Hello Suzanne, For me the biggest question is not whether the movies will sell: these guys have a stellar history of making money with low-budget films, some of which evidence an "art" quality that surprises critics. Nor is it exactly when their US filing will be completed.
What I find most disturbing as an investor is that the usual mechanism for passing the revenue on to shareholders is not operating here. They finance the production with investment capital that is discreet from the corporate funds, and make individual deals for the repayment of those monies. The individual investor in a particular film will undoubtedly have preferential treatment when the payback is made from a completed picture.
These arrangements are not public record, and while we here were lauding this arrangement because it didn't dip into corporate assets, the flip side is that there exists the possibility that NONE of the profit from the sale of a picture will "trickle down" to shareholders. The movie industry is notorious for cooking their books to screw actors, writers, etc who have a percentage-of-net arrangement. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell whether this affects us on any given picture, or on all pictures.
This "monster seller" got cheap shares at the get-go (see posts by V & Paul Taylor on RB) for who-knows-what amount of operating capital, and there is no way to tell who else is out there waiting for .10, .15, .20 etc. to do the same thing. With the free-trading shares being increased four-fold (17mil-85mil) over the past 4 months, one would hope the end to this dumping is near, but who knows.
I'm long MVEE on the track record of the principals, but there are many knotty problems of credibility, financial responsibility to shareholders, and disclosure that keep this one on the front burner for DD and tracking.
All the best,
M. |
