Gary, thanks for the honest good and bad side overview. I have been wanting to get the story from a distributor's perspective.
Regarding upstart problems, I said once before, I wish I had bought AOL when they were having trouble with long delays, outages, etc. I almost bought AOL when they announced doubling of customers, but the problems cut the stock price in half. Hindsight shows that was exactly the time to buy. I didn't.
I bought some more shares of CODI today. As long as Teddy Turner stays with the company (and I think as a matter of pride he will, not to mention his 3 year contract), I'll have confidence that the company will prosper. I don't think Compu-DAWN would have given up some of their cash reserve if they didn't have a sense that they could pull this off. They've sat on this $6 million (now about $5 million) looking for a faster growing market than the public safety (government) market. Their software seems to be excellent, but government contracts have very lengthy approval processes, and can take a year just to finalize a contract.
Now, how's this for a guess - Ted Turner Sr. sees the future in the internet for all kinds of communications: TV news, movies, radio, data, voice, games, sports, teleconferencing, etc. Ted doesn't have a piece of the internet pie (directly). Teddy wants to follow in dad's footsteps. Teddy knows the future of broadcasting has to include the internet. Teddy, with dad's silent support starts experimenting and getting some high power players strung together. Dad is pointing the way and facilitating, but behind the scenes to not draw attention. Suddenly (actually after 2 years) several players come together and are ready to publicly announce their big internetworking plans. They include an ISP, telephone company, set top box company, software companies, merchandise and content vendors. Since the technology is twisted-pair copper wire based, it can run over telephone lines connected to everyone's house.
This really isn't even far from what we know is happening. My point is that this may not really be just the "juniors" running around on their own. Also, I'm betting that the acquisition by a listed stock company is not accidental timing. I'm betting that they think they have it almost together for big annoncements. Until now, nothing they did had to be reported publicly for full disclosure.
Who knows, the Compu-DAWN company could have gone public and held on to the funds as part of this plan all along. Sound far fetched? Don't forget we're dealing with a Billionaire's son and at least 2 multimillion dollar families. Do you think this arrangement will be allowed to ultimately fail? Now that sounds far fetched.
Again, thanks for your insight. I know you have a vested interest and would like to see the company succeed. By the way, how far behind are they on shipping set top boxes, if you've ordered any in last 6 months? I understand they're working on some new box or software arrangement.
Thanks,
David |
