that, with consummate modesty, promises to "Save the World" will have its U.S. operations staff and sales office in -- where else? -- San Diego.
The name of the company is Save the World Air Inc. Its corporate headquarters is in Australia.
It also has an office in New York City and, last month, it opened its U.S. operational office in La Jolla. That office now has five employees, with plans to add an additional 10.
On its Web site, the company boasts that it "has purchased the worldwide manufacturing and marketing rights to a revolutionary new device which, when fitted to internal combustion petrol engines, virtually eliminates the emission of dangerous polluting carbon monoxide exhaust gases."
Whew!
Supposedly, it also improves fuel economy up to 42 percent.
Double whew!
The stock of this company trades on the Bulletin Board under the ticker symbol ZERO.
In these days, when so many foul-smelling gases emanate from Internet chat rooms, and day/momentum traders find them uniformly aromatic, it is hardly surprising that this is a flowering stock, although it has recently wilted considerably.
On Dec. 10 of last year, it was trading for 10 cents a share. After the company cranked out a bushel of news releases about its purportedly wondrous development, the stock got as high as $12 on July 6, up 70.7 percent on the day.
But on the following day, it dropped 24.5 percent, then 14.8 percent on Monday before losing an additional 25.9 percent yesterday to finish at $5.72.
There has been controversy aplenty. One news release said that Ford Motor Co. had contacted Save the World Air and discussed testing the company's purported device.
A Ford spokesman said Save the World Air had mischaracterized the nature of the two companies' discussions.
"We get thousands of ideas from people who have a way to improve our industry," said the Ford executive, stating that Ford was not consulted about the press release.
The following Monday, the irrepressible Save the World Air came right back and lashed out at Ford for issuing an "inaccurate comment."
On June 25, The New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson wrote a piece on the company that was dripping with sarcasm. Headline: "Saving the World? At Least Selling Stock."
The highly respected Morgenson said the Bulletin Board "is a hazardous place for investors, where blasts of hot air about obscure stocks and their supposedly dazzling prospects propel shares into the stratosphere. Alas, these fliers usually fizzle out."
In that sardonic context, she discussed the company, noting that it "may not pass the, ahem, smell test." She pointed out, for example, that the stock then had a capitalization of $90 million but only $873 in cash and a net operating loss of $9,822.
The company put out a news release talking about how The New York Times had spoken positively about the company. As David Evans of Bloomberg News pointed out, Morgenson's contumelious references had been excised.
The effervescent Roger Neal of Neal Public Relations in Huntington Beach is sending out the blizzard of news releases. Of Morgenson's column, he says, "We took out the opinion and left in the facts."
If a New York Times movie reviewer says some kind things and some harsh things about a movie, the movie producer only publicizes the kind statements in its ads, Neal explains.
Says Morgenson: "I have referred the matter to New York Times attorneys, who will take up the company's use of cuts and pastes" in its self-promotion.
The San Diego office of Save the World Air will be run by Bill Blackwelder. The company gets 15 to 20 inquiries a day from its Web site, he says. Once it gets California certification, he will have marketers peddling the product to smog and gasoline stations.
But he admits the Department of Motor Vehicles has not given the product its stamp of approval.
"We want our distributorships and licensees to have it beforehand," he says. If the company got the approval and patents first, competitors would be able to copy the product, he says.
The company has applied for a patent in Australia, but not the United States.
"I've been told we've got the potential to be as big as Microsoft," effuses Jeffery Muller, founder of the company, who claims he was Australia's youngest and fastest speedway driver in 1974. Muller will appear on MSNBC in August, said Neal in a news release yesterday. He had been scheduled to appear twice earlier, but never got on the show.
© Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. |
