Rain,
<What I see is Pascoe being a lame duck CEO. He
was brought in as a highend marketer (under the guise as CEO)
to land Avidia sales. Once contracts are in and the price moves
up, the FOR SALE sign goes up. As the CEO, he will retain a
significant position with the acquirer and Chuck will slip away into
happy retirement with his 500k shares..>
i have discussed this in the past with Jay, i believe the scenario you describe is correct. it is very similar to the company i used to work for. in it's glory days it traded between 60 and 120 with a number of stock splits. when hard times hit the energy sectors the stock price steadily declined and everyone began downsizing and reengineering to maintain profit margins. our stock price traded from the high teens to the middle 20's for a number of years. though we were always profitable, analyst viewed management as too conservative. the company had ~100M cash, reasonable earnings, and little debt but we were not growing. the trust that held control of the company decided it was time to sell. the ceo was never able to work out and deals and would always claim the potential suitors were not offering what the company was worth. the trust then hired ( i believe it was goldman sachs) to help position the company for sale.
shortly after that an "adviser" to the ceo was brought in to "help" the ceo in finding a buyer. within a few months the ceo was gone and the adviser was given complete control of the company. he was an extremely sharp and personable,had a good track record with other sector businesses, who new how to deal with customers, employies, possible buyers, and most importantly..analyst.
within months the company received a number of upgrades and he was working with a number of interested buyers. we went to the highest bidder - bhi. when he took over the reins the stock price was ~22 and on the last day of trading before it was exchanged for bhi stock it was 68$ a share. the time frame on all this was less than a year.
i hope this is possibly what is happening behind the scenes with pair..i know there are a lot of similarities between the two companies.
i hope i'm not rambling on too much...people will think it's a post from Jay!!! just kidding Buddy...keep up the excellent post.
regards,
thomas |
