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alea, unfortunately, doughnut hole is a flawed metaphor
my thinking was they would suffer till summer (hence hole, hence the other side) and the thinking was simply a matter of expectation management of my own to recognize an inevitable PP.
The doughnut hole more resembles a fiscal cliff as time drags on, it lacks the other side, a normal feature of what one may call a hole.
That only exacerbates the magnitude of their miscalculation (if calculating was ever involved, they are after all insulated from consequences and enjoy a loyal following with bottomless pockets).
blue, I can't help but think that at least a portion of that reference may involve me.
I prefer to think I have always been at once an optimist and a critic.
For some time I tried, and likely failed, to follow JesseLivermore's rule that one should only beat on Wave on an up day, and shut up on down days.
I posted more bullishly on Wave in e.g. 2010-2011 as Wave's revenue and cash-flow picture was much improved, eclipsing towards showing promise. I acknowledged and complained about nepotism and compensation repeatedly during that time as well. A walk and chew gum at the same time kinda thing.
As the cash flow circumstance started to deteriorate, I offered the doughnut hole thesis. It was variably received, with the kool-aid crowd dismissing it entirely "Wave built it and so they will come". bullcrap.
Obviously, in my considerable naivete, I figured Lee could do at least as much with their computers as I could with my dual purpose abacus/fish-smoking-rack ... but I was wrong. So while I gestured with certainty towards a 5-10m PP, Wave hit the gas and sent the train off the rails.
Amazing.
My assessment of Wave for some time (since 2009) has been strictly revenue, revenue growth and cash-flow. When it was improving, I said so, when it weakened I said so, when it collapsed I said, "what a bunch of idiots".
While my therapist speaks towards the three of me, on this matter there has been only one.
The risks that Lee was willing to take, to me, are only done by folks with no skin in the game and those insured against the consequences. I have screamed to vote against most proxy issues most of the time every single year.
While I have always considered it a reasonable possibility that Lee's nepotism and lack of vestment may well screw WAVX shareholder's (hence I am not in the multibazillions of shares category and never have been), it is reasonably safe to say that I see effectively zero chance of Wave achieving anything like what the various optimists think.
Even with the wind at their back, slow runners only run so fast.
Wave lacks certain skills, they are unwilling or unable to see that, and they have a loyal cadre of followers who live in fear and prefer to coddle that fear through worship and submission rather than risk change. It is a consequence, IMO, of them likely being massively over-exposed to this equity.
I have no idea how or what the three of me would think if I had 100, 200, 300 thousand shares. I spose if I was a billionaire, I might be able to think clearly in such a circumstance, but if I was an upper middle class retireee with that sort of exposure and under water, crap ... I just can't imagine what that would do to the three of me.
In summary, I will always push back against your my-side their-side me-them pro-con absolutism ... just as I did a decade ago when you were nothing but kool-aid yourself. I find myself in the middle, being trampled by some as the run from edge to edge (you?).
telstar, Wave stated they lacked the
50k to run an add in the WSJ when they thought it would be a good idea, in the same time frame they sponsored Peter's car.
Seriously. An electric car that says scrambls on the side of it.
Cool.
Blue's last straw was years ago. That was mine. Lee demonstrated and even chose to PR that they are the welfare nanny for some.
An effort funded by printing shares at 75 cents.
Rant over.
Barge, I realize I may have been piling on here,
and I have no issue with your durable optimism, I believe it to be of the benevolent sort.
And yes, Zaptronix was good fun, but I beat the Europe is ours drum as hard as anyone and jumped atop a mailbox to proclaim the WXP franchise to be worth a cool $30m.
your point that Dell and folks are deploying TPMs in a razor thin business is a valid one ... but they are doing it from the black side of the ledger.
I accept that Wave cannot be caught flat-footed in their supply channel if/when some sort of switch flips (gov, Win8, whatever the lever of the day is).
I supported and continue to support the investment in porting technology to ARM/Android etc ... broadly speaking "mobile".
Due to the opacity of Wave filings, it is difficult for me to discern what component of there expenses are these things, and what component is fleets of sales-people failing to sell.
Your only criticism of Wave that I am aware of is that senior management is under-compensated. I find that to be remarkable. So be it.
