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Strategies & Market Trends : The Amateur Traders Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oleg Sogolov who wrote (6902)	3/7/2001 4:16:37 PM
From: Kelvin Taylor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19633

BRCM -7 7/8 today. due for a bounce like SEBL did today?

To: Oleg Sogolov who wrote (6902)	3/7/2001 4:29:15 PM
From: Pete Mason	Respond to of 19633

>> . In addition, I am still in CRWN. They got upgraded today to $27 yet again. Covering broker feels the company could break even by 2003. I wonder how, since they only have cash left until this April. I smell a secondary. << HallMark Entertainment has made a $150M credit line for them (in addition to the $40M they've already loaned CRWN). I think I remember that HallMark owns approx 50% of CRWN (and I think controls 90% of the voting shares or something like that). So now CRWN can go on their merry way and burn $30M per quarter for another four or five quarters! Weeeeeee, it's a strong buy! The big difference IMO is that, while burning through their entire IPO windfall isn't a good thing, at least that money doesn't have to ever come back--it's just the money they got from shareholders, so once it's gone, no biggie... shareholders never have to be repaid. But real debt, which is what they're now using in a big way in order to maintain their dubious business plan and stay in operation, presumably DOES have to come back. With interest. So the difference between the last year and now is, after burning their first $120M in cash, now they're just at zero, pretty close to worthless. But after a year of burning this new money, they will be on the hook for big interest payments, and in majorly in hock to boot! Much worse than worthless! Nevertheless, the fact that their creditor owns half of them does cloud the picture in terms of how dear the debt really is... I didn't find any terms listed anywhere in their filings. And maybe HallMark will just keep giving them money to burn for who knows what reasons. So having a giant company own half of them makes their future more uncertain, at least to me, in terms of exactly when and how they will bite the dust. This fact, as well as these inane upgrades which truely the very worst analysts seem to come up with, seems likely to drag out the inevitable for a while, making this in all likelihood a short only for the very patient. In the meantime, CRWN remains a heinous butt-ugly piece of shit that no one should ever own. -- Pete