JDN - you may be right, mangagment may have taken an "I'll show them" approach to dealing with analysts and shareholders. If so, I have to question their collective maturity and intelligence. Like it or not, management has fiduciary obligations to its shareholders which require, among other things, keeping them appraised of the company's operations. If they didn't want these obligations, they should not have gone public.
Does this mean managment has a duty to hype their stock? Absolutely not. But it does mean that at least in my opinion they have a duty (although perhaps not an enforceable legal duty) to release sufficient information so that the market can fairly and accurately gauge the value of the company. Again, in my view, it is completely unacceptable for management to simply ignore its shareholders, thumb its noses at the analysts, and walk away from the market in hopes of returning several quarters later with a "better" company.
I get the uncomfortable feeling that management has decided it liked things much better back when it was a private company and could simply run its business without shareholder or market interference. It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle, though. They accepted the benefits of a public offering, now they have a duty to act responsibly to increase the value of the company to its owners -- us. I sincerely hope we'll see a "loosening of the lips" at CMND in the very near future.
[Sorry to spew on in this post, feels good to get all this off my chest, though :)]
Dave |