Certainly Wave is in an unenviable position, making a play for a central infrastructure role in a IT dynamic where they have no legacy foot-print or technology. Moreover, what they sell is prevention. Ask the medical field how well prevention actually sells.
But they are there. They chose to be there. Being there requires the skills to be there. That requires wisdom, remarkable talent in anticipating demand, careful planning to navigate financing, and near flawless ethics and communication to maintain investor confidence and trust. On a scale from one 1 to 10, on those matters, Wave can't clear a 5 on any. So on the things they must have for where they put themselves, they are bottom tier.
It is simply a truth. No amount of benign fibs requires overcompensation or nepotism. None. Professional financial advisers look at this company and tell investors to steer clear. Not because of what I say and do or what you say and do but because of what Lee says and does. It causes you and me material harm. You it seems consider it all a rounding error, I believe on this you are in error.
Agreed, nobody will know until they know.
The only promising thing from Wave that I have seen is NWs comments about a number of companies initiating deployments at scale with incremental starts. I look forward to the Q3 report to see if Wave nets the outstanding component of the WEM trials which would indicate their successful completion.
Wave has stated they expect some activity from mil/gov sometime in 2013. I expect continued severe dilution as a consequence of Wave's misstatements/mismanagement to continue. I fully expect Wave to exhaust its share authorization limit well before they see profitability or even perhaps serious revenue growth.
This means that I believe that regardless of the success of the company, that current shareholders need to deduct 33% from what they had anticipated on Jan 1 2012. Again, some consider this rounding error, I don't.
If Wave becomes a 5bn company (it will not happen), then one needs to divide that by 150m, not 100m to determine SP. By Wave's stated expectations this is not a thing that could ever happen before 2014. By Wave's stated expectations the company is not going to achieve 1-2bn dollar status anytime before mid-late 2013 (if at all).
By any reasonable measure such a milestone would be accompanied by a float of some 140m shares, a SP of 7 to 14. For that to be the millions and millions you speak of one needs to hold well into the hundreds of thousands of shares. I am not a member of that group. All of that is the positively best possible scenario, in excess of Wave's statements.
Wave has stated they hope/expect to get some 30-50m in revs from gov/mil in 2013. That coupled with current revs will get them close to breakeven ... sometime in 2013. They expect that after that, in 2014, NATO may follow suit at a similar level, and that gov/mil may expand and so on. In this best case scenario offered by Wave, revs in 2014 might reach $150m, or revenue of about $1 a share. A very bullish PS of 10 gives Wave a SP of 10 in late 2014.
Thoughts more bullish than this lack anchor, lack precedence, and lack candor with the facts as they have so clearly demonstrated themselves.
*barge, correct, demand is not under the control of vendors.
But vendors must nevertheless anticipate demand and measure demand and respond to demand more capably than a drunk teenager. Wave is just dismal at this and it costs millions. I do not assign genius labels to folks who so plainly and regularly fumble this rather important component of running a business. If Wave experiences demand tomorrow it does nothing to change the fact that on that matter they are morons.
24601 used to have a tagline that went something like 'if somebody predicts the world is going to end tomorrow every day for a year and if finally happens on the 366th day, they did not become suddenly right for the previous 364 days.'
They are bad at this. Really really bad at this. To their fortune that have a loyal cadre of followers with apparently bottomless pockets that consider them geniuses in this and all other matters.
Man does not the control weather ... what does that say about walking naked in a blizzard?
barge, yes you are correct,
... it *could* be that it is once again, a matter of a missing supply link, this time the cloud, or Win8, or Vista, or an installed TPM base, or SEDs from Thailand ... it could be that Wave statements have always been wrong and that their statements should not have been made until this magic cloud piece of supply was in place
... or it is a problem with demand that they have no ability to measure or forecast in any mature way.
alea/barge, Wave has basically said the same thing ...
They have stated they have the products, there is the infrastructure, and it is time for folks to "start writing checks"
Continued perseveration on matters of supply and infrastructure are just that: the uncontrolled or uncontrollable response (dot-ism) to a stimuli (SP and revenue doldrums).
