Wes:
Joe V and I have put our heads together to answer your comments. Joe V says he's sorry about missing your calls - he's been out of town (in Dallas) a lot over the past 2 weeks or so. He will call you on Monday.
Remember that this company started with Jim Truher and Bill Davis, of SelecTel, as the backbone of the operation. Supposedly they had the experience and know-how. Truher then went ahead with the Select Switch acquisition without performing a proper due diligence examination. Alan King, president of Select Switch at the time, was not an experienced telephony person. Truher did not have a hands-on relationship with the Texas subsidiary, or even oversee it - he stayed in California and looked for more acquisitions. He may have been a great idea man but he shirked his duty as a manager. He and Davis had no clue about Select Switch and the AAFES / Sprint contract. They thought the contract was a terrific deal the way it stood originally. Again, no due diligence, no verification.
King was responsible for the original contract. It had a lot of potential but the terms were terrible. Basically, King was happy to collect a paycheck and do business with Sprint. The way he managed the project, he behaved more like Sprint employee than a Select Switch employee. The project needed hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves number crunching. This is when the Company brought in Joe Vigliarolo as CFO (and little did he know what was in store for him).
Later, the board sold SelecTel, which did not have nearly the potential of Select Switch, and brought in Dennis Casey and Richard Pryor, who had the telephony experience and business talent to do the hands-on work of the AAFES contract.
Joe Lanza did put a lot of money into the acquisition of Select Switch. The Company was told at the time that 2« to 4 million was all that was needed to get the project running smoothly when in fact Xecom has had to scramble to raise tens of millions for the project. So it's been an uphill battle much of the time and you are right, management has had to learn the hard way in many cases. There are times when I think all of us, including Joe L, deserve praise for sticking with this operation. Certainly you shareholders do.
The Board is doing everything it can, right this minute, to find more telephony talent to beef up the management team and to bring in more equity capital without diluting the stock. Joe L has also been diligently pursuing this end because, as he so often reminds us, he has the most to lose. I think management has a pretty realistic idea of its strengths and weaknesses. We are doing our best to improve in all areas.
Dal |
