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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Bid.com International (BIDS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James W who wrote (32347)	6/10/1999 9:19:00 AM
From: GoNorth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37507

James, do I understand that your call is "everything will be fine" <<gggg>> >>And BII is going to be just fine.

To: James W who wrote (32347)	6/10/1999 9:21:00 AM
From: waldo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 37507

Thursday, June 10, 1999 For two days, Bid.com kept mum on CEO switch Fund manager 'agog' David Akin Financial Post <Picture>Greg Pacek / Paul Godin says a shareholder meeting was not the right place to break the news. Paul Godin agreed to give up the title of chief executive of Bid.com International Inc. on Monday morning, a few hours before the company's annual meeting of shareholders, but the company did not announce the move until yesterday. The delay raises new questions about Bid.com's maturity as it begins a concerted effort to court U.S. investors and analysts. On Monday morning, Bid.com's board of directors agreed to realign the duties of the firm's co-founders, Mr. Godin and Jeff Lymburner, Mr. Godin said yesterday. He will continue to as chairman, but on Aug. 1 will pass the chief executive role to Mr. Lymburner, who is now president, secretary and treasurer of the Toronto-based online auctioneer. A few hours after that meeting, Mr. Godin and Mr. Lymburner stood before a hall packed full of shareholders to speak extensively about the company's future. Neither man hinted at the changes to the executive structure that had been agreed to earlier in the day. "I'm agog. This is pretty much unprecedented," said Duncan Stewart, manager of the Navigator Canadian Technology Fund. Mr. Stewart added, "That's a material change. It's a remarkably poor bit of judgment by Bid.com." Mr. Godin, chairman and CEO of the firm since 1995, yesterday rejected a suggestion that the annual meeting was the right place and the right time to announce the changes. "We would have had to come to a full stop, issue press releases, and everything else. Also, the AGM [annual general meeting] is not a great place for launching a whole bunch of new initiatives or to bring out large news like this," he said yesterday. "There's nothing cloudy about this. We'd been planning this for about a year." Mr. Godin and Mr. Lymburner first teamed up at Completely Mobile Inc., a company that designed and built wireless data systems. Mr. Godin had been a senior vice-president and Mr. Lymburner was president. Prior to that, both held senior sales and marketing positions with consumer electronics companies. Now, their Bid.com has become the first Canadian dot-com company --Êa firm whose revenue and operations is based almost wholly on Internet transactions -- to be listed in the prestigious Toronto Stock Exchange 300 index. Yesterday's shuffle raised eyebrows on Bay Street if only because the way it was done is considered odd for a TSE 300 company. "You've got to act your size," said Adam Adamou, a technology analyst and partner at Taurus Capital Markets of Toronto. "I haven't talked to management there . . . but in general you would find it odd that a major change like that would not be announced at the annual meeting. It's a perfect opportunity to get into the details." Mr. Godin said the move frees him up to concentrate on strategic issues, including finding access to new capital markets. The company believes the first step to reaching new pools of capital is to get analysts at brokerage houses and institutional investors in the United States to cover the company. Bid.com's shares began trading on the Nasdaq exchange in April. Getting analyst coverage is important for many younger companies because it signals to the market that a company is mature. That can help a firm raise capital from large institutional investors. "Bid.com is going to drive this year to get as much analyst support as we can. It's my number one priority for this year," said Mr. Godin on Monday. Mr. Lymburner was in New York yesterday meeting with what the company said was 35 to 40 analysts. No analyst in the U.S. covers the company. Since the stock began trading in February, 1998, just one analyst, Mark Pavan of Yorkton Securities, has picked up the company. Yorkton has underwritten three placements for Bid.com, raising a total of $30-million for the firm. Mr. Pavan made headlines when, in April, he issued a report suggesting the stock was overvalued and that it was really worth $2 to $3. The stock had been trading above $30. Yesterday it closed at $13.55. nationalpost.com W