But even the front office has stated, these dots are moot (although I sometimes might prefer the mute so often stated here).
Checks are not being written.
Such truths are a consequence of any of the following:
1. the toy is not attractive
2. the toy is priced to high
3. (corollary of 2) folks simply don't have the money to write checks
4. (corollary of 1) folks are choosing different toys
5. sales - the right people with checkbook authority are not in the right room with the right toy at the right time.
Industry reviews praise Wave's product, and call it expensive. Wave says deals are closing, and nothing materializes. Corporations are dripping with money, but governments are not. The toy looks like fun, but nobody has died yet.
One thing is certain: Wave management for decades perceives demand that is not there. Peter smugly chortling about all those folks so aware of Wave's patents and products, SKS saying a year ago Wave doesn't have to call folks any more, folks are calling Wave. A massive ramp in sales expenses (presumably based on perceptions of demand). All of this and much much more shows that Wave is simply unable or unwilling to measure demand. This may well explain their lack of direct competition. Folks will compete when they see demand. Undeployed leadership may be just a myth of leadership.
On this matter, the measure of market and demand, Wave management is clearly among the most inept imaginable. The frequent lament "ahead of their time" means in the wrong time and out of time.
650 million Years ago the earth was an ice ball. One could market bikinis and indeed be ahead of their time. Another word for marketing bikinis on a frozen snowball is - stupid.
This genius of their's costs Wave and shareholders millions and millions.
One can praise always having the wrong equipment at the wrong time as visionary, or they can call it what it is: failure.
Sure, they have neat gadgets that would dramatically improve data security and communication. Something might come of it. I have it as a coin toss or a little less than that. Wave exhibits nothing resembling urgency, putting decals on cars is not urgency.
The flaws in this company are gaping, and they will remain, as clearly the shareholder base has no interest in seeking remedy to those flaws.
So, yup, I am in a show me sales or shut up mode.
Blue, given that pretty much anybody
was well aware back then (2000ish) that Wave would need further dilution (revenue being measured in the thousands not millions) perhaps it would be more instructive to make SP comparison via MCAP.
MCAP hit something like $1.5bn as memory serves, making for a current SP of something like $12.
Certainly for holders of the 15 million shares from back then, 150 is indeed their basis (although I have no idea how many shares anybody actually ever acquired at those $50 prices, it seems $30 is a bit more rational as obviously at lot of shares were acquired at that level).
The $12 mcap-based and a more reasonable weighted high of $30 roughly coincide if one takes the split in for those shares, recalling of course that most of the shares were printed post-split and hence that factoid is simply a historical artifact for the consideration of most shares.
For the company to regain the valuation it once had, it needs to get back to $10-12 a share. That is company valuation ... not how individual shareholders were treated in the process.
I think the treatment of individual shareholders by this management is a well established fact at this point ... hardly worth review.
Blue, which part?
The "successful merger part" or the "Prospects saw evidence of two companies" part?
Short numbers continue to decline,
the ATM provides the liquidity for shorts to cover.
Expect the pattern to be durable until revenue supplants the ATM.
It seems the company can at least keep the ATM offering over a buck in order to allow removal of the delisting notice.
Yawn.
Gartner's comments:
Wave Systems
Wave Systems is the most experienced supplier of self-encrypting drive (SED) management, having pioneered the use of Seagate self-encrypting hard drives as the basis for managed FDE, and it was first to ship MDP products to support TCG encrypting drives from Hitachi and Samsung. In 2011, Wave Systems acquired Safend, which gave it ownership of products for file encryption and removable media protection. Wave Systems currently supports Windows XP through Windows 7. Windows 8 support is planned for 4Q12. Embedded system support includes Intel vPro, Seagate encrypting drives, and all commercially available TCG encrypting drives and TPMs. Safend Encryptor and Safend Protector products can also support Mac OS X. The Safend acquisition provides ownership of FIPS 140-2 Overall Level 1 and CC certifications but only for file and removable media protection.
Strengths
Safend's historically successful niche track record is a helpful asset to gain buyer attention. Wave Systems can now break free from selling only pure-play Windows SED solutions, and will appeal to a wider set of buyers and end-user scenarios.
