Recap of VIAS annual stockholders meeting...
First, let me preface this by saying this is report is provided only because TED is pressuring me to do it... The only reason we attended the meeting to partake in the cocktails and buffet lunch, which I might add was excellent, right up to the time we were informed that these fine delights were for the meeting being held next door...
The first half of the meeting was the basic read from the "Stockholder's Meeting for Dummies" book about board members, proposals, and auditors. The votes were counted, including the ones from the stockholders present that felt their 0.000000001% of shares actually mattered, and everything passed. The official part of the meeting was promptly adjourned.
The second half of the meeting was a dog and pony show (minus the dead horse part) by Mr. Wiggins, oops, I mean Steve Whiteman. The show basically indicated how Viasoft was going to grow in the Application Modernization arena with very little emphasis on either Y2k or Euro conversions. They intend to leverage their customer base of 1300 of the Global 5000 companies using their core technology for both license and services revenues. A comment was also made about a large portion of this customer base being acquired do to Y2K work. The main theme of the show was that Viasoft intends to work on building their business by providing the tools and services needed by large IT organizations to evolve their existing systems into the future.
Various questions and answers were then exchanged. Some questions were promptly dismissed like:
"What to you expect the stock price to be..."
"Where did the financial analysts which last spring were predicting $70 a share by year end get their information...".
Other questions were answered like:
"Is the Y2K revenue dead?" -- "Yes, for the most part the mainframe revenue is dead, however we expect to receive a fair amount of revenue from Onmark sales through the reseller channel."
"Is the Euro a strategic revenue source for the company?" -- "No, it is not" .
One concerned shareholder even asked about the "Large amount of employee attrition which has been occurring in the company...".
Mr. Whiteman explained that several changes were being considered to retain key employees but he could not go into any details. He then replied to that prior Viasoft employee, that Viasoft may even be able to entice certain prior Viasoft employees to return to the company.
There... Are you happy now TED? |
