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Now here's how much IBM used to reportedly need Ants. This was from a conference call several years back so it won't necessarily apply today, or more to the point, tomorrow. Not verbatim.
For every dollar of Ants sold there are six dollars of IBM software sales with a potential of four more in hardware.
"Have you ever considered that I may have been one of the potential customers that IBM was trying to convince to use the software?"
You are correct. No, I have not considered that possibility. Your posting history on Yahoo precludes that particular scenario. I would ask the gentle reader to go back and look for themselves if recent evidence isn't enough.
The files are definitely a problem. Not defending him here other than to say Joe might have disagreed with the change in power, details of which still remain unclear to me. I was never contacted for my opinion and never heard where a majority got together and forced the issue, although that's my guess. Anyone know different? I couldn't connect so I missed the webinar. Was there any info there? So far I'm just glad the Doc is in charge. I really don't think Joe's trying to hide anything, but we'll eventually find out. Remember, all I'm asking for is a level headed look at the facts. It's all too easy, and human nature, to jump to conclusions.
Whoever you talked to may have given slanted info, because what you posted is not public information. What is sure is IBM would not take Joe's word before going to all the work they did - putting it in hardware, sales training, road shows. Maybe what you posted, happened after the software issues surfaced, maybe not.
Maybe??? More like probably.
And how do you know these facts about JK and IBM?
I can speak for this "old" investor. He's averaged down with a vengeance. Ultimately, I may be better off having gone through this crash than not.
I don't want to belabor this point, so it'll be the last I address it. I said I wasn't defending all of Joe's actions, just didn't feel comfortable with everyone calling him a crook when they don't necessarily know all the facts. As to the dilution, well the first infusion by Fletcher was fine. The terms even looked good, but there was this clause (for Fletcher's protection) that stated if Ants did any more fund raising Fletcher's share count would be adjusted to reflect the new lower price. Fletcher was highly regarded(my how the mighty have fallen) on Wall Street and I doubt you could have found capital without similar kinds of "adjustments". Now there was a lot of speculation at the time ( and the doc is looking into it) that Fletcher was shorting the stock just so the "down round" adjustment could be enacted. Whether it was that or investors getting wind of the software issues that were putting the IBM sales on hold, the price started it's run from around $1 downward. From my point of view(limited), the screw-ups magnified from here on out. No funds from sales, and desperate to keep this going until you can fix the issues, or sell it, the capital raising dilution got worse and worse. Doc says Ants fatal mistake was a finger pointing fight with IBM. In case any of you have doubts about the legitimacy of the tech, Ants ACS took second place at a trade show (a very high honor). Don Haderle, known as the father of DB2, was on ANTS technical advisory board, and on a conference call when asked about the potential of the ACS said "exciting beyond belief". I have that quote burnt into my memory, so shocking was the subsequent fall from grace. How the software got inside IBM hardware, with an official announcement at IBM's world conference in Rome, and then those IBM/Ants ballpark road shows before it was apparently thoroughly tested is beyond me. One other fact to consider is that unique versions had to be written for a particular pair of data bases(my understanding is that this is no longer the case). They had 2, and were banking on one. The Sybase to IBM version. It's a fact that about the time of IBM's announcement of the product, Sybase was bought by SAP, who is interested in the data base market. I ca't say about the "withdrawal" of funds. I'm definitely not defending his actions, but there may be mitigating factors, e.g. he thought he deserved them. NOT.
Now don't mistake this as a defense of all Joe's actions, but what evidence do you have that he was a crook? It was during his tenure that the company changed it's focus from the ADS to the ACS. It was he who got the contract with IBM. Just because things didn't work out doesn't mean he was a crook. From everything I understand, the ACS has tremendous potential. Joe got us part way there. I believe Frank will take us home.
So nobody gets confused. Though the latest funding from Ironridge was canceled, they hold shares because Ants has done business with them before. Twice if I remember correctly. Yes, those terms on the canceled deal were awful for shareholders, but what do you do when the business is not working and the share price is in the toilet? I'm so thankful a person came along who had the knowledge to fix the software issues, and the resources(capital), to get us over the hump. Thank you Dr Frank.
The Ironridge quote was for informational purposes, and I remember from somewhere about that deal being canceled, but when I went to looking I couldn't find it. Where do I remember that from?
Oh, and here's another quote for the person interested in the share structure. This is from the first CEO corner.
"No over-subscription of stock issues as validated from Wells Fargo and Island Stock Transfer. Further detailed analysis by CPA firms and ANTS Counsel is underway."
