LOCK stinks.
They are not able to sell the gun locks (average monthly sales was just $3,600). They have announced agreements with a distributor with no previous history in the gun business. What happens if the distributor is not able to sell the locks? The details of the agreement are unknown (penalty clauses, etc.) The deals include mysterious delivery of stock to the distributor/PR-firm/whole-seller/etc. In addition to the above, warrants to some unnamed companies were issued as a finders fee (for finding the distributor and wholeseller). The warrants are for 2M shares ! It does not end here - In addition, and in connection with the Distribution Agreement, on February 11, 1998 the Company entered into a commission agreement with a consulting company which helped the Company structure the transaction with the Distributor. This commission agreement provided that the consulting company will receive a 15% commission from the sale of the products in accordance with the Distribution Agreement and a 15% fee upon the exercise of the stock purchase warrants described above. This is in addition to the distributor's cut.
The # of outstanding shares is around 11.5M. However the number of warrants, options, convertible-debt runs into several million shares. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant % of these shares were dumped yesterday.
This company has serious liquidity problems. It should run out of cash
by the end of this year.
The insiders have sold shares almost every month.
Also check out this chart (look at the lows)
quote.yahoo.com
Clips from their SEC filings.
The Company has met with a number of the handgun manufacturers in the United States seeking OEM (original equipment manufacturer) relationships with them. To date these efforts have not produced any commitments from gun manufacturers to offer the Saf T Lok/TM/ as an option with their hand guns
The exercise of all of these stock purchase warrants and stock options would result in an increase in the outstanding shares of Common Stock by approximately 82%.
The Company believes it must achieve revenues through the sale of its gun locking devices of more than $400,000 per month in order to break even. The Company's monthly revenues since January 1, 1997 have averaged $3,600.
On September 19, 1997, the Board of Directors determined that the outstanding stock options held by John L. Gardner were no longer serving as an adequate incentive because of declines in the Company's stock price. Believing that it was important to encourage employee stock ownership and to provide incentives to
increase shareholder value from the then current stock price, the Board of Directors offered Mr. Gardner the opportunity to exchange certain existing stock options for the same number of options at the then current market price. ( my comment - nice incentive for mismaanagement. The exercise price was changed from $2.5 to just $0.5 )
Disclaimer - I am obviously short LOCK.
Regards.
Rajiv |
