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I say 'We are on the way!' This is a huge step forward. When one lives by the contract, sales can be lumpy, but this is a great start. Years of product development and relationship building are starting to translate into orders and booked sales. It's been a long road and some people on this board have been justifiably frustrated by the pace. It looks as if the sales ramp has begun.
And thank you Barry Lamperd for issuing this news weeks before it is due. Very encouraging.
Gokser is obviously serious in their commitment to Lamperd and its products. They see a product line that they can sell or they wouldn't be making the investment in time and money. Companies like Gokser have contacts all over the world. One has to assume that they are not starved to things to sell. They are dealing with Lamperd because they have products that they believe others will want.
These things take some time. This isn't like selling paper products or cell phones. Buyers have purchasing cycles and budgets they need to work through. I understand it has been a long ride for some, but now that train is gaining momentum, a little more patience is necessary. Some things just take time.
Wrong analogy and not even close. Think poker game. Someone is always the patsy. If you can't tell who it is, it's you. And by you, I mean the little shareholders.
That drip drip drip of increasing SG&A and a string of purchased businesses that don't seem to turn around fast enough is either managerial incompetence or something else. I vote for something else.
The deal's been sealed my man. It's game over. They must have lost your personal invitation to the signing. Too bad. It was glorious. And best of all, you and all the other shareholders get to pay for the party. You have been and you will continue to do so.
Nothing will change. There will be no insurrection. The potential troublemakers have been mollified.
Give him until Summer when he makes his next acquisition. Probably be another B2C company because A) B2B food companies that he can afford are hard to find and B) they are losing money so they are happy to find a buyer, and C) management still believes that they will figure out how to make money in the B2C business. And maybe they will. Someday.
If I may paraphrase the brilliant words of myself, near term profit is not the goal. Hasn't been for the last 2+ years. Not since he stopped communicating with all of you. And as I said, the big investors are not screaming and not storming to the exits. There is no apparent dissension in the ranks. It's the case of why the dog didn't bark. Answer - because the dog knew the killer. Why aren't they screaming? Maybe they are part of the game?
The Dick Model? I am absolutely verklempt (it's Yiddish - look it up). This is better that having a full sized Dickmo statute made of Lego blocks and chewing gum.
I wanna thank the academy. I wanna thank the Grease Monkey and his Shoes. And I need to thank the company management team for making this all possible. From Fresh Diet to now the 'Son of Fresh Diet' - iGourmet. Today I am the happiest man on the face of the earth. I hope this model comes with a check when I win the contest.
BTW Fish - Just a quick comment. If you are going to chastise me for being a 'freaking idiot' (which is not the first time I have heard this), then use of proper English counts. "Dickmo - You a freaking idiot..." sounds a lot less serious when you read what you wrote rather than what you meant to say.
Just saying.
Your pal, the disgruntled fool.
Fish - Do me a favor. Print your last post out in big letters and date it. Go to the nearby dollar store and get yourself a frame for a buck. Frame that post and hang it on your wall.
Send me another note in a year and let's see who is right.
I stopped listening to people long ago. Actions are all that matter.
I noticed that phrase when I read the PR. And I also thought that Sam was trying to connect, if clumsily. I offered my services when he purchased Fresh Diet, but he rejected my letters without so much as a comment. I wondered why he would want to connect now, and in such a cryptic way.
As I pondered this paragraph over my 4th cup of coffee, I was struck by the focus on the future. 'I look forward...'. And for the last two years, this was not possible? Management was incapable of addressing the questions of its ownership? Was there a plan so secretive that if it was released to the public, the entire future of the organization would be in peril? Could lives be a stake? Devastation perhaps?
Nay, I don't believe a freaking word of it. I'll believe it when I see it. Sorry, I didn't find a 2.3 cent Q4 result to be anything to write home about. If you can't make money selling fancy foods in Q4, you have no reason to be in the business. Alas, we will all know soon. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for management to deal with the shareholders it has obviously rejected communicating with for two years. They might want some real answers, real results and a real board of directors. I don't think management will stand for such insolence. It will be back to business as usual within 60 days.
The PR is out. It looks like something that a management consultant would issue playing business jargon bingo. I read it quickly and see no reason for joy in Mudville. Q4 is as good as it gets all year.
Fish - that's a pretty low bar for praise. Continued existence and the ability to keep borrowing. Well OK then. Will you still be a fan at 38 cents? 35 cents?
A PR? Like something that would explain how the company is doing? From this management team? Oh, Cool, you really are funny sometimes. You should have your own blog or TV show.
You might want to read it carefully. Gross margin down YoY while SG&A up substantially. This is what you want to see? I think it's just a preview of coming attractions.
Can't you just feel the anticipation of another earnings release? Me neither.
Well why didn't you say you don't own shares up front? Now we know we are having an objective discussion about management ulterior motives or incompetency. Neither of us owns this POS and therefore have no reason to defend the company.
There is no way to defend the FD debacle. I split that fiasco into two pieces. When it comes to the original purchase, I am going to cut management some slack. True, they didn't do their homework. They looked at something that from a financial metrics perspective looked like a steal. Had they asked someone who knew about the business, they never would have touched it. But how tough can it be to manage a food business? Hehe.
As for the selection of CEO and the way they ran the company, I must grant you the honors. That was one bad decision after another. Poor operator is an understatement. But knowing the business as I did, it's not clear to me that anyone could have salvaged that turd.
Now let's look forward. I am convinced that company management can run the B2B business they were in the days before the FD debacle. I would hope they have learned a little about running a B2C business, but that may be wishful thinking. But I am convinced that management's decision to make this company as unattractive as possible to investors is purely by design. The fact that the large shareholders are not in open revolt also speaks loudly.
I believe we are not seeing incompetence in action. No, I maintain we are watching a program being implemented by careful design. And I see only one endgame for this program. All I can say is that I were in charge, this strategy would also cross my mind. I'd like to think I wouldn't implement it, but one never knows until one is faced with the same options.
Gilead, great response. I considered what would happen if management just put all their friends and relatives on the payroll as consultants. It's clean, simple, and gets the same result.
Here's my reasoning. First - an assumption. Sam is not a poor operator. He is arrogant. He is set in his ways. And he has limited skills outside the financial arena. I believe the FD debacle was simply an enormous mistake due to poor due diligence coupled with bad management. But he is not stupid - not by any means. Sam is brilliant at what he does. The problem is that he is a finance guy. Every problem needs a finance answer. I believe Sam has figured out a way to make IVFH pay off for him in a way it could never pay him.
IVFH is a crappy little business in a go nowhere, always under the radar industry. If you or I were to run it by the book, we might make a decent living out of it, but we'll never extract a sizable portion of the company's potential to stick in our pockets. I believe that is the goal. And the program starts with getting that stock price as low as possible without resorting to methods that get one called out.
I believe he will pull the extra SG&A expense trick, eventually. But it's too early for that now. So for now, he's buying cheap revenues. Now I must admit I haven't checked so I can only guess, but it would not surprise me if SG&A expenses as a percentage of sales have been increasing. The excuse is it takes time and money to turn around the latest 'disaster du jour'. And maybe it does. But aided by slow rolling the recovery of these dogs he acquires, he can keep the earnings low while providing plausible deniability of the end game.
I believe when this is over, Sam will hold the majority of the chips.
Earnings don't matter from quarter to quarter. I have told you this maybe 30 times. They don't matter because this is being run as a privately held company. Your management won't give you the time of day. They will do nothing for you beyond that which they are required to do. You cannot force them to do anymore to improve your decision to own the stock than I can prove they are treating this as a privately held company. If you don't believe what I am telling you, then continue to hold the stock.
I believe Sam is playing a long game. His concern is the price 5 to 7 years from now. In the meantime, he would prefer it sit at 40 cents and not at 70 cents. At 40 cents, he has more flexibility. Now if you assume, as I do, he would prefer to see 40 cents more than 70 cents, which do you think is easier to attain? And how would you do it?
Ooohhh! Mr. Greasemonkey!! I know how to do it. Buy stuff that loses money. Take your time fixing it and when it's fixed, buy more of it. Repeat for 5 to 7 years while acquiring cheap stock.
So riddle me this Mr. Grease. There are, what, maybe 4 firms that filed 13D's indicating ownership over 5%. Why haven't they A) forced Sam to commit to a real Board of Directors, B) raise the company's governance practices from abysmal to a perfectly acceptable average, C) tried to start a proxy fight. I could go on. Every one of them is losing money on their investment. Why are they so happy? Got an answer?
Management has never displayed overt competency in selling to consumers. The base food brokerage business never developed an active consumer segment and, of course, their effort in running Fresh Diet made France's effort in fighting off Germany in WWII look impressive.
Still, what they do they do well. It's a modest market but as consumers want more variety from restaurants, I believe it is a decent business, especially in Q4. So we will see how the financials look once they get around to issuing it.
