Rob - One other thing - Mary is basing her 2-month "maximum useful life" prediction on cash on hand - whereas the financial data also reflected "securities available for sale" (publicly traded treasury bonds and corporate bonds, according to a prior SEC filing) of close to $3 Million in addition to "cash on hand" -- which extends that "life" by at least another 2 months, assuming zero revenue. Add $100,000.00 in income for each 10 Million revenue shares traded on the system (and they are on pace to exceed 10 Million shares this week -- with all the recently added contra-liquidity, it should be interesting to see if volumes continue to increase).
You nailed it on what the 70 Million in liquidity represents -- this is just what 3rd party "committers" are prepared to do every day in matching unmatched orders. The idea is to draw more order flow into the system. I'm sure ASTN will be sharing a higher fee with the committers - probably approaching the 5 cent a share fee charged by brokers for synthetic VWAP trading (time slicing) with the liquidity providers, but if they can keep merely 2 cents a share of a 4-5 cent fee on a two-sided transaction, that would maintain the 1 cent a share average they use to project revenue. But it does not preclude natural matching, and the whole point is to draw more and more liquidity to the system in order to provide a venue where natural matching eventually becomes the dominant form of execution. This has been a continuous effort for 2 years now (to get committers to step up and commit to this level of liquidity) -- and the SEC approval of the rule amendment to PHLX Rule 237 specifically contemplates this kind of trade, it was built into the system for just this reason.
Lastly, there is no question that the 60-day delay between trading and payment for trading can easily be bridged on a short term line-of-credit/loan basis from a commercial bank, given the highly collectible nature of the accounts receivable. If they are trading at break even levels or higher, they will be able to borrow short term against their receivables to stay operational. I still think they will renegotiate the equity line or come up with an alternative, if they haven't already done it (but have not announced it yet). We shall see.
I still can't understand why she is so anxious to see it fail, but there is no need for her to blow the risks out of proportion to reality. The legitimate financial concerns that have existed have been more than sufficient to keep the stock price under $1.00 for the past few weeks, and hovering at or near $1 for the past 6 months -- but that can change if volumes continue to grow, and these issues get solved, and nothing she says will affect that outcome. As the pieces start coming together more and more, she posts more and more often and with increasing shrillness. It makes you wonder.
Have a great week.
MST |
