Deaf-Talk Inc. (fka MGQG)

[bobbydigital]

Merger information and company history.


MGQG went public Wednesday 9/15/2010 after being a privately owned company since 1999. Deaf Talk inc has been run by both Bob Fisher, and David Stauffer since the company began. The facts that we know so far are that the Authorized is 50M, 14.3M O/S and a float around 8M. This article gives a breakdown of expected revenues once the Audited financials are completed ( In the works now)

They currently have a partnership with Sony Electronics

http://newsroom.yorkhospital.com/pressrelease/York-Hospitals-Deaf-Talk-System-goes-High-Tech-34.aspx

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-government/resource.articles.bbsccms-assets-mkt-gov-articles-deaftalkarticle.shtml

I've been doing a little DD on the officers of the company and came across this.

http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010909deaf0909p5.asp

Apparently these same guys were running the business back in 2001 and at the time they were doing business in ONLY 47 Hospitals. At the time they said estimated revenues were $2,000,000 a year. They said by years end they expected to be in 100 hospitals which would net them about a revenue of about $5,000,000 a year. This was back in 2001. Since this time they have expanded the company and Yesterdays release stated they are now in over 400 hospitals.

So since 2001 they've expanded from 47 hospitals to now over 400. These guys are the REAL DEAL. Rough estimates based on prior numbers puts the revenues at $2,000,000 a year with the estimation of 100 hospitals bringing in $5M a year.


Since this is WAS a private company we knew nothing of it. It would appear they've been an established company for over 10 years and have been making money. There is no way of knowing exactly how much until we get the Audited financials which are due soon but my guess is they're making well over $15,000,000 a year based on the number of hospitals they are working with.

Yesterdays news talks about national expansion. Who knows how much they could be making in the future!

Rough estimates here. No matter how you look at it this is so undervalued. Can't wait for audited financials.

Revenues / O/S shares = rough valuation.

$5,000,000 / 14.3M o/s = $.35
$10,000,000 / 14.3M O/S = $.699
$20,000,000 / 14.3M O/S = $1.40
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http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010909deaf0909p5.asp `


Lawsuit inspires company to help the deaf

Sunday, September 09, 2001

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Almost three years ago, deaf retiree Ferman Ritchey hurried to a rural Bedford County hospital, suffering stomach pains and a burning in his chest.

It was a heart attack, doctors decided.


David Stauffer, center, meets in Mt. Lebanon with client Bill Schoen, left, of Allied Services while interpreter Rick Haffner from Deaf-Talk's Charlotte, N.C., office demonstrates on a monitor how the service works. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

But it was only part of his distress, Ritchey said.

For the next 24 hours, his attorney charged in a federal lawsuit, Ritchey suffered "fear and anguish" because he couldn't communicate with hospital workers, and they wouldn't provide an interpreter to ease the process.

Now attorneys for Ritchey and UMPC Bedford Memorial, a 59-bed hospital near Bedford, have reached a settlement that will end the case.

It's an accord drawn "to the mutual satisfaction of the parties," said Don A. Gerred, Ritchey's attorney. Beyond that, lawyers won't detail the settlement or say if money will change hands.

But there's one clear winner that got nowhere near the courtroom.

The lawsuit spawned a Mt. Lebanon company, Deaf-Talk Inc.

It's an electronic go-between that has signed up 47 hospitals, providing long-distance video links between sign language interpreters and deaf patients across the country.

The privately held corporation, the 2-year-old invention of a pair of Washington County men who simply started out hunting second jobs, will make an estimated $2 million this year.

By next year, that should be $5 million, co-owner and President Bob Fisher forecast.

"We installed our first unit last November in New Hampshire. There were six in place by March and 47 now," Fisher said. "The market has somewhat exploded."

And it exploded on the strength of complaints like Ritchey's.

Fisher and partner David Stauffer were considering dabbling in the teleconferencing business when they read a report of the lawsuit in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette news brief. "That was our niche, we figured," Stauffer, company vice president, recounted.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Johnstown in September 1999, the result of 62-year-old Ritchey's visit seven months earlier to UPMC Bedford.

"He's not litigious," said Gerred, a Johnstown lawyer. "He wasn't looking for a fight."

Indeed, Ritchey was both diagnosed correctly and given proper care, UPMC Bedford said in a reply to the lawsuit. But in a region that lists but 17 certified interpreters in seven nearby counties, he got no interpreter.

That, according to the lawsuit, led to a bewildering 24 hours before Ritchey was transferred to Altoona Hospital, which had an interpreter among its staffers. And in that 24 hours, UPMC Bedford violated Ritchey's rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the lawsuit says.

When his wife and a companion left the hospital for the night, Ritchey had no good way to communicate with staff, the lawsuit charges.

