My thoughts on the Financials and Conference Call:
Okay. There were three divisions which had a negative impact on the E-business, as follows:
"While revenues for the second quarter increased 50% from the year-earlier second quarter period, positive margins in Microforum’s e-Business segment were offset by negative results from its marketing, advertising and public relations segments."
First question. Ladies and gentlemen, in any business I've ever been in, advertising, marketing and public relations ALWAYS have a negative impact on profits. That's why they call them EXPENSES. Ya, you might get a few good contracts from wining and dining potential customers, but are they saying the money spent to bring in new customers exceeded the value of the business brought in? Translation: They threw more parties than they should have?
Okay. Next question. What the heck were/are the non-Ebusiness divisions?
Third question. To quote Rick, the non-Ebusiness divisions were, "Affected by cost overruns on fixed-price contracts and an increase in the proportion of lower margin business." Does that mean that the "fixed-price" contracts weren't as fixed as they thought, and ended up costing a pile more than expected?
(I understand the part about "an increase in the proportion of lower-margin business". It just means that they weren't able to sell stuff at the profit margin they hoped for.)
Next question. In his opening remarks, Rick states that the company will focus on, "Efinancial, Ebusiness and Knowledge Management" (that makes three).
He later refers to the priorities as "Efinance, Ecommerce, Knowledge Management and Wireless" (that makes four). Gawd I hate all these catch-phrases. "Efinance" and "Ecommerce", ladies and gentlemen, are pretty-much the same thing, aren't they? Sigh.
And now some comments.
And so, we know that Rick will have six divisions reporting directly to him: Product Development; Client Services; Client Operations; Finance; Human Resources; and Legal. I can accept that.
What I don't quite agree with is Rick's vision that EVERYONE will, in the near future, be "Always on, always connected, sitting on a pile of bandwidth. Always."
Sorry, but there are times I go down the hall, take a holiday, go to sleep, etc, etc, etc. Ya, it sounds nice, but it's a leeeeettle overblown. Not always. At least NOT IN EUROPE so far! LOLOL
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