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Strategies & Market Trends : Graham and Doddsville -- Value Investing In The New Era -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: investmentmaker who wrote (169)	4/14/1998 5:58:00 PM
From: porcupine --''''>	Respond to of 1722

ATEC came public in early 1993, as Hillside Bedding. The bedding business may have been a flop, however, since a shareholder suit was commenced about 6 months later alleging all manner of "material misstatements and/or omissions". The suit was settled after about another 6 months (though a personal injury suit by a former fork lift operator drags on). In 1995, ATEC decided to be a full service computer systems vendor and integrator. Considering all of the litigation surrounding the former bedding company (outlined in various SEC filings), one might conclude that their lawyers were enriched by their association with ATEC. However, there has also been past litigation in the matter of allegedly unpaid legal fees, also now settled. There has been other litigation which I will not detail here. Then there is the matter of the accounting firm that was dismissed in a disagreement over how the acquisition of the computer business should be accounted for. A more obliging accountancy firm has since been engaged. Through a number of reverse splits of prodigious proportions, the nominal value of the common shares have been raised to 6 and change -- which still leaves them down somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% since the 1993 IPO. However, in the current Market frenzy, insiders are selling perhaps $15 million worth of shares, thereby increasing the float by say, 2/3. The boiler plate in a recent SEC filing reads: "THESE SECURITIES ARE HIGHLY SPECULATIVE. THEY INVOLVE A HIGH DEGREE OF RISK. THEY SHOULD BE PURCHASED ONLY BY PERSONS WHO CAN AFFORD TO SUSTAIN A TOTAL LOSS OF THEIR ENTIRE INVESTMENT (SEE "RISK FACTORS", PAGE 5)" (see: sec.gov Not my idea of a Value play --''''>