For all you Acacia fans. Recent SEC filings detail a few interesting points. 1)- Their major investments have all lost money or have no revenue. One (Whitewing), in operation since 93 has never earned a penny, and consistently lost money.
2) 1st Qtr Rev's of 63,000 and Admin expenses (read -salaries to the insiders) of 484,000
3) They value their patents at $5.5mil.
4) They issue warrants to pay for expenses.
5) Some insiders are registering to sell shares that they just bought in March for $10, at $17. That's a long term view on the value of the company!
Let's look at their record of capitalizing on intellectual property.
1.Combimatrix - trying to help speed up the drug delivery process. No revenues, no clients. This is an extremely competitive area and there have already been a number of very successful companies that have capitalized on growth in this area. They're much to late to play any part whatsoever. Might as well right that one off. They like it so much they sold some in the first quarter.
2. Greenwich Info Tech. - Information on demand. Set up 2 years ago. If they haven't had any business yet --forget it. Another write-off.
3.Internet Software, set up in 97 --nothing released yet. Yeah, this isn't a competitive area that takes big bucks to get noticed, is it?
Don't hold your breath.
4. Whitewing - Nutritional supplements. How many marketing scams have we seen with pyramid sales programs for diet aides. This is a sure winner. Noticed that the reset the price of their management warrants from $7.00 to $3.00 recently --how nice of them. Certainly dilutes Acacia's interests. Share price don't look to good.
5. Soundview - we'll see, I guess.
6. Money management - a strange one, but management fees are so tiny that it can't be of any significance in the real world of money management. Given that fees were around 30,000 for the quarter, we can guess the assets under management were no more than $6mil (with a 2% fee, let's assume). Given that these firms sell for around 4% of assets under management, that gives a whopping value of 240,000 for their money management business! Whopee! Where's the other $80million of value coming from?
7. Mercwerks - mac software for CD-recordable drives. Great, except Mac's are not a growth market. Unfortunately, "the company has not completed the development of any products..." Oops. They're not even certain the software can be translated into Windows format. Oops x 2. There are already 25 competing products. Oops x 3.
The recent filing also notes the need for more management and marketing personnel ($$$$) to successfully commercialize anything. Like this statement:
"There can be no assurance these companies will be able to meet their anticipated capital needs for developing their products. Failure to properly develop these products will prevent these companies from generating meaningful product sales."
Sounds like a "going concern" phrase to me. Good thing their accounts are the well known firm of Finocchiaro & Co. Who the heck are they?
Oh, I see. Fred Finocchiaro, the accountant that passed on everything, is also a happy shareholder (69,000) shares and also was paid in warrants. How nice.
I mean, come on. TVL shareholders may be accused of being too optimistic, but at least the company is real, has income, many products, has customers like Rogers and Shaw Cable and the like. Is earnings positive even when they write-off much of the R&D expenses for V-Chip development. From an accounting perspective, they easily could have capitalized it all and wrote it off over years.
The statement you keep refering to in the annual report is bunk. There is an informal quote from the licensing manager stating that they are confident about their IP. From the totality of the report, it's pretty clear their situation. Also, for the Canadian patent, it's extremely clear cut. Once again, the Acacia folks think there is "a patent" and they are betting $80million that other's haven't found a better, more robust, different approach --using internally developed software, memory, infrared etc... --that will quite easily extend and be a novel approach to reading ratings from VBI 21.
Let's be serious --we've obviously been too optimistic (me included) with TVL, but for anyone who has meet the management and spent time with them, they are not looking to mislead anyone, they are hardworking, honest, ethical managers --perhaps a little naieve on the way's of the market and excited about their potential, but absolutely not crooks. Talk to any of the company's they sell to --Shaw, Rogers, Videotron etc... You will hear nothing but good things, much like anyone who has talked to the Ingram people they work with.
So, fine, accuse us of optimism, but the real question is......
where does anyone find any value in the Acacia portfolio of crap. They have a bunch of tired, worthless IP and investments that have never earned a dime. HOW DOES ONE BACK UP AN $80MIL MKT CAP WHEN SHARES ARE BEING ISSUED OUT THE WAZOO AND INSIDERS AND BOARD MEMBERS ARE SELLING? TALK ABOUT A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN--WHAT A FRAUD! |
