Jock, I tried to answer as many points as you raised, but you did not number them, and I'm sure I don't have time to answer you line by line. As for accusing me about being in denial, gee, I am not!
Your concern about litigation cost may be too extreme. Almost every tech company that has gone through an earnings drought has been sued. So you can bet that the board has liability insurance, and the company also has litigation insurance. From what I heard of other companies, the premium will increase, and a deductible is applied any any settlement.
Unless you know that IOM does not have insurance, I think it is not a great detractor.
As for manipulation of stock price...I remember listening to the Q3 '97 CC, and they stated that gross margins in Q4 would be below GM in Q3 because they planned on increased advertising spending and also spending on Comdex. I remember that this statement cause IOM stock to plunge in the next few weeks.
However as comdex rolled around, enthusiasm (over?) with IOM and the clik! drove the price over 33. Then after Comdex, it plunged. Based upon earnings of $0.45 trailing, you can say that expectations were very high.
However, the demos at Comdex were not polished, so I'd say people's expectation of Clik! were really premature. And I remember no promises of release dates.
So, I think that lawyers will have a difficult time claiming stock manipulation.
You know, IOM officers have a 10 day window to sell their stock every quarter. If it happens that the price is high at that time, then that is their luck.
I agree that KE's selling of $14mm of IOM stock sucks. But it will be difficult to prove that he knew that sales and earnings would be crappy. Also, after he sold, we had Comdex and higher prices.
Your estimation of litigation costs sounds extremely high. Can you tell me the most expensive successful litigation amount? I doubt it exceeded $10mm. Unless you think IOM is going to make case law, your $250mm is extreme by an order of magnitude.
as for your Raw Materials issue, since you listened to the CC, you heard that IOM drew $30mm in short term debt from their revolving line of credit to pay for the extra raw material. They were up front about it, although they had to clarify the answer in the Q&A session. Why didn't they use cash? because it was invested in 90 day CDs? I think you can find the debt in the Balance sheet, and the interest earned in the Revenue line.
yeah, it was a stupid cash management issue.
But as to issuing 150mm extra shares? where did that come from? what rationale are you using? even at today's prices, thats $1 billion!
So to summarize the answer, it was in the Q3 '97 CC about what was going to happen in Q4, and also they telegraphed their actions in the Q4 CC (remember that the price dropped in the weeks leading up to Q4 earnings release).
I really doubt IOM will be taken over soon. I give it a 1% probability. Too many other issues besides valuation. But litigation , especially securities litigation, will not prevent a takeover proposition.
BL
ps
were you trying to be rude to me? it read rude. |
