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This interim CEO seems like he's doing some good stuff as per the directions given to him by Raefield. He's doing some hiring, paying some consultants, doing a presentation, doing a bad financing.. Might even done redecorating. Raefield must be very proud. Perhaps if the company survives the next while he could work on some activities that investors like myself are more interested in.
Here are a few ideas that other companies hav tried.
1. Sell something that can be reported as news.
2. Design, develop and release a new product.
3. Doing some form of marketing.
4. Restructure the company to save it from bankruptcy.
5. Do anything that could create value in the stock and bring it over a penny.
....... Like any of this will happen ......
I recall the grand Pooba Raefield bragging on an IR call about his new support team. The problem here is simply bad management. Bad cash management obviously results in cash problems and part shortages. Sierecki is Raefield's disciple and they only hope is that to go forward they need to go back to what was working pre insanity.
Merry Xmas my fellow Victims. Since last Dec we've only lost about 85% of our equity. Was hoping the board would give us a present of a real CEO, even Pineauclaus would do. Let's hope Mr Interim doesn't make it far into the New Year.
Unbelievable how this guy went from being the least successful VP of sales I can imagine to the CEO chair. More sales people turning over and not a single contract win news since he took over. Why am I even bothering to post... Well every train wreck gathers spectators I guess
Hey Ted, the one time I talked to IR they said he was interim CEO and would run the company from Michigan. As far as old shareholders my guess is they spoke loudly with their wallets and that's why the stock is 1 cent.
Hey Ted, the one time I talked to IR they said he was interim CEO and would run the company from Michigan. As far as old shareholders my guess is they spoke loudly with their wallets and that's why the stock is 1 cent.
I agree. They have released no contract wins since this guy came on board and he was part of the Raefield fiasco. This company simply can't be successful with CEO's who grace the company with a visit once a month.
Your point is correct. Awards don't bring trust to govt agencies. All systems must go through testing and be approved. That's the only trust they require.
Lol. These contests are pay to play. You either get to be the winner or a Finalist. Congrats to Viscpunt for winning in a category with no other finalist since this means they were the only entrant.
It wasn't a waste of time for management it sounds like one person actually wasted the time to listen.
In his parting shot Raefield said that the company is in good hands with Scott and that he is willing to advise Scott. Scary thought.
This better be the bottom since the next step is ? Scott has been VP Sales for a year and we've seen no news that indicates any real success so I fear that the only kind of magic he can perform is making money disappear.
Simply put, Raefield ( and a lesser degree Liscouski) made an absolute mess but as long as he's on the Board he would want to defend his bad decisions. For example he hired the new CEO Sierecki as VP of Sales and was probably part of the decision to make him CEO. They've replaced a CEO who was living and working 1000 miles from the office with one who lives 2500 miles away.
Now that they're gone the Board can be free to fix the mess. Can't get worse, can only get better.
P
This is good. Really good
As an FYI, Liscouski has been on the board since 2012 so was part of the board that ousted the real CEO and initiated the Raefield fiasco. He was chair of the compensation committee that awarded Raefield an absurd contract that amounted to close to 10% of company revenue. As for IMSC he's late to the game and their stock is down dramatically. In short, Viscount made the microcap mistake of adding some big resume board members hoping they would add value when all they've done is suck it dry.
I'd be thrilled if Liscouski and Raefield went bye bye because they were the problem, not the solution. IMO.
looks like someone realized the seller tree has been picked pretty clean. Some décent support makes me guess something is afoot, possibly a cash raise? I doubt this has anything to do with the Q. If So the stock Is still cheap as a buy
Interesting story line. The CEO gets fired. The new CEO does nothing. The stock does nothing. The 8k from last week says he's still the interim CEO so either