A successful merger following a friendly, long-term OEM relationship has minimized the potential for disruptions in either company's operations.
A dedicated TPM key management server helps companies back up TPM keys to an existing platform and migrate keys to new platforms for recovery or migration.
Safend brings basic DLP capabilities to Wave Systems.
Cautions
Wave Systems is integrating product lines; however, during this report's evaluation period, they appeared as separate to the public eye. Prospects saw evidence of two companies, with no guidance about current or future product integration. Execution improvements are in doubt until the company begins to deliver on combined values.
Wave Systems has leased a number of variants of its domain name, but buyers could still miss them when building an MDP RFI list. For example, "wavesystems.com" is owned by a company in a different security market and can cause dead-end searches.
Gartner client feedback, a relatively low incidence of publication references or reviews, and lack of peer vendor reaction continue to signal a lowered standing in competitive execution.
alea/tkc
alea's version is more or less how I remembered it, but I too, lack any interest in going back and mulling through it. I'm pretty much in the mode of being interested in newly released SEC filings and PRs of similar stature should they occur and that is about it.
I did at least glance through the new web site, but comfortable under the 5 minute mark.
Over the years folks have remarked at my attention span, but on this matter Lee won.
It's not just the Wave dream,
it's dreams in general. Abandoning the ability to be critical. QDEK, IOMEGA, all sorts of rockets going to all sorts of moons. Even when it happens (Wave ca. 2000) it does so for mostly the wrong reasons.
WAVX may do well but there is nothing out there indicating that it will somehow explode into fantasy glory (in an historical sense) anytime soon and without ample warning.
What might happen is some orders, 2m here, maybe 5m, heck, toss in a 6 month tear with 50m in new large orders.
Once the buzz wear's off folks can break out there calculators and settle down. Expenses do run at a clip of around 60m.
blue, i mean no disrespect,
but certainly you know I don't actually read your whole posts ... I mean, would you?
but I do skim. And I don't even skim most of the others.
Wave was cash-flow break-even, that fell apart partially do to a lack of big new deals and mostly as a consequence of rising expenses. Much of that (although not all) is SFND.
Will SFND return proportionate revs? I don't know. But, is it something one is to expect 5 seconds after acquisition or 5 years after acquisition or somewhere in between.
You seem to be in the 5 seconds camp. I think 5 years would be bad. the company has given guidance in the 1 year zone.
It is worth looking at, what does SFND sales start to return in Q3 and Q4 (the 1 year range).
Just sayin.
blue, we agree on one point
"Jobs worked and worked at it. Why? Because it was important and Jobs knew it."
Great talks are great talks. I am confident I have seen tens of millions of dollars move in different directions as a consequence of great talks.
Not bagging a customer type of thing, but where the whole thought process of gov (e.g. and specifically relevant in this case) moves.
This may sound silly, but a few good talks moved 100m into HIV research. Real money moved. Bad talks had tried. They failed. Better talks happened, and boom. Money.
Jobs knew this. Whole frameworks and paradigms are not moved by the shiniest new wrench, they are moved by a few good talks.
(ok, I exaggerate, but not by much)
(my apologies to awk and his wrench-worship and that all things begin and end with a shiny wrench. truth hurts. they don't.)
blue, I noticed the hands thing straight away, and there were other aspects where I thought ... somebody has talked to him about this.
But still ...
Nobody saw those slides before he used them. Nobody. It just can't be.
So while he has been coached up on a few points, the first point is inclusion, give your talk to a critical set of insiders whose job it is is to rip your guts out (gently).
And somebody that coaches theme or message. Does every word, graphic and gesture converge on your ONE point, or not.
In this case not.
telstar, it is not as if SKS is not without moments where he invokes a valuable example or metaphor.
He does. He comes up with good things. It is a fit of arrogance where I think, crap, if I could just spend a day with him on a talk like this first. (yes, I have a delusional impression of myself in this regard)
The problem is as if the problem was a blob in the middle of the room, and he pokes at it from 12 directions. It is as if he seeks to defeat the giant by a million flea bites. He needs to chose a few of those angles, sharpen the sword and actually completely cleave through on just a few angles. The human mind will fill the blanks.
