Frank...
Your perceptions about other people's professions are about on a par with your capacity to value IMES' IP. I am not a lawyer - God Forbid!
The Third Standard Deviation, even in engineering circles is recognized - if it's at the lower end of curve - as being about as close to the relative zero point on the curve as one is likely to get. That's low.
No doubt you have something useful to do at the Company, but assessing personalities, honesty and running numbers on valuations is very clearly not amongst your responsibilities.
I guess the easiest point to make to you with respect to the divisive rubbish that you have posted, is this... If the shareholders, the past management and everyone else is so blighted by misunderstanding and incapacity, then what do YOU suppose is the reason this present little exercise of lifting the assets is all about? Simply giving a more secure home to a bunch of engineers, and a company meal on the town regularly?
If you have a copy of isd Magazine, the January issue, there's rather a lot in there that does a quite good job of describing what exactly the intrinsic value of this and related IP actually is. And it's not only in engineering high tech mags either. There's the beginings of recognition by business mags as well that SOCs are the wave of the future, and that anyone with the capacity to produce the essential - functional - performing - building blocks that become re-useable cells
in a superior library, has a prospective gold mine. WITH the engineering team.....
If your inane comment about the the engineers being the principal value in-put on the IP were correct, and anyone with a $500k to burn could simply reproduce it - along with THEIR group of engineers - then why don't they, old buddy, old pal? Seems like Cadence Design, Synopsys, Avant!, Quickturn and a rather long list of others including the newly trading Artisan Components (ARTI) would be kind of vulnerable to anyone with a small sum of capital and an engineering team. Of course there's the fact that leading edge tools and software don't come from the Five & Dime either, but I guess you forgot that one.
Judging from the recent presentation by the CEO of one of those companies, nothing could be further from the truth. Now - before you get all hurt and so on, don't misunderstand my comments, as seems to be your habit, I am not short selling ANY of the team of engineers. I happen to be quite aware of the value of the team. But equally, don't consider this thread to be totally gullible either. The investment value of all of this is quite clearly recognized by IPIQ, or why hang so much out in order to acquire it. Seems that if they had consulted you before pulling their putsch, they might have recognized that it would have been more cost effective to just blow $500k, induce the disaffected engineers to join them, and you'd all be off to the races. Somehow, that was missed.
As you have admitted on various occassions, you are not responsible for management decisions, nor for the strategic directions of the Company. Those of us who have spent a lot of time and effort reviewing that aspect of things - aside from being furious by the arrogant cynicism implicit within the events of the past three months - also have quite a legitimate ownership concern about those fundamental details, and no amount of caustic, not to speak of uninformed rubbish about the desireability of the present trends are likely to change that.
Like I said before, chum, stick around, and see what happens. You might even be surprised. |
