Loving life
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Mickey and attorneys .. Here's a twist (I'm sure I'm wrong, but) .. How about going after all these folks under RICO? Is it possible? Could it work?
MO,
Danny
MJP .. Last night's were by Dumb .. this morning's were by Dumber LOL.
Mo,
Danny
MJP .. Ooops I'm not as quick as I used to be LOL.
MO,
Danny
Gattica and Sail .. I'm not one for reading too much into AH and Pre-market trades but this mornings trade is consistent with last night's AH. Couple of trades after the close then nothing until 6:00PM and the last three trades look like they were above $24. Probably means nothing but .....
MO,
Danny
Data .. Thanks for keeping me from getting off the reservation. Back to staying away from what I don't know anything about and posting on the little I do.
MO,
Danny
Gattica .. The new rules, set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, let the Cupertino, Calif. company instantly recognize revenue from sales of its hit iPhone smartphone. The old rules, which had been scrapped in late September, forced Apple to defer the billions of dollars iPhone sales each quarter over a 24-month period, which Apple argued hid the iPhone's value from shareholders.
OK, crazy thought .. could this explain how this board and analysts came up with such a low per unit license fee? Dividing the amounts paid by the projected sales rather than the reported sales could have produced such a result. Ronny or anyone?
Also, it could mean that what we saw from Apple in licensing fees was only the tip of the iceberg in what we will get when Iphone deferred sales are reported. Also, would that put Apple in play for the recently announced pre-payments.
Anyone?
MO,
Danny
dmiller .. You are not one of my favorites either LOL. BUT, you do clearly get it about this board. I've taken shots at you and you have responded in kind but I don't think either one of us has called the other "ass wipe" or resorted to rattling off a travel itinerary meant to impress and thereby bolster our credibility and I know I could and imagine you could as well.
Frankly, it is a badge of honor for someone like robjer to call me names. I don't believe in TOSing him or anyone for that matter. I prefer to duel verbally and let the board decide who has presented the most valid argument on a given subject. I also don't have anyone on ignore anymore for the same reason although I recognize that more than a few have me on ignore. As much as I have taken shots at you apparently you have not put me on ignore. I don't give you high grades for much as I'm sure is the case for you with me LOL, but you DEFINITELY get them for that.
Danny
dclarke .. This guy is a penny stock trader .. look at the other three stocks he follows. Incredible waste of time even responding to him. No matter what the SP history, IDCC has never been a penny stock and he apparently does not have a clue how to evaluate anything but penny stocks. Penny stocks are a manipulator's dream, particularly given the VERY limited investor savvy and competence possessed by most who trade them.
MO,
Danny
dclarke .. You care about the stock moving because you are a trader, you just want volatility.
Hmmmm .. can you think of anyone that wants volatility even more than Dmiller?
How about EVERY on-line broker in existence? Their profits have an almost perfect correlation with the number of executions they make. They couldn't care less whether you make or lose money as long as you trade frequently doing it.
Go on to the website of any on-line broker and 90% of the reasons to become a client of theirs are related to trading;low commissions, low margin rates,low account opening minimums AND trading "tools" up the wazoo many of which are priced according to your trading volume and FREE for the most frequent (strong implication: smarter than all the rest LOL) traders.
The dmillers of the world are an online brokers dream. They have been carefully duped and scammed into the notion that the ONLY thing that matters is the stock price. Pretty powerful kool-aid they are dispensing to dmiller et al 24/7 that turns know nothings into know it alls which is their target market.. another of WS's dirty little secrets.
MO,
Danny
Thanksformusic .. I don't follow the currency markets much so I don't have any thoughts on the dollar. It does seem to me, however, that all of the world economies are in such a volatile state that it would hard to predict with the degree of confidence where the dollar is headed necessary to formulate a hedging strategy. But, your point certainly does have merit and maybe IDCC should consider outsourcing some hedging.
Hopefully, there will be so many dollars coming to IDCC in the future that what you posture will be a "high class" problem LOL.
