Excellent and accurate post, Bruce. Just a couple of small corrections if I may:
<<For Q1 they are anticipating revenue in the area of 64-65 million.>>
Actually, I'm pretty sure they said in the CC that Q1 revs would likely be greater than Q3 ($64-65 million) and less than Q4 ($74 million), in line with their original 4-5% sequential gain estimate given in Q2. In other words, 4-5% above $64-$65 million or around $68 million.
<<4. "Lightweight Components" >>
Bruce, I think this should be "Lightwave components" - i.e. MRV stuff (lasers, diodes, etc.)
<<5. "new axis">> s/b Newaccess
<<7. The company's investment in the 3 independent companies (Kempton
communications in Europe, NewAxis in Santa Barbara, and Charlotte's Web in Israel) totals under $3million.>>
Actually this may not be correct. Noam and Edmund were intentially (but consistently) vague here, but what they actually said (in effect) was that:
1) they either own controlling interest or have the options to have
controlling interest in all three.
2) if they owned less than controlling interest, they expensed the investment as R&D.
3) NewAccess was expensed as R&D
4) They would not state whether Kempton or Charlotte's Web Networks were expensed as R&D or not.
Obviously this means they own less than 50% of NewAccess, but own greater than 50% in one or both of the other 2 which, if so, did NOT get expensed as R&D. So their total investment here is higher than the "less than $3 million" they estimated was expensed to R&D. How much higher, we don't know. Vlad on the Yahoo! thread missed this as well.
Now there are also ongoing costs here, as they said NewAccess (and probably all 3) have access to MRVC staff, facilities or resources for design or engineering, development, sales, etc. But their payback could be huge if any of them go public or win large contracts.
roktar comments that these are "shell" companies, implying a negative connotation, but actually this is a common form of hightech investment, and one that can have high returns for them. It sure beats investing the $3+ million in Treasuries, and they couldn't do this on their own at anywhere near this investment level. These are excellent moves on MRVC's part. |