That is what he lacks. He never takes ONE line a simply drives a stake through it.
Mr. Sprague I do not need 40 examples that almost demonstrate a point.
I need a clear absolute message about what a Known Device is and what it means and I need it presented in three examples that cut from beginning to end in grade school clarity.
Three strokes, all the way through. What is a known device, what does it mean. Never twitch deviate or wander from that. Three different angles or three different strokes of:
What is a Known Device and What Does it Mean.
This Can Be Done.
Makes me want to quit biology. This can be done.
Blue, yes pretty much any competent presentation starts with a few rules:
No matter what you seek to do, assume you will only be making ONE point.
In the event you are inclined to think you have a remarkable audience, then you can break the rule, swing for the fences, and only if supremely capable ... then you can make two points.
In such a daring adventure the two points must be inextricably linked. They must nest as in the 'exception that proves the rule' way that allows you to again prove the rule (point one), but bring in the notions of the caveat or some such counter notion that is fully hinged/attached to point one.
SKS stated his critical point. He did his best there, but didn't seal the deal.
Device, not user.
If you unplug your landline and walk to your neighbor's and plug it in and make a call, it is compeltely different than if you walk to your neighbors and use a cell. In one case pretty much anything is allowed onto the network-IN port, in the other only a specific device is allowed IN. We could attachpasswords to both. We could attach CAC cards to both. But in the end, one is a known device with a specific ESN communicating, and the other can be pretty much anything. That point, the known device point, needs to be driven into the ground, completely understood. What it means, what it means for data security, what it means for phishing, spoofing, malware, .... everything. A known device brings something to the table. Be painfully clear. What is a known device. A hardware defined known device. A unique identifier known device. What is it? What does it mean?
Nothing else: a known device, what is it, what does it mean.
He really tried to do that. He just didn't have the focus and channeling to achieve it. Wandering around with obscure examples of set-top boxes and cloned phones and APPL is al good and well, but spell it out painfully.
I do not believe that folks that did not know before hand left that talk with a strong new impression of what a known device is and what that means.
kisa, this is not education:
slides:
"Improving usability by transitioning training of the
user to policy"
"Always encrypted so solid state is protected"
tkc, sometimes conduct or performance in one area is highly correlated to conduct or performance in another area. Anal folks have a tendency to be anal at all variety of things. Careless folks tend to be frequently careless. Some can flip the careless switch on and off, but not most. Sloppy slides, sloppy management, sloppy conference calls, sloppy time-lines, sloppy financing.
Sloppy. That is all there is to see. Perhaps there is somewhere something that this individual tightens it up on, I just don't know.
I assume everything goes through editing, even if it is not a professional editor ... Lark looks at the slides, that sort to thing. Sloppy people often fail to avail themselves of that which is there. They are/were too busy.
I don't know why it is, but Souren's content to me appears much tighter. Does Souren simply do better work, or does he actually pass things across somebody else's desk? Does he simply make inclusion part of the process.
SKS/Wave reeeeekkks of non-collaboration.
I believe it to be fundamentally impossible to produce 27 slides that are that bad if a single other person had ever seen them. Anybody. Just grab somebody at the train station. This presentation necessarily was prepared entirely in private and never shown to anybody. (or folks are terrified of SKS)
Neither of those things are good.
It suggests few are involved in anything. Everybody has a job presumably, but interaction, at least at the top is NIL.
That can't be good.
The ESPP is 15% below the lowest price of the quarter, no? A pretty solid discount it would seem to me. Not crazy, but certainly with a highly volatile equity it makes for a pretty decent basis.
it might be worth noting that most shares have been printed after the split, that is most shares know nothing about any split. My greatx6 grandfather had 6 kids. A third of the US belonged to the French. Neither of these facts have material relevance to me. Again, most shares were born after the split, it makes little sense to evaluate shares for events before their existence. Unless, of course, you want to blame and bill me, or praise and reward me specifically here and now for the American Revolution.
It would have taken me a few pages to say that.
alea, yes, I guess that is my point,
a third of their liabilities are deferred revenue ... not an obligation they need to pay off.
The rest can be met with existing revenue and a reduction in staff.