"The example I give is of going to a foreign country and not being able to understand what's going on," Gerred said.

"The deaf person in a hospital is stressed," said Mary Vargas, attorney with the National Association of the Deaf Law Center. "Communication with doctors and nurses is a way of getting reassurance."

The lawsuit says Ritchey didn't know what tests hospital workers were doing on him. And as he lay in an intensive care unit bed, suffering chest pain, Ritchey rang for a nurse, the lawsuit says.

If one replied, Gerred surmised, it was only over a bedside speaker that Ritchey couldn't hear.

Only after Ritchey rang again, and more than 20 minutes passed, did a nurse respond, the lawsuit charges.

UPMC Bedford insisted that it complied with federal law, hospital attorney Thomas May of Pittsburgh said. But before the case went to trial, lawyers forged the settlement.

It is one of a handful of similar suits across the country.

In the Pittsburgh area, for instance, a Monroeville couple are suing Pittsburgh Ear Nose & Throat Associates and three physicians.

That suit, awaiting trial in federal court, says Darrin Majocha, who is deaf, was refused an interpreter in 1999 when he and his wife scheduled an appointment at Ear Nose & Throat to get treatment for their 15-month-old son's chronic ear infection. Then, when they pressed their request, the facility canceled their appointment, the lawsuit says.

Fisher, 53, of Washington, Pa., and friend Stauffer, 57, of McDonald, were taking note of such complaints.

In 1999, Fisher was looking for a sideline after heading a company manufacturing coal mining equipment; Stauffer owned a company making quarrying gear. An associate sold them on exploring the market for teleconferencing.

"But we were stumbling around," Stauffer said. "We needed a place to start."

Deaf-Talk began marketing a system through which video cameras and 20-inch color TV screens and other necessary electronics are grouped on carts that can be rolled through hospitals.

In Flint, Mich.; Silver Spring, Md., and Charlotte, N.C., Deaf-Talk contracts with banks of interpreters at for-profit services. When a hospital phones, interpreters go into action -- deaf patients and interpreters communicating, their TV images beamed back and forth.

"This is going to become part of the future," said Ronald Burke, operations director at Birnbaum Interpreting Services Inc., a Silver Spring-based company that sends its army of 45 interpreters anywhere from courtrooms to the in-house studio where they work for Deaf-Talk. "Nationwide, there's a shortage of interpreters."

Hospitals that sign on -- there should be 57 by next month and maybe 100 by year-end, Stauffer said -- generally pay $400 a month and $3 for each minute the lines are open.

For Fisher and Stauffer, the sideline has become full-time work, supplemented by a staff of five.

Among the customers is UPMC Bedford, Deaf-Talk's lone client in Pennsylvania, signed on three months ago. At Bedford, the system has been used "multiple times in the past few months," said Sherrill Wylie, hospital vice president for performance improvement.

"The deaf culture has accepted it 100 percent," said Suzanne Ilsley, spokeswoman for one Deaf-Talk client, Wells Regional Medical Urgent Care, a walk-in medical center in the southern Maine vacation town of Wells.

Industry estimates are not available for the number of American hospitals with interpreters on staff or readily on call. The stereotype is that rural medical centers have the toughest time providing interpreters.

In Pittsburgh, for instance, deaf patients generally "can go to a hospital and get very good service," Vargas said.

But across the country, the rural-vs.-urban stereotype doesn't hold up.

In Brooklyn, N.Y., 602-bed New York Methodist Hospital is among metropolitan hospitals considering signing up with Deaf-Talk. Interpreters there aren't tough to come by, but interpreters who can get to the hospital quickly and work inexpensively are.

"It's quite expensive in New York," hospital spokeswoman Laura Montemarano said. "The going rate is $120 for a minimum of two hours, I hear. And we've had patients like ... a guy who came in with a card saying, 'I'd like an interpreter in 10 minutes.' "

"It can take time for an interpreter to get here," said Suzanne Smith, hospital director of patient relations. "Deaf-Talk is instantaneous."

Birnbaum Interpreting, for one, is looking for ways to make it faster.

Burke said the company was considering putting television cameras in interpreters' homes so that it can have more interpreters ready to start signing at a few moments' notice.

Interpreters need a working medical knowledge, a familiarity with medicines and maladies, Burke said. "And they can't have a weak stomach."

In the meantime, back at Deaf-Talk, Fisher and Stauffer are pondering other markets, such as courtrooms and criminal booking centers. And they're waiting for a competitor to arise.

"There's going to be somebody who says, 'Look at what they're doing. We can do that,' " Stauffer said.

It's not a prospect that has either Fisher or Stauffer reaching for the Rolaids.