This is from an Ironridge filing dated 4/27:
"IV is prohibited from receiving any shares of common stock that would cause it to be deemed to beneficially own more than 4.99% of the issuer’s total outstanding shares at any one time. For purposes of calculating the percent of class, the reporting persons have assumed that there are a total of 300,000,000 shares of common stock outstanding, such that an aggregate of 15,756,000 common shares issued to IV would represent 4.99% of the outstanding common stock after such issuance."
300 million is the authorized amount(you can find this in older filings)and this is a recent entry in the CEO's corner:
"• ANTs is now fully subscribed in the common stock as authorized by the Delaware Secretary of State, ANTs state of incorporation and bylaws all of which is in the public domain."
I've followed this company for some time now and even with all the desperate(my characterization) funding that went on at the end of Joe's tenure I can't resolve to my satisfaction how those 300 million are distributed. Fletcher had a down round provision to protect their investment, and Ironridge had a formula to protect theirs, but all these guys had a percentage cap. The 10Q and K should be interesting.
Now the buy back could obviously change that figure. So coulld the preferreds(in an indirectt way). It all depends on the needs of the company.
According to a 2010 article Hewlett Packard was working in the field and one of the projects was petroleum related. Now the doctor has experience here, but I hope Ants stays more focused for the time being. With the ACS and his other current ventures we don't need to be jumping into any new fields just yet.
Several years ago Joe mentioned that when a company switches data bases by using the ACS if the former data base was not ready for the "cloud" the ACS made it ready. I'm pretty sure the doctors redesign keeps this asset intact. Now I'm no software expert, or even amateur, but if anything ever comes of "smart dust" it might take a certain type of data base to handle the massive amount of information. Is it possible the ACS could incorporate something to make the old data base better able to process this. Just throwing half baked ideas out for discussion.
My feelings as well, but do you have any speculation on how a semiconductor company fits into our picture? Are we going to manufacture a box(in the case of the ACS) that sits atop the old data base???
Utter BS? That's a pretty strong characterization, and it implies Joe was a snake oil salesman. I guess IBM and several very large companies were in on it too, huh?
You need to speak to the CEO directly about this. Just send him an email. There is a minimum investment, and you will not be able to trade those shares for a while. Not sure of time period though. In other words you'd be an investor, not a trader. Also, not sure where this 10/1 stuff is coming from.
A propaganda tutorial, right here on IHUB. Repeat, repeat, repeat........
"And rightfully so considering the corruption, the misuse of allocated funds, the lawsuits, the gross debt, and the expected bad hype. "
Uh huh. What information do you have, that others don't?
Exactly what corruption?
Exactly how were allocated funds misused? And please have something better than the funds Joe withdrew at the end.
Now you can't further an agenda without a pinch of truth in the mix. Yes, there were lawsuits, but not a troublesome amount, and yes, they were printing way too many shares for Capitol.
"expected bad hype"? What does that mean? Message board rumors?
But none of the above matters. The only thing that matters is that the ACS is real. So real that it was/is(as far as I know), inside IBM hardware.
Overvalued? At a little over 3 million? And that's if we can rely on the figures. Until they go through the books and file the 10Q's I'll have some doubt about that 300 mil. figure. If the Doc can fix most issues with the ACS then this will likely be the buy of the year. Add to that the diverse revenue stream he wants to foster and I think you've got a possible legend in the making. It's the future. May or may not happen. Place your bets.
There's nothing wrong with a reverse merger, but that wouldn't adequately describe what I think will happen here. This is not a "shell".
Yes, that's the correct company. And companies like that endorsing the new architecture make me very optimistic.
"But most of the other companies who tried the product ran into serious problems that could not or would not be fixed. "
Where are you getting this stuff? Do you have inside information? I'll be very surprised if you can give me a source.
"But it likely won't happen overnite"
Yes, but I bet faster than you seem to suggest.
"The first about existing and former clients praising Ants was laughable given that Ants hasn't had meaningful sales for the past year. Way to pat yourself on the back for doing nothing!"
Wrong. Yes, no meaningful revenues were derived BUT....the companies involved were not small fish(Dig. It's possible to find out who that California utility company is). To a discerning investor these endorsements are very important.
As for today's press, I don't know what to make of it. On the website under the new Ants, Home Junction is listed and it appears to be licensed to Ants. In the press release it appears The ACS and other products are licensed to Home Junction? It seems clear that Ants will be a mixture of the ACS and Franks other ventures, but how this works out is anyone's guess. I'm sure this will be tied to his "compensation", since he's not currently drawing a salary. There's no board to speak of so how could these kinds of decisions be made now. Thoughts?
That'll be the key. If Frank has found an elegant solution to any software issues in the ACS, and it sounds like he has given the last press release, then there's no telling how high future sales might propel us. Probably going to take a little time though.