I would not grant them protection from the phone bill.
alea/tkc bk
My understanding of bankrupcy law is that its purpose to to provide shelter to a party when their circumstances are intractable.
If, I, for example, made 100k a year, lived in a rental apartment, was paying the bills, decided to hire 1000 servants and found myself in financial trouble such tht I needed protection from my liabilities (my liabilities being salary in arrears obligations to my servants and something I call "deferred revenue" an unrealized gain on some stock e.g.) I'm trying to understand how I would convince a judge I need shelter to reorganize.
Wouldn't the judge simply say "lose some of the servants".
That's enough Wave apologizing for me
for the day. Time to get back to lynching.
Starting with the car.
If it is the WEM DoD thing that I am talking about, then the "qualifying" of the opportunity seems pretty straight forward NIST 150.147, 150.155 (I think I got those numbers right).
In this case its not a matter of talking a bank into doing a better job with PII, its about providing a product to meet a federal requirement on federal machines, the pilot being the process of proving that it does/can.
This may be two different points being covered in that bit. SKS does a poor job of maintaining compartments when he speaks (and perhaps when he thinks).
Wave e.g. has been working on a DoD pilot to conclude in August (timeline, total amount, amount so far earned and so on in each of the last few Q reports). Basically the amount was some 1.5m (1.3?, 1.7?, I cant' remember) and Wave is to get paid for each platform certified through the process. I understand this to be BIOS work, each platform being a particular set of machines with particular BIOS. While Wave gets paid to do this work, all they are doing is certifying platforms for a potential future sales of presumably WEM. Platforms have been certified, WEM has not been purchased at scale, I believe this is the 'check' SKS speaks towards. Wave isn't in the business of slaving over a trial for a year to pull in 1.5m, they are in the business of selling WEM to those platforms for $30+m. SKS is referring to a WEM p.o. as a check, not the platform certification work (which they do get paid for, but not a whole bunch).
On the $5-6m account. It has been variably mentioned in the last couple calls that a deal(s) for $5-6m or $8-10m crashed out 'cause of floods or slow decision making. In the Q2 call it was stated that a Q1 expected thingy is disappointed and is "closing now" ... whatever that means.
I expect this deal to surface this year, and as with BP,once its out there from a CC the chatter from the following is "where'd it go?!?!"
Player says it was a sticky mud play, I'm thinking it is a deal exiting the pipeline in a sticky way.
It does seem that 2 deals for $8-10m has migrated to one deal for $5-6m but these are not the type of things Wave has ever demonstrated anything resembling arithmetic cohesion or competence on.
I think it was that pending deal that made them go the ATM route, they probable thought the deal would close Q1, they'd get a SP bump, they would sell ATM into it, plus the cash from the deal itself, and have all appearances of momentum having come off BP the Q before that and BASF a Q or 2 before that and have a tidy sum in the treasury.
When they filed the ATM I recall saying something to the effect of "they are going all in" as it necessarily from my estimation of their treasury required a deal in the short term less it turn into a bleeder.
Wave's forecasting was true to form, and there be blood.
24601, the report is unfortunately thin as always (although perhaps I just haven't read thoroughly enough) on the bundling revs.
It looks, at first blush, that Wave continues to lose some 1.5m from the restructured Dell agreement. The restructure is a matter some feel will be better for Wave in the long haul as more robust Dell-TC options become the norm, but it does not look like Wave has reached a tipping point.
While all sorts of sales-fails are generally the topic, that drop in the Dell baseline appears to yet to be overcome.
The difficulty is in understanding what component od the reproted major customer Dell revs have previously included DefRev from large orders booked as Dell revs versus the OEM bundling revs.
I thought at some point the number could be derived in previous filings, but I failed to stumble across it in the latest 10k.
AS I assume Dell is the partner in the invoice (credit) facility Wave has now, that number will only further erode (presumably Dell effectively gets a discount for invoice pre-payment).
kisa, while that is the billion dollar question,
good arguments can be made that the breadth of TC may well preclude one of the established cornerstones running enterprise key management. There are good reasons why none of the players you mentioned may be suitable for such a role. On the flip side, and as you stated, once there is real money there, there will be real efforts by folks to capture that money. The centrism of each of the providers you mentioned (INTC, MSF, GOOG) would seem to be a stumbling block to cross platform management solutions. Obviously the notion that their need be one centralized management solution is an assumption many here make as if it were a fact, and it seems it is entirely plausible for a MSFT, an INTC and a GOOG solutions for the each of the relevant device subsets. It would be more complicated, presumably more expensive, but certainly could be what ends up coming about.
