William---
Very briefly....
There is always the possibility a bigger fish could eat Mvis for a snack, but fortunately we do have at least a little protection. I am not an expert in this subject by any means, but being the largest warrant holder I have made an effort to assess the risk of a hostile.
Under Washington State law, an acquiring company cannot buy more than 10% of Mvis (and still have voting rights to the portion over the 10%) without the permission of the board of directors. They may be able to buy the stock, but they can't vote it for something like 5 years if I remember. In effect, this means an acquiring company must be friendly, or they will have to do a full blown hostile tender offer before owning more than 10%. This is a very expensive thing to do, and all shareholders would of course have something to say.
A rather large portion of Mvis is held by a small number of holders who would have to be convinced by the tender to give it a chance of happening. While I don't know all these holders, I certainly do know some of them and I don't think they would give up without a fight unless the bid was very high. Fiduciary duties do become part of the equation at some point.
The company may also have other defense possibilities, but as a practical matter any acquiring company would have to win over the employees at Mvis. Without them, they wouldn't be getting much of anything except some patents. I think most of the employees at Mvis are thinking pretty much the way most of the long term shareholders are thinking so it would take a very convincing package.
The bottom line is I guess that, yes, it could happen, but there are many reasons why, at present at least, I consider the possibility rather remote. Hopefully, at some point Mvis will have important relationships with other large companies who will have a vested interest in seeing Mvis remain independent. This will probably start to happen before very long, and once it does, we will be in an even stronger defensive position. Hope this helps.
GMG |