MO,
Danny
olddog .. I was going to respond but read dclarke's response to you first which is dead on the money. I'd add a couple of things:
1. The street IS always watching but it is thousands of stocks that they are watching at any one point in time. All they are looking to get is a return above the benchmark averages. In that regard there is not a lot they can afford to risk on "story stocks" and there are ALWAYS lots of them out there. Doesn't mean that IDCC is not a "good" story but it may very well not be the "best" story in the street's opinion. Put another way, the street might see IDCC as a "screaming buy", just not the loudest one.
2. Is it possible that the "street' believes that NOK is very important regardless of what WM says? Sure, but appearances can be deceiving.
3. I don't have a clue what the street's current opinion of IDCC is and no one that is not currently working on the street doesn't either. Of that I'm certain. Trying to discern their opinion from stock price movements on ANY stock is an exercise in futility.
MO,
Danny
jai .. Instead of having percentage licenced, I'd rather see grants or options given out based on the year over year average share price.
The problem with that .. and it is a HUGE one (See Enron, et al) .. is that they have very little direct control over the stock going up UNLESS they falsify and manipulate earnings to the upside. Thanks but no thanks on that one, because they are the ones who know how overstated the earnings are and they will bail en masse well before the fraud becomes public and we will be left holding the bag.
This is incentive compensation and you need to choose a metric that will move with a high correlation to the efforts and talents of everyone in the program or the lack thereof (carrot and stick). You also need to choose one that should correlate well with stock price movement.
Maybe percentage licensed is not the right metric in regard to the above but that doesn't make the method wrong.
MO,
Danny
GE_Jim .. Hope Jim posts this as a note and never takes it down:
We all form our own thoughts into the reasons for this, I have mine, you all will have yours, but I would like to mention to those that state the street is not paying attention. The street is always paying attention that is all they do.
MO,
Danny
OT All .. Now our secret is out to the world. And we thought the traffic was bad this summer. And tomorrow is the annual oyster festival where last year they served 15,000 oysters at Schooner Landing.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/travel/27explorer.html?hpw
Danny
Dave .. AMEN! .. And here is a "dirty little secret" for this board to think about. How much money is being made by the vendors of data with only minimal, if any, DD value? It could be billions, perhaps double digit billions. What is the percentage split of that money between individual investors and professional managers? Someone is getting ripped off and you will have a hard time convincing me that it is the folks who make money managing other people's money. Like any business they are careful not to spend money on anything that isn't essential to the operation and success of their business.
MO,
Brad
Frobinso .. You can stick up for that all ya want, but I personally think it's a little out of kilter, and I can only surmise that Harry Campagna is the champion of it,
I'm not sticking up for anything. I can understand why you and others might think so about lots of things I post re: management and WS. That is certainly your right to do so and you definitely should be skeptical about my posts when it comes to management and WS because given my background it would appear that I would have a strong bias to defend both. All I can say is that I have nothing to gain by doing so and I have nothing left to prove. Those days thankfully ended 15 years ago when I retired LOL.
I didn't state that the option program at IDCC and the way it has been implemented is appropriate and not excessive in terms of motivating and retaining key employees. I honestly don't have a clue. Sounds like you and others here have concluded that IDCC insiders have been riding the gravy train to the max. You may very well be right. I don't have an opinion on it .. primarily because I don't know what I would do with it if I did and at my age (67) I try to stress only about things over which I have control and/or I can effect AND are important to me.
Your observation about the options today and those of ten years ago is essentially correct but I don't recall the strike price being set above the stock price at the time of the grant. My recall is that the strike price was set equal to the stock price at the time of grant. If I'm right about that, the incentive (or "carrot") to work hard to increase the stock price after the grant is made is the same today as it was ten years ago. However, ten years ago the grants also had a powerful "stick" of the options potentially expiring worthless if and when the stock price dropped below the strike price. With today's grants that "stick" is at best an indirect one.
I wouldn't even attempt to justify the compensation packages of CEOs. In fact I wouldn't even know how to begin. Nor can I explain why athletes make as much as they do or actors or radio talk shows hosts or models and on and on. It has always been thus. Life is not fair and I can't imagine that will ever change. We all have to find our own way to deal with the unfairness of it all. I've chosen to just accept it and focus on being as fair as I can to others around me in my little world. I wish I had learned to want what I have a long time ago. Constantly striving to have what others had .. particularly those who I felt didn't deserve it .. was a huge drag on my serenity.
I didn't take anything in your post personally.
Take care,
Danny
dmiller .. I don't try to analyze relative compensation since to determine if it is excessive or not would take far more time and effort than I am willing to put in and apparently that is the case for you as well. However, I'll put the effort in to try to demonstrate with facts that IDCC's total compensation package for insiders is in line with comparable companies if you will at the same time try to show with facts that the package is excessive. (BTW, apparently you are unaware that excessive is a relative measurement, not an absolute one. Ergo, if a compensation package is in line relatively, it can't be excessive.)
You pick the deadline date and we will both submit our findings to Jim by that date. If one of us doesn't submit anything, the other wins by forfeit. If both submit something Jim will publish our findings and we will let the board decide which one of us proved their position best.
MO,
Danny
Mickey .. The insiders don't invest in IDCC.
No one on this board has ever said it better. And it is not just IDCC. It is true for every public company.
Investors who think that insider transactions are investment decisions and are therefore valuable input to their own DD do themselves a great disservice. I can't think of a single time .. not one .. that my insider stock transactions were driven by investment considerations (other than diversification). That was true for all of the other insiders I knew. Options were just a component of the total compensation package along with salary, bonus, company car, country club membership, expense accounts, first class travel and on and on. They were NOT investments.
I knew that every time an insider sold it was for strictly personal reasons and I never gave it a thought for even one second that it might have resulted from a negative view on the company's prospects. Likewise, it never even crossed my mind that a lack of buying by insiders was somehow indicative of a lack of confidence in the company's future. The best measure of how insiders (the most competent ones) feel about a company's future success is whether they stay or leave for greener pastures.
MO,
Danny
dmiller .. Actually I don't miss those days even a little bit. I love the simple life in Damariscotta Maine.
How would you know that this individual was granted options in lieu of cash compensation?
Because .. now I know that you will be unable to grasp this .. because EVERY option grant in EVERY public company to insiders and employees alike is in lieu of cash compensation. Period.
Now, if you want to try to demonstrate with facts, not your opinion that the total compensation (cash +benefits+options) is out of line have at it. That is appropriate DD.
MO,
Danny
robjer .. Every time an insider receives an option grant it is in lieu of cash compensation. It is, therefore, their "own hard-earned money" and absolutely just as hard earned as the money we have used to buy shares. The assertion that the insiders have not "spent their own money" to buy shares when they exercise options is fallacious and misleading to the max, particularly when one considers that the options could expire worthless or near to it.
Did anyone here ever have one of their paychecks expire worthless? I know I never did. But some of the options I was granted did and I sure as hell didn't think at the time that I lost nothing. Nope, I had a pretty firm grip on how much in cash compensation those options cost me, not to mention how my wife felt, when they were granted as much as five years before.
Moreover, we all feel like we've lost 43 cents today on every share we own. Trust me, every insider also feels that they have lost 43 cents of cash compensation they deserved to have been paid on every non-exercised option share they own.
Think about it everyone and maybe you will have one less thing to stress about.
MO,
Danny
Gamco .. VERY impressive .. it only took five minutes for someone to provide dclarke with the answer to his question.
Thanks for all you do.
Danny
nicmar .. No surprise there .. you've demonstrated time and time again a shocking inability as an investor to go beyond the literal meaning of the words written in a post or a public announcement to deduce possible interpretations that MIGHT add to your DD and that of everyone else here. Apparently you haven't figured out yet that just going with EXACTLY what is said and no more without trying to speculate about a range of possible meanings is not going to get you very far towards being a successful investor.