I realize that(but it's hard to know how those approx. 300 million shares are divided up with the info available). When all those filings referenced a figure of 40 million(I believe that's right) as a tipping point of what would happen if the company were bought, it seems that IBM could have stepped in then. Somebody said that Hewlett backed off because of the legal/financial mess management had gotten themselves into. I've never seen that verified. Suffice to say, the market cap is considerably cheaper than 40 million now, and I have taken advantage of that fact numerous times;)
Don't know. Investors kinda knew the ACS wasn't 100% efficient at it's job. If the good doctors re-design substantially improves on that, I would think given the same(or less) cost of ownership sales would surely be helped. There was a reason Ants went after Sybase. Now keeping in mind that I'm far from a database expert, Sybase produced some software that was very popular with financial institutions, but was becoming expensive to own and I believe support was stopping or already had. The way the story goes, Oracle and Ants went on a sales call to, umm....well it was Citi or Chase, and pitched the product. They declined, but the bank called Ants back and said we're interested, not in Oracle, but IBM. That, supposedly, was the genesis of the IBM agreement. So it depends on all the separate components of the why. The product wasn't perfect, there IS a cost of ownership, and IMHO SAP incentivized customers to stay. My guess is we'll get some of those customers contingent on the new design. Now, it's also possible, since SAP and IBM do a lot of business together there might have been some sort of mutually beneficial relationship, i.e.. we'll do this for you if you back off on the sales push. I doubt that bit of speculation but it's possible. The bottom line is this product is designed to "translate" any one database to any other, so there's plenty of fish in this sea. The doctor seems interested in open source, which I think is good. Remember, without a product like this it is very expensive and time consuming to switch databases and as far as I'm aware we're the only game of this type in town.
P.S. - I've often wondered if the customers, knowing Ants was cash strapped, figured why not wait til it almost drowns and IBM buys it, and then we can get the product cheaper. There was a supposed 6 to 1 revenue drag for IBM. For every dollar of Ants sales, IBM made six more in software with a potential of four more in hardware. So IBM could have theoretically given the product away. Which begs the question, WHY DIDN'T THEY TRY TO BUY IT ON THE CHEAP????? Buying stocks, let alone penny stocks is not for the faint of heart.
Didn't read this yesterday, and noticed the bit about developing, supporting, and marketing the ANTs Data Server??? What's with that? I thought Ants sold it years ago.
"BURLINGAME, Calif., May 22, 2008 – ANTs® software inc. (OTCBB:ANTs), a leader in compatible, high-performance SQL database management systems, and Four Js® Development Tools, Inc., a leader in development tools for business applications, today announced they have reached an asset purchase agreement covering the ANTs Data Server (ADS). Under the agreement, Four Js will purchase the ADS - rebranded by Four Js as Genero db - its intellectual property rights and patents, and certain fixed assets. The agreement enables ANTs to focus exclusively on its newly-released ANTs Compatibility Server (ACS) product, and provides Four Js with a powerful enhancement to its Genero® product line, while opening the door to a $16 billion database market. The ADS brand will dissapear in favour of Genero db."
In my opinion, he has found a way of "tweaking" it. From the website:
"Re-Architecting ANTS ACS technology, initial pass, completed."
This re-architecting may take a little time and money. It's easy to jump to conclusions about previous management, but we just don't know why, exactly, the product didn't sell as expected. One thing you have to keep in mind is two versions of the ACS were available. One for Oracle to DB2, and another for Sybase to DB2. It would take time and money to write other versions, which Ants had very little of. Right after IBM announced the ACS product at their conference in Rome, SAP announced that they were buying Sybase. The Sybase to DB2 version was the one that was expected to sell well. Well....that potential sales train ran off the rails for some unknown(to me) reason. I think SAP decided they were going to make those previously unhappy Sybase customers happy. And they had the deep pockets to do so. There are other ways to look at SAP/Sybase, but regardless, I'm betting they were the biggest part of the problem.
P.S. - I've already asked the good doctor about this speculation and he said no comment.
Grawsha, the large electrical company you speak of was the one referred to in my post.
"These revenues came from multi year commitments from customers who chose on their own not to renew with Ants."
A little clarification is needed. The majority of those revenues likely came from Inventa. Originally bought to help with revenues, and to open doors for the ACS, it's purchase turned out to be a mistake. Revenues quickly fell to nothing. To the best of my knowledge, any ACS contract was heavily discounted, and as far as I know, they're all still using it(ACS). I can only speak to one of those contracts, the California utility company. Frank stated to me in an email that they are still using the product, but no revenue is coming to Ants. For all our sake as shareholders(cough...cough), please don't bother the good doctor with too many questions, and especially ones you can find out on your own. He's quite busy. I think we have a real shot at something of lasting value here.