Michael, Welcome! I think if you focus your 'research' of the thread on the time frame surrounding the shareholders meeting which took place on Feb. 4th in Henderson, NV, and the few weeks following, and then up to now, you'll get the picture.
I notice you work as a controller. I'll put Larry's 'horrors' into perspective. Valence has been using 'just in time' financing to make the transition from R+D to production. Prior to last summer, they had a contract with Delphi (old GM/AC Delco) which helped their cash flow. Lev Dawson was directing all efforts to getting all their equipment operational, first in Henderson (allowing them to send production samples as of last summer, to dozens of OEMs), and then beginning late last summer, at their facility in Northern Ireland.
They issued $7.5M of convertible preferreds last July, with a timeline of 6 months with conditions to be met, or else the fixed conversion rate became a floating one. In December, Castle Creek agreed to waive the conditions on the floating conversion, take the fixed rate, and issue a second tranche of financing, with a similar 6 month timeline.
You should also know that the major shareholder, Carl Berg (12.7%) has extended lines of credit to the company which have not been accessed yet. There are also outstanding warrants. Then there is $40M U.S. in financing that becomes available from the IDB in NI, once VLNC ships their first $4M of product. (FYI, Berg is worth $800M, and is not about to let the company dry up at the last minute, if he believes they are very close to making his stock investment flourish.) Lev Dawson has 8.4% of the shares, which puts him in our corner in that he wants to avoid excessive share dilution.
Lev Dawson has publicly stated that he could arrange other financing (they run out of *cash* at the end of March), but would prefer to wait until a 'material event occurs' which would be 'independently verifiable,' and would cause the stock price to be at much higher levels. Then he would do a secondary offering.
So, in a sense it is 'just in time' financing. It could be construed as frightening by some, if they weren't aware of just how close VLNC is to production, and if they weren't aware of VLNC not really being 'desperate' for money, as some fear-mongers who lurk here would say.
Regarding being close to production, the company put the employees on restriction from trading the stock over two weeks ago; usually this occurs 30 days prior to a material event.
The company will not announce 'contracts' until they ship product. (On the premise that it's not a done deal until it's done; and because they were sued in '94, for announcing a deal with Motorola that got cancelled when that prior product wasn't scalable to a factory environment; costing the company $7M, and causing Lev to take leave for a while.)
So the stock price is twitching, most of the shares are 'locked up,' and everyone anticipates PO's within a month or so from now.
Note that all four board members were heavy buyers of the stock; the only sellers were ex-officers exercising options, and all of them still hold substantial positions as well. The board consists of Lev, Carl, and then Al Shugart (Seagate founder) and Bert Roberts (COB of MCI/WCOM).
There are nearly 200 employees busy at the factory in NI, all steps of the process are done in-house (beginning with dry-mixing of the powders, even), major emphasis on quality control at every step, and 3 complete lines are already installed, with the 4th now being put in.
That should be enough for now to whet your appetite.
And again, welcome to the thread. I estimate you have a few weeks to accumulate a position before the price really moves, if the timetable holds. Bon chance! |