NEVER reading anything into what appears here is just as bad as ALWAYS seeking hidden meanings. I'm pretty sure that is what Jim meant when he cautioned everyone that your posts and those of dmiller essentially are of no value to this board because all you do is state the obvious that nearly everyone here has already concluded.
So, let me get this straight. In a space of four or five back and forth posts Jim, Mickey and I agreed that it was just a misunderstanding and nothing of importance but you were unable to deduce that from interpreting what we each had to say. The three of us were and apparently everyone else on this board were as well. The matter was over without another thought about it until you showed up with your thoughtless post.
Now, PLEASE do what you said you did but didn't: PUT ME ON IGNORE.
MO,
Danny
nicmar .. That's because in your zeal to post a "gotcha", you read Jim's post of clarification NOT the original one that got Mickey and me wondering what Jim was saying. Here is Jim's original post:
redbarn, You said, "Since they have at their fingertips IDCC's know how,"
What know how are you referring to?
IMO IDCC has licensed their patents to quite a few companies by telling them if you take this path you are violating our patents. Evidently some agreed and licensed.
As far as the know how IDCC attempted to take some of the pieces of the puzzle they own and provide a solution such as the Slimchip but as we know so far that failed.
I'm extremely happy IDCC isn't investing in these pieces of the puzzle they own by trying to produce a product to market.
As an investor I say license others who are willing to invest in RD and let's look at buying small companies that don't have the money to enforce what we might call essential to some standards.
Notice there is no mention of IDCC engineers continuing their R&D efforts and (see my bolding above) one could even infer that Jim was suggesting IDCC begin "outsourcing" R&D. His next post expanded upon this one and made his position perfectly clear. Mickey and I both quickly acknowledged same. So what is your problem?????
Question, Have you been a sh*t stirrer all your life or is it something that came on recently?
BTW, I thought you had me on ignore?
MO,
Danny
Jim .. Thanks for the clarification. Glad we are all on the same page on this one LOL.
MO,
Danny
Jim .. OK, you've got me scratching my head along with Mickey with your question. IDCC is essentially an R&D company and that is what their engineers do .. what else would they do? The product of their R&D is patents that they in turn license. Stop the R&D and you stop growth. Moreover, If they buy other companies who do R&D it will still be IDCC paying for the R&D both initially when the acquisition is made and thereafter since the companies revenues and expenses will become IDCC's.
It is much the same with drug companies whose profits are directly correlated to the degree of success of their scientists performing R&D. What are we missing missing?
MO,
Danny
Dmiller ... Uh, I assume you know that's good news not bad news or do you?
MO,
Danny
Mickey .. Good question .. Perhaps a better question is how many stocks have coverage initiated with a 12 month target price more than 50% above the current price?
I'm tempted to call IDCC a "SCREAMING TABLE POUNDER." LOL.
MO,
Danny
xdx .. Absolutely!! .. eom
Danny
Mickey .. I agree. However, no analyst is going to state those things in writing. Everything in writing is ALWAYS going to be conservative or ultraconservative. What we don't know is what the analysts are saying to their clients about IDCC in private meetings, phone calls, etc. where they are are far less concerned about CYA.
It's referred to as "pounding the table" on WS and it is reserved for those stocks that the analysts feel MOST positive and confident about. Is IDCC one of those stocks? Obviously, none of us know but I think the odds are high that they are.
Here's why I think so. Prior to the ALJ's ID the stock was performing extremely well and I believe it was a direct result of lots of tables being pounded about IDCC's increasingly positive risk/reward ratio relative to other stocks. The stock price and the credibility of those table poundings took a significant hit when the ID was released. Some here suggested that the analysts would drop IDCC coverage like a hot potato.
