Steve, thanks for copying us on the letter. Don, I think you said it right. I too feel a little misled by the management of the company. I feel very fortunate that I sold the majority of my position last February. I did this after meeting Dave Dorheim in NY. I had the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions and was left very unsatisfied with the answers. The first set of questions dealt with laptops. They had been surprised, they said, as had the entire industry, they said, by the tremendous ramp-up in energy consumption of lap tops in 1996. I asked him if their product ws prepared for a similar ramp-up in 97, and he said that the "industry" projections did not predict this. I asked him if it was these same projections he had relied upon the year before and he essentially answered yes. It was then that I realized that these guys were guilty of shooting behind a moving target. It was my opinion, voiced to AERN, that the entire laptop industry was based on continued processing power and features upgrades and that it was important to align with this movement, not fight it. In any case, I gave up hope then that laptops would be a revenue source and sold most of my position. I still held out hope(and still do) that there are other applications which hold promise, some of which may not exist yet. I asked Dave if he felt this was the case and what he was doing to find these adn exploit them. He said that they were focusing on laptops right now, but that he was open to any ideas I had. This also discouraged me. I was encouraged that they found two such applications earlier this year, but I don't give them much credit for going out and finding them. If it took them this long to realize that the laptop dream was a pipe dream, and now they are completely refocusing with 5 quarters left, I think it is probably time for me to bail out of my remaining position.
If they announce tomorrow a new management team, or if I find out who buys the rights to the technology during the Chapter 11 proceedings, then I will be interested again.
I learned a lot during my 18 months or so in this stock, and I wish everyone involved good fortune and good investing.
Ariel |
