Bard,
I don't mind and cannot imagine that anyone else would, either. I also received an email this evening from jmitchell@montgomery.com:
Like Ga Bards, would you post this for me? Thx. (that stiff $75 is killing me)
I've been a silent reader, but here're my thoughts:
Bought AGTI at .45, thinking that the announced merger was actually a "reverse merger" with the rational that any deal for $67 million in stock would be too dilutive to digest. I'm referring to past instances where a large private company, hesitant to go through the public offering process/fees, buys a public entity but in an arranged stock swap so that the private co. ends up owning a majority interest in the new company.
Bitter that I was so wrong and that I'm sitting on a 56% loss.
So other musings:
Talked to Chris Sargeant earlier this week who suggested the deal would fall through, so I'm dismayed at the amount of inactivity today. As the price dropped ? from the announcement day roughly,
I would have thought that an announcement calling off the transaction
would have created an uptick. I'm also surprised the other company (target of acquisition) even seriously considered a buy-out, given the fixed share amount and the recent volatility.
So, my question is----what do you think?
I asked the Company about a share-buyback plan to encourage more
confidence in the stock, company and management and got a optimistic "We're thinking about several alternatives...". What gives? And I'm frightened about the earlier note talking about management's salaries. $175,000!!!!!! For what????? Because they added little
if any shareholder value and severed the stock's earlier momentum with the announcement of an acquisition whose price the company could never, ever support?
I'd personally like to see top management get as small a salary as possible and a huge options package as incentive (with an exercise price over the .45 cents I paid per share)!
Any thoughts?
(from Jason Mitchell)
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Jason,
I would like to offer my comments to a few of your issues. Regarding the acquisition, it seemed to have merit for us shareholders...but not if it meant we had to give up the farm. AGTI will do just fine on their own, thank you. I'm still hoping for profitability by the end of this year.
And you may be right about the "reverse merger", but that would only be speculation.
Ga Bard did a good job of addressing the executive salaries. It's tough running a corporation....I know because that's what I do....and a salary of $175,000 is certainly not overboard. You may disagree, but first try walking in the shoes. If you notice the time stamps on most of my posts, they occur quite late in the evening. I didn't even walk through my front door until almost 9:00 tonight, after a 13-hour day "at the ranch". I'm not asking for a pity party, just illustrating my point. My average share cost is higher than yours, and some shareholders have a much higher average cost than I. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and remember that AGTI's products only recently entered the market.
If you bought on the news of the proposed merger, then you are obviously a very new shareholder. I have learned many lessons (yes, the hard way!) regarding stocks, and one of the most important is to practice patience. Even though I have been trading for a long time, that lesson finally hit home this year. I looked at my own performance of buys/sells in 1997 and discovered that if I had been more patient..sometimes by only a month...I could have earned an additional $40K. I did that analysis in mid-July. The message was crystal clear to me: my initial reasoning to buy was on target, I simply lacked patience. I won't repeat those mistakes again. AGTI is going to be a major winner -- I FEEL it and I BELIEVE it, so I'm prepared to wait.
Hardrocker |