I have always maintained that whether EPS in Q4 is 1 cent or 3.5 cents, it doesn't matter. As a shareholder, you are unlikely to ever see the benefits of those earnings.
No contradiction. These guys are in the high end food business. Last quarter was Q4. Even a clown can make money in this business in Q4. The challenge is making money in Q1 when it's snowing up north.
In the history of mankind, there has never been a favorable restatement of income. They are always bad. If they were good, they would just adjust for it in the current quarter.
be_real: No, I have not been up there to visit. I would like to go someday, but let's be realistic. I can't go visit every company in which I own a few thousand dollars in stock. More importantly, I can't imagine the company wants a parade of people walking through a plant that manufactures explosives.
It's early to start thinking this way, but I have been very impressed with the way the company has gone about developing distributors. And now we have our first decent order. It gets one thinking about whether this could possibly become more than a pink sheet company.
I would love to see a five or ten minute narrated video. I know it will be slanted to cover up the warts and highlight the things they want us all to see, but I think it could still prove useful. I would be curious to understand the size of their production area and the policies and procedures they have in place for safety. If this is going to be a potential long term (2+ years) holding from here, I'd like to know more about it.
EPS doesn't matter because the stock price will not follow earnings. Earnings can be manipulated - easily and very legally.
I would be very concerned after reading the NT 10-K but that's just me. I believe IVFH will come in higher than you expect, but Sam will correct this slight problem with another acquisition in 2019. Put me down for 3.25 cents/share for Q4. I'll estimate a negative penny/share in restatements bringing the year total to 5 cents/share. Stick an 8 multiple on that and you are back at 40 cents/share. That would make the boys in Bonita Springs very happy.
Perhaps you should just sell your stock and move on. You don't know what products are being sold. You don't know the end user. But you know enough to start screaming 'channel stuffing'.
Macy's didn't start out with a 200,000 sq. ft. store in Midtown and Lamperd isn't starting out with a $3.1 million contract. But what they received is a great start. And if, just if, 20% comes back, does it make a difference? Am I, a regular shareholder, that much more impressed that they quoted $172K and not $145K? Is there some magical $165K number that separates a small order from a medium sized order?
Sell your shares if you are so negative that you can't recognize good news when you see it. First they sign distribution agreements. Then they get contracts to fulfill. That's how it works and apparently, it's working.
There we go! And the first big order comes in. Product first. Distribution second. Order fulfillment third. It's a process and Lamperd Less Lethal is following the process. It doesn't happen overnight. When one deals with regulated products that contain explosives, the process can be long and convoluted. What delayed LLLI in getting the ball rolling will help keep copy cat competitors away for years. This will give time to Lamperd to become the preferred provider to many less lethal product users.
$172,000 is a great start. Looking for more - much more. But as our ol' pal Mao noted, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” This order confirms that the journey has begun. Congratulations to Barry and the team.
Per the NT 10-K
Is it anticipated that any significant change in results of operations from the corresponding period for the last fiscal year will be reflected by the earnings statements to be included in the subject report or portion thereof? Yes ? No ? (checked Yes)
You'll excuse me but that statement does not say 'good news' in my version of business English. Prior statement adjustments only come in one flavor in my world. That flavor is bad. But we shall see.
I am amused though. They waited for the last minute to file for more time. Management couldn't be bothered to treat its minority shareholders as if they were co-owners of the company. Informing them of this event either this morning or last week was just too inconvenient to consider.
How many other ways are there for a company management to tell its shareholders to go pound sand? Can someone please come up with another way they haven't used yet?
Forget it. You are never going to understand.
If you understood what good treatment meant, then the answer is 4 to 7 years.
As you wish. I contend there is no money to be had by design, not by accident. You may have noticed various people coming in and acquiring 5+% and filing 13D's. Question - are all these people stupid enough to trust a management team who treats the retail investors like crap and has the ability to screw everyone over, or do they have an arrangement that maybe the rest of you don't share.
I contend they know something. They expect better treatment from management and they will get it. You, and the rest of the retail public, will continue to get shnat upon. I find it hard to believe that some of these groups who have been here for several years have sat by and watched as this company has developed a reputation for abysmal shareholder relations and weak financial performance and corporate governance. They have not demanded a change in the Board. They have not demanded that the company start treating shareholders as owners and not the great unwashed. Yet nothing has been done and no one has said squat. Ever wonder why?
