<<What about when a company does the same thing in a formal press release?
biz.yahoo.com
Does that mean the company has no business "being in the stock market"? ;^)>>
In most cases, yes. The ploy of asking shareholders to take possession of their stock certificate began with, as I can remember, with a very sleazy company named SOLV, about 2 years ago. Since than, SOLV has declared bankruptcy and was delisted from Nasdaq to the pink sheet. A few other companies followed that ploy, and as far as I remember, the stock price of all of them declined very rapidly.
First of all, this ploy is getting really old -- not that many innocent shareholders would fall for it anymore. Secondly, a legitimate company, such as Cymer (CYMI), would simply buy back shares at large amount when the shorts drive the price low enough. There is absolutely no need to resort to this "urging shareholders to take possession of shares" shenanigan. Good, legitimate companies like MSFT, CSCO and INTC would just demonstrate the soundness and viability of their business by consistently reporting solid earnings and revenues, quarters after quarters, and if by any chance, the stock price appears cheap, they would just buy back more shares.
Making an announcement to urge shareholders to take possession of their shares is, at least 9 out of 10 cases, a desperate attempt by a pathetic company that sees no way out of its financial bleeding, hoping to lure some naive investors into buying the company's stock, thereby momentarily inflating the share price so the insiders and their friends can unload. In other words, a classic pump and dump scenario. |