The next 6 months should clear matters up a fair bit, the next year should clear matters up even more so.
The question is how difficult is it actually to slip in between all these OSs, BIOSs and chips, and where does Wave actually stand (all the rhetoric and assumptions aside) on actually being able to slip into that space.
Some here have been calling Wave a swiss army knife defacto standard for a decade ... but the fact more seems to be that each effort is a mountain of pilots, legacy BIOS issues, ad so on.
the data seems more consistent with the notion that Wave wants to be a swiss army knife, and they are currently a marginally organized tool box with a difficult to wield array and standard and metric tools, phillips, flathead, torx etc.
So far there is not one bit of evidence they can flip a switch anywhere for anybody.
That presumably gives them fluency and expertise and it is nearly impossible to presume (IMO) whether the sum of that expertise and familiarity amounts to a mountain or a molehill for the folks at e.g. INTC/MFE to climb.
lugan, my guess is better than 8m for Q2, but that is by no means a lock. I believe Wave will be perfectly happy with anything north of $7.6m, just based on their public comments. I believe that would fit the bill for "seeing strong growth".
Based on apparent ATM use, it seems 8m+ (but not by much) seems more rational. Figure expenses at around 15.2m, actual cash exp more like 13.5-14m.
I figure the decals on the car only cost about 50k shares.
What's a suitcase of shares among friends anyways?
For some time Wave was accomplishing QyoQ growth over 30%, something that would weigh in at revs over 10.5m, and that ain't gonna happen.
yup, my cat, mot being much into hoops, already madfe that basket.
The "they don't get it" matra that Lee has said about some many others cannot possible more precisely deployed in decribig themselves.
Lee doesn't get it.
The last week is simply doubling down on that.
I find their "get it" factor unrecoverable and unsupportable.
The magnitude of their flaws are breathtaking.
No 10 or 20 million idolatry deal will change what is clearly on the table. Such a deal will provide exit points, but will not be bullish for continued investment in this company (for me).
my broker(s) report 12.8m shares, as does Yahoo. Institutional interest reported by my brokers and Yahoo was 13m shares. Perhaps a coincidence, but I don't see a missing 7m shares that zets points to.
player1234, your notes are completely consistent with my information, I use 50% or 70% depending on my mood, and as I posted previously ...
institutional WAVX ownership was most recently reported as 13% of outstanding ... or 12 million shares.
That a list of the top ten or whatever that zets perceverates on seems to fall short of that total institutional number should perhaps bring pause to zets' supposition.
The plain fact is institutional holdings were more than adequate to rationalize the RussRebalance volume, and double counting serves to only further secure that fact.
The notion of some missing 7m of mystery sellers is, at the level of the first approximation, one of pure fancy and not one of reasonable fact.
mig on INTC,
it is less about lead and more about a fundamentally different solution, one is a proprietary closed system with few if any adherents and the other is an open standards systems with more adherents than the former. Importantly, Dell Samsung MSFT ARM and lately CSCO have migrated to the non-INTC path.
This DOES NOT mean success for Wave, but it is a requirement for Wave success.
The direction of what the big fish (less INTC) are doing is what Wave wants people to do, but again, it does not spell automatic success.
Wave's program, products, and placement is an engagement ring. Ther eis nothing new about being left at the altar. That is SKS primary concern, and would be the sensible concern of investors. Not "will INTC win" but more "will Wave get left a the altar" and a plethora of last inning open commodity solutions swamp them out.
That is the game.
correct, but the average daily has a adjective associated with it ....
"average"
and it has been my experience that when a specific day trades in excess of 10x, 20x, 30x ... in this case 40x average daily, that lots of other background trading piles on (fear, ambition, all sort of retail participation).