I have. And I concluded that there is a reason. Do I know this for sure? No I don't. But I do not believe in coincidences. And there are too many 5+% owners screaming nothing when they should be screaming bloody murder. Yet they are not.
I can't say it enough. The ER doesn't matter. Sam's game is not the same game you are playing. You have two different objectives. I am firmly convinced that if IVFH finally turns around this most recent acquisition (and I believe they will one way or they other), then they will just find another similar situation to invest in.
You want IVFH to make money and return to $1.40 like the good old 'Make IVFH Great Again' (MIGA) days. Of course, those days didn't exist. They had just bought Fresh Diet and the fools who follow this company had no idea what they were buying. So they bid up the price because buying FD at less than 1x sales was such a steal. Some dopes valued this stock at $1.40 to almost $2, if memory serves correctly.
Meanwhile, like our friend Wily Coyote, Sam had just run out over the cliff. His feet were still running, but the company under him was gone. And down it fell. Those in the meal plan business could only watch in amusement.
So while you pine for the MIGA days, know that Sam's game doesn't include your fantasy. He's got another game. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War with shareholder value, shall we?
You must be correct. And that's why Sam put out an announcement as to when the earnings report would be released and then followed the schedule.
Oh, wait a minute. I'm told the company didn't even care enough about the ER to announce when it would be released. I can only imagine how much company management thinks of all of you small shareholders. It's as if Sam & Co. are working for you each day, every day, as hard as they believe you warrant their attention.
OK. Have it your way. But Sam's game is not your game. You may win the battles, but he'll win the war. He holds all the cards.
You are playing checkers. Sam & Co. are playing chess. You just don't understand the game. And you have to admit that you don't set the rules.
I have no opinion at all on the EPS. Nor do I think it matters at all in how the stock is priced. Tell me something - what could management do more than they are currently doing to signal to every shareholder that they don't care about the stock price? Remember the objective of the game. I've told you all before. Earnings don't matter. And if for some reason they did, it's a heck of a lot easier to make them lower than higher.
They are going to continue to do as little as possible to maintain their status as a fully reporting company. Nothing more will be forthcoming. Maybe they can send you all a telegram to sell your shares? That would make them extra happy because I believe that is the goal.
Q4 is usually good. I see no reason why this one shouldn't be. But will it matter by Easter? I don't think so.
The company usually announces when they will issue the earnings report. Perhaps they have decided even that tiny effort on behalf of investors is more than you are all worth to them. Just a thought. Could be wrong. But I still believe Buffalo Bills fans have more grounding in reality than holders of this stock.
Chirp said the cricket
Friday at 4:50PM is a perfect time for an earnings release if you don't want anyone to know.
Obviously I have no idea what Q4/2018 results will be. But I do think it unlikely the company will show $50K to $100K in sales in that quarter. I would like to think this is a realistic number for Q2/2019. These distribution agreements and regulatory issues take far more time in this business than they do in the businesses I usually work with. While I would also like to see more and sooner, I am comfortable that the direction and activities are all very much in favor of a company poised for growth.
Your frustration is quite understandable. I have been way too early with many tech companies. The waiting can seem endless and profitless. When it comes to these types of companies, timing is everything.
Things have to go in a sequence. Product means nothing without distribution. Almost every PR you've seen in the last 2 or 3 quarters has been about distribution. That tells me the game is finally about to begin. The warm-ups are over. It's getting time to sell something -hopefully a lot of something.
Stocks look at the future, not the past. All I can tell you is I am buying more.
be_real - the forecast hasn't changed. All that's changed is my expectation of what significant revenue is. As I see these distribution channels being developed, I'm getting greedier. Whereas once I would have been happy to see revenues in the $50K - $100K range for a quarter, I am now looking for more. And yeah, I think more is 12 to 18 months off.
As the company has clearly shown, there are even more legal and regulatory hurdles in the permitting process than I expected. I didn't expect this level of scrutiny by ATF and their foreign counterparts for a non-lethal product. But I was mistaken. Frankly, it doesn't discourage me at all as I see this hurdle as a barrier to future competition. It won't stop competition, but it will slow them down. This will give Lamperd time to develop relationships and get their equipment made standard issue for many police forces, security agencies, and others. Once they get their foot in the door, they have the upper hand in future orders.
So no, I'm not backtracking on anything. My expectations are rising. I'm simply recalculating when I expect to start seeing revenues that allow Lamperd to start thinking about moving up to a higher profile exchange.