Crony,
I will disagree on one point. I think they know exactly how the stock market works. They are just choosing to ignore the rules for personal reasons. Brasfild has a friendship with the old CEO and I think he feels a sense of slight when it comes to how things transpired with the change at the top at Simtek. I think that this changes the way he looks at the company and what has been accomplished. I get the feeling that he hopes that the company goes belly up. I don't think that there would be anything that HB could do that would satisfy him. That is his perspective and his prerogative but I don't have to agree with him. I think the rest are following his lead since he has been a very knowledgeable poster on Simtek in the past. Even if Simtek succeeds and the share price skyrockets, I think he would say that HB didn't do it fast enough. That is just my read on the situation.
The big thing that they point to is the share price when DM left the company.By all other metrics, the company is succeeding and there wouldn't/shouldn't be anything else to complain about unless they fall significantly short of guidance. When DM left the company, though, all we had was the good news of the deal with Cypress(which had artificially propped up the share price) and none of the bad news of lost sales(I think that Simtek's largest customer, Ricoh, had jumped ship for the year and was buying chips from someone else) another delay on the 1mb chip as well as a new and dangerous money crunch which may have scuttled the company. At the very least, there would have been significant dilution. Revenues had gone from 15 million to 10 million and imminent profitability became something that got pushed into the very distant future. With that all said, I did like DM as CEO but he just couldn't seem to get Simtek to the next level. Maybe he took on too much responsibility and tried to do too much on a shoestring budget instead of bringing in help and let him concentrate on some of the other things that CEO's need to do. Hard to say. But this issue will keep coming up with Brasfild and the others until Simtek succeeds significantly(which they will say is related to the technology and none of the things that HB has done) or HB fails and they will hang around to tell everyone I told you so and that we should have stayed with DM.
One thing that I think did happen is that people/investors are not willing to buy Simtek on the hype as they did in the past, especially since Simtek is on the NASDAQ now. I think it will take real results to get things going. This is not the OTC board where a little hype can really push the stock I think Simtek and HB are close but the semi market went into a bit of a slowdown right when things were supposed to be interesting. There is still a lot of risk in Simtek but similarly, there may be some nice rewards if things go as HB has laid out. We will just have to see if these things can be accomplished. Especially during a downturn in the semi market which probably has more to do with the present day doldrums than anything else.
Just my opinion though.
Neal |
