re. <<Did you listen to the online interview with Halimi?>>
Yes, I highly recommend that everyone look at the company's web page and listen to the interview. They can be found at turbodyne.com . The interview lasts about 10 minutes, and it requires the free RealPlayer, which can be downloaded from a link on the turbodyne site.
The web pages have a great focus on the stock and little apparent effort to sell the product to customers. I think that is telling. It is consistent with my opinion that the co. exists more to sell stock than to sell wheel and electric superchargers.
Everybody can make their own judgment about the interview with Mr. Halimi. Here's my opinion. I've heard lots of interviews with CEO's before, both in conference calls and one-on-one. I've never heard a CEO who had a market cap of $20 M, much less a market cap of $400 M, who created as unfavorable impression as Mr. Halimi. He was asked a number of routine questions that CEO's should all be ready to answer in a flash, and he stumbled over them. It was sad, really.
Here are examples: Asked what his company's business was, and then 'are you the leader in this field?', he answered the latter question by saying that he is the CEO of the company. Guess he didn't understand that in context 'you' obviously meant the co., not him personally. Asked whether his company reports in Canadian dollars, he answered 'no', they report in 'GAAP'. Asked why earnings haven't kept up with increased sales, he did not explain that sales are primarily generated by a mature aluminum wheel subsidiary whereas earnings are also affected by the other division which is in the development stage. In fact he made what seemed to me a conspicuous effort to avoid mentioning the wheel subsidiary at all. The only time it came up was when he was asked where the co. operated -- in answering this question he was confused for a moment whether he had a factory in Mexico City (in fact he has a maquiladora across the border where wheels are cast). To his credit, when asked whether investors should buy his stock, Mr. Halimi did describe the co. as 'speculative'. However, he also claimed the co. would do $200 M revenue in 1998 on top of the $40 M it did last year in wheels. He also claimed the co. would have huge margins. Curiously, these forward-looking statements were made without the protection of invoking the 'Safe Harbor Act', so this recording might be of interest to Mr. Lerach and his ilk. |
