Ted, so your interest is just "as a consumer" - BULL!
What you have proven is that Georgiev (or how ever it's spelled) was a poor manager. I'm glad he recognized that the company needed a manager and stepped down. Yes, they made bad R & D investments. $22,000,000 on medical R & D between 1995 -1997 was overly optimistic, to say the least. I would guess that each of these had merit in and of itself, but Georgiev didn't have the business sense to understand that each would take many years before any product would result, and thus many millions. Each 10Q, however, clearly stated that each research area was years from a product.
I'm sure you've noticed that the majority of these agreements have been eliminated or modified. Yet you'll notice that they still have certain licensing agreements that could be profitable long term. Their agreement with Coherent requires 10% of sales be reinvested in R&D. This is the best way to ensure not just growth, but that you don't lose market share. Choosing the best areas to invest that R&D money will hopefully be done more wisely now that they have what appears to be an excellent management staff.
Profits for Q4 will depend to some extent on how the companies that were spun off do. They could still have some liabilities, plus they could still stand to gain from improvement in these companies. Notice that they retained certain rights to invest, and they have shares in at least one company. Yes, Nexar took a beating recently, but they have an excellent product that has had good sales to the government, and I think would be doing better if they hadn't inherited some money problems from PMTI. They had trouble delivering all the products they took sales for. Not, by the way, the worst problem a company could have. Still, a bad reputation from this could hurt them going forward.
While you have always maintained that laser products do not provide long term results, PMTI claims that some of the hair removal is permanent. You mention people just using tweezers as if it were just a couple of hairs being removed. Remember that PMTI's products remove hair from larger areas.
You used to harp about skin discoloration from the laser heat. While I still think in most cases it's more like a tan (and temporary), their new product (and a product that only PMTI has FDA approval to market) uses a cooling element.
But their future isn't just in hair removal. Don't forget they also have tattoo removal, treatment for spider veins, and other cosmetic applications. They are developing a tonsilectomy laser. I think they're still working on a product with government funding for measuring the depth of a burn based on amount of damage to capillaries, etc. This can save valuable time in getting the proper treatment for burn victims.
I guess it's fair for you to only cut them down based on hair treatment, first because that's all you know anything about, and second because they over estimated the demand for the product and caused overestimations by stockholders. But PMTI is in a growing medical sector. Lasers will be used to perform more surgical procedures as time goes by. Teaming up with Columbia Hospitals ( while the timing couldn't have been worse due to their own legal problems) could still result in a very profitable venture. The new PMTI president is watching this venture. It's quite possible, given Georgiev's poor management skills, that the deal is not profitable to PMTI AS CURRENTLY WRITTEN. Watch for a renegotiation of this contract.
My interest? I invested a long time ago - like 2 years ago, and more for Nexar than PMTI itself. They had good potential - bad management. Nexar had some industry experts that founded the company, with contacts and a solid product base. Their stumble in being able to deliver products could be a small setback or a fatal blow - time will tell.
Now back to your interest. You say that you've done all this research and hours of posts against the company, but your interest is "as a consumer". That's bull! There are other forums to protect consumers. Those on this forum are stock investors - shorts and longs and lookers. You know that. People don't come to Silicon Investor looking for hair removal products. So come clean. What is your real interest? |