I doubted that very much but decided not to state my opinion in order to avoid starting another pizzing contest. Well guess what .. not a single one dropped coverage as far as I know and I'm sure they all faced some VERY tough questions from some clients that were as upset as we were at the outcome. The analysts would not have done that if IDCC wasn't one of their table pounder favorites. They hung in there and while I don't think they are back to pounding the table yet, I'm guessing there has been some pretty vigorous table finger tapping going on now that IDCC is showing that it is NOT all about NOK.
MO,
Danny
Mickey .. Calm down my friend. EVERY analyst report I've ever seen has a "Risk" section. No one is going to listen to any analyst that states there are NO risks. Don't take the bait with Dmiller's negativism. He absolutely does not know what he is talking about and he is clueless when it comes to interpreting analyst reports.
I thought Sidoti's report was excellent and VERY positive. They enumerated the risks that could cause their overall positive outlook to be wrong. NO BIG DEAL. They didn't say the negative results were likely to occur, just that they exist. In fact, they think a settlement is likely. If you are positive on a stock, just look at the risks section to see if any new risks have been raised that you haven't thought of and move on. That's exactly what the institutional money managers do.
I skimmed the risk section and actually was happy they didn't raise anything new that the naysayers on this board haven't raised time and again. No surprises whatsoever and that is a good thing, not a bad thing.
MO,
Danny
And here is the best part: http://www.sidoti.com/aboutus/ourresearchproduct.aspx
MO,
Danny
Gamco. .. Sidoti Link: http://www.sidoti.com/
At this point in IDCC's business position we are much better off with coverage by firms like Sidoti who service "niche" institutional investors and wealthy individuals rather than major brokerage firms who we can't get now anyway. They will show up only when they have to because of pressure for them to do so from their major institutional clients. I'm resigned to the likelihood that is years, not months, away if ever.
MO,
Danny
magilla .. Thanks .. you and Olddog are tireless in providing factual, on point information to this board.
Take,
Danny
Olddog .. Thanks for hanging in there for all of my follow-up questions. I think I've got it now LOL.
Danny
Mickey .. The price was not 22.61, it was 22.612 which means it was an average of several trades that took place during regular hours that was reported after the close. The same is true of the first trade in after hours. The only trade that appears to be have been EXECUTED after hours was for 211 shares at 23.06 which was the close.
Danny
Olddog .. So you are saying that it was only PROPOSED to change it from one Commissioner to a majority of Commissioners with regards to initiating a review but that PROPOSAL was never adopted, ergo it STILL only takes one Commissioner to initiate a review? Right? Don't know where you live but if that is your final answer you will hear the cheering from Damariscotta ME even if you live in CA.
TIA,
Danny
revlis .. That is exactly why I am confused. Hasn't Olddog since reversed his position that a review request requires only one Commissioner to a requirement of four or more?
I was elated with his original post .. since one Commissioner is a VERY low hurdle to go over.. but four or more commissioners is a significant hurdle to overcome. Subsequently, posts between Olddog and Jim implies that the Commissioners typically are unanimous in their votes .. which would scare the hell out of me. I just want to make sure that there is no REQUIREMENT for a unanimous vote by Commissioners on any issue.
Danny
olddog .. You now have me completely confused. I have no interest in voting requirements AFTER the review. First we have to get the review, so no sense thinking past that point.
Regarding the voting requirements for a review to be instituted:
1. If four or more Commissioners vote for a review then a review will be conducted in the absence of a settlement between the parties, right or wrong?
2. If less than four Commissioners vote for a review, a review will NOT be conducted, right or wrong?
3. Although your "very limited quick review" turned up only unanimous votes, nothing in your research to date indicates a unanimous vote requirement for any Commission actions, right or wrong?
TIA,
Danny
Rev .. Thanks!
Danny
Jim and Olddog .. What would be interesting to me is whether or not the public and/or the parties will be made aware of how many Commissioners are in favor of a review. Seems like it could have a significant effect on both parties to settle given that each would have a better "feel" regarding the outcome of the review.
MO,
Danny