The analyst lunch was a while ago, IIRC, and involved their institutional oven. It probably worked fine, but oddly enough, the darned oven just didn't sell. Restaurants complained, among other things, that the oven was bulky and too hard to use. Furthermore, what restaurant really needs the ability to serve main courses in two minutes? That's when they sell appetizers, soups and salads.
The Maytag thing seems a lot harder to judge, but it is a tacit admission (along with their slight name change) that TRBO's institutional oven was a failure. Now they are letting Maytag fiddle with their miracle technology and see if they can't come up with a satisfactory consumer oven out of it. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. If they can't, Maytag will just chalk it up as part of the cost of doing business, but Turbochef will go under. If they can, Turbochef lives. Whether they thrive is another matter entirely.
Seriously, if you want to invest in Turbochef's oven technology that badly, why not buy MYG instead? They stand to get the lion's share of the revenues from the oven anyway, and they're actually a pretty solid investment lately regardless.
I'd hate to be invested in a company whose entire future hangs with the whims of another company. |
