Cyberken: normally I'd agree with you about management and short-sellers. In this case, however, I'd be more worried if management weren't concerned. The primary culprits selling our stock short are people the company, unfortunately, did financings with a few months ago. Not only are they profiting (at least on paper) as the price goes down, but under the terms of their deal with SGII, they have the right to convert their monetary investment in SGII into unissued common stock, basically whenever they choose. Hence, the lower they drive down the price, THE MORE STOCK THEY'LL BE ABLE TO CONVERT.
So management's current concerns about this are really the same as mine and many other stockholders...namely that these people, if not stopped by ANY MEANS POSSIBLE, are in a position to get their hands on quantities of very cheap stock, seriously diluting current shareholders.
No point at this juncture in debating why SGII made a deal with these people in the first place. (After offering a similar deal about a year ago to current shareholders with few takers, there were simply no viable alternatives, according to management, in order to keep the company going.) Without info inaccessable to me, I have no way of truly verifying this, but as our officers are also shareholders and are likely also trying to protect their own personal interests as well as ours, I assume it to be true.
Anyway, here we are in the paradoxical situation of the company closer than ever to fulfilling a grand destiny, and yet the stock is near historical lows!!
I have been a shareholder now for 13 years. I've heard ALL the stories and promises. I've been through the 1 for 20 reverse split. Through it all, I've been through periods of huge optimism and other periods of feeling I must be one of the planet's great idiots. I sold some stock the last time we got above double digits but not enough to cover my total losses over the years....
And now? I'm trying to scrape together funds to accumulate more stock. Why? Because I feel that we are FINALLY at the point of transitioning from an r&d company to a commercial one. The transition won't happen all at once, but given a 6-month to 2 year time horizon, I think SGII represents an extremely rare risk/reward opportunity at current prices.
There is, of course, still risk. SGI is still a speculative stock. IBM or Microsoft we are not...at least not yet. There is no cash flow from continuing operations. But these and other big names were once penny or low-priced stocks, struggling to emerge. There will surely be glitches in getting the first LFC plant up and running. OCET may turn out to be less than we all hope when the data finally comes in later this year. Short-term financial difficulties may continue for a while longer.
But stepping back and trying to take an OBJECTIVE VIEW, I see a company with patents on 2 distinct potentially home-run energy technologies, relatively little debt, subtantial tax-loss carryforwards, a recently-added sales and marketing staff with years of experience, a profitable subsidiary (AMS), a near-completed deal with Mitsubishi (a huge vote of confidence in SGII's basic technologies and a formidable marketing power), and a "shares outstanding" count which, while larger than I'd like, is still small enough to allow for tremendous appreciation as the story plays out. Our monthly burn-rate should be declining once the Mits. deal is consumated. Additionally, government clean-air legislation, favorable to our technologies, is currently coming in to play.
After yesterday's conference call, it appears that many positives are in the works and, for me, they far outweigh the negatives, especially at current prices. Of equal importance, management is trying to keep us informed.
It is at the very least time to instruct our brokers to put our shares into "cash accounts" (from which shares may not be "loaned" to shortsellers)...or to ask that the certificates be sent to us. Shortsellers can't operate if they can't borrow stock.
And as for buying...like I said, at this price, I'm starting to accumulate again...
Just one man's opinion. |