So, with the daily trading at 40x average ... I'm willing to assume that underlying activity that generates the average to which your speak can certainly perk up a bit. Wave jumping to say 1.5m shares can happen completely in the absence of much of anything, and 12m shares is something that can more than justify a similar jump which all told once again leaves a circumstance with no large mystery block of shares that need to be defined in terms of buyers and sellers.
zets: Volume, buyers, sellers,
my math on major institutional holders was well north of 3m shares. Then there are the minor institutions.
More directly, my references showed institutional ownership at 12.9% of outstanding shares, or roughly 12m shares. Against that there were about 9m shares short.
The distance between the short postion (potential buyers) and the institutional position (potential sellers) was 3 millions shares.
Toss in all the chaos of Nasdaq double counting of buys and sells with some percentage of trades and I'm inclined to think that there is no massive phantom block of shares to consider.
It looks pretty clean. The short report will clarify things. If 75% of institutional shares were index shares (probably more) and 50% of those double counted, then 8m shares could have actually traded hands, reported as 12m in volume, and if all covered by old MM naked short positions net out to a current short position of 1-2m considering normal background retail investing to cover the balance.
Or something like that.
The point is, the volume, insitutional interest, known short postion, known size of the Russell-IN short effect all pretty much balance out within a million shares or so.
I don't see a big "who bought?" thingy.
alea, I'm o.k. with plums instead, in any event there is the fuzzy pipeline, and then the rather rarely mentioned customer of an amount within a best guess time-frame. I still look at the WEMmy pilot folks as pipeline fuzz, 'its going well and we think something will come of it' when that turns into a 'a WEMmy customer, $10-15m which has completed trials and for which we are doing integration work that we expect to complete in Q1:13, but nothing is signed until it is signed' ... that becomes a BPesque carrot ... or plum if you will.
It seems the SSD $8-10m Q3ish SSD thingys are now plums. History has shown one should add a Q and round down.
Pipelines and Carrots
Wave talks pipelines, which clearly are rather meaningless in a QtoQ or even YtoY sense. I dismiss pipelines. Occasionally Wave states a particular contract, gives a price range, and states when they think it will close.
I felt BASF met this criteria, but certainly BP. In these situations one has a customer, and deal range, and an expected Q. These are not pipeline statements at this point, they are carrots.
Wave's carrots are eventually consummated. The SHM carrots were rather clear: 2 deals, total $8-10m, eta Q3ish. I'm expecting this business to be consummated which will restore the treasury, interactive the ATM, get the SP north of a buck, and more-or-less put Wave back where they were in say, Aug of last year.
On BP there was a confusing point mentioned somewhere ... it mentioned BP had bought 30k seats of their planned 80k seats effort. All the various sleuthing had come up with 18k seats and not 30k seats. I've been expecting a round two from BP Q3-4, but the number potentially available may be nearly half of what I was thinking.
Doing the math, the 30k seats makes more sense than the 18k seats based on historical derived price per seat notions ... at 18k seats, delivery was north of $100 a seat. Kicking that down by a third is more consistent with previous sales, and the way one accomplishes that is to recognize more seats.
So, all tat said, it seems to me 2 new deals for $8-10m plus BP for say $2m looks like a reasonable possibility for 2012. After that of course is whether anything comes of the WEMmy pilots. We do kow that LMT, a major aerospace firm, got punched soundly in the face (publicly) by an ATP that WEM seeks to address, one could imagine they make be a reasonable pilot participant. They are not weighing the pro and cons of paying off on the loss of some customer SSNs or similar such things with a year of free credit monitoring ... they are talking about the nuts and bolts of warcraft thingy's, it would seem they would represent the type of company that may be inclined to be a first adopter of WEMmy things.
Certainly if one puts the 2 new $8-10m, another installment of BP $2m, and an outfit like LMT jumping in at what would likely be in the 10-15m range to ERAS-WEM their 100k seats, all in 2012, then one could reasonably imagine Wave trading about a buck for a bit. Its this $20-25m on top of their base business of about $30m that leads Wave to variably think they may well do $50mish in business in 2012.
The WEMmy stuff looks very ripe for delays, the 2 new will likely book in the year is the past is any measure, and BP is linkdin type speculation.
twt