Mike: I appreciate your ability to garner responses directly from Mr. Rumy, unfortunately he didn't answer all of what I thought were very clearly stated questions.
First of all, after arguing the point ("as wrong as can be"), he re-states the company's strategy as I basically presented it: Lowering customer's cost (his price) to drive up applicability and at the same time increase capacity to meet the new demand -- which would cause sales,and therefore profits, to soar. No argument from me.
During the early P.R. campaign, the stated cost (price) goal was $5/pound. I've seen articles in the past which claim even that's too high to bring on many of the targeted applications. Mr. Rumy failed to mention the status of price/pound. I think that if were even close to $5/# with consistent production, we would have had an answer.
He didn't answer the question regarding his capacity goal and the status. He had an opportunity here to clear up the suspected production problems, and the associated technology.
He did mention that he has lost sales over the last three quarters; it's sure fortunate we have Asia to blame. If you take a look at some of the electronics companies like Phillips, to see if their sales are appreciably down. They're not.
I've never professed to be a 10K expert; I just think most of the information provided in the 10K is fairly objective, and that you can learn a lot about the company by analyzing the data, especially when compared to competitors. I also think that Mr. Rumy is a very smart fellow, who has his personal fortune tied up in this company. He's right about current stockholders concentrating on the current status - his inability to meet his low-cost fabrication goals, his problems bringing on capacity, his inability to sell current production, and his inability thus-far to create new applications. With this status, he recommends enthusiasm. Unless he starts a PR campaign detailing major breakthroughs, I still think the stock will fall to the mid-teens.
Thanks anyway for trying to get him to give specifics, too bad he didn't or couldn't.
regards |
