Mary,
Thank you for your kind words, but I don't consider myself the leader of any pack anymore than your investment to you is any less important than my investment to me. We all have our " dream drops" in the collective CCEE bucket and none of us has priority as to feelings or personal hopes in the reasons we invested to begin with.
I feel there are many reasons to hold CCEE but to take profits at 35 to 40% is something nobody would argue. However, putting one or two zeros on these figures does not seem extraordinary if any of these proposed contracts comes to fruition.
I have no personal issues with management as people. They have done a remarkable job building a company poised on the horizon of becoming a world force in the data mining/data problem solving arenas. Their expected liaisons with BT, AT&T, and IBM intelligentsia could be absolutely boundless.
The Following Is A True Story.
When I was a kid in the 50's our next door neighbor's sister-in-law was married to this guy who was running around California selling malted milk mixers. Kind of a loose cannon. He wanted to buy a couple of hamburger stands from these brothers out west who really weren't doing too well. Our neighbor was asked by his sister-in-law if he and another relative wanted to go to California and invest some venture capital to get this door-to-door type salesman going with his hamburger stands.
They did go out there but lost interest as they felt the guy they were helping was pretty good at selling malt mixers but not too good at managing hamburger stands. Thus, they came home to Minnesota and didn't invest any further time and money. Well, the hamburger stands started to do pretty well and the owner realized (after his ego endured a few painfully expensive lessons) he was better surrendering his decisions to people smarter at managing hamburger stands than he was. He kept his title and some genuine management clout but he really let more elevated minds expand and run his business as he saw it was the best thing to do for everyone involved. It had to be a difficult thing for Ray Kroc to do, but after 300 gazillion sold it's not debatable it was the wisest decision he ever made.
My point is that my neighbor didn't stick it out to see the shift in management fundamentals even though all the signs were right there in his face. Later, when McDonald's went public, they did get into the stock and did very well simply due to the fact they were related, but they could have had a piece of the original business.
Although CCC isn't McDonald's, I see the exact same business scenario. Right now we're essentially holding options worth under .50 that could be worth 100 times that with the proper guidance. Present management has done great things with where they've taken dbExpress and by procuring the visionary leadership of people like Jim Cannavino. They have not been good at the fiduciary duties regarding their compensation in regard to company earnings and their duty to the shareholders. All these avenues need to be in a healthy working rhythm to sustain success. Now it's time to let someone else manage the hamburger stand.
Mary, for me I'll take heart that present management will have the wisdom to do just that. The potential of resulting concentric good is certainly worth the risk to me at this point. Next week should be the litmus test to what path we'll be following.
Hope this helps,
George
PS-When McKnight (founder of 3M) died, he owned less than 1% of Minnesota Mining. Of course this was worth more than 750 million dollars! This was many many years before the new financial strata of Bill Gates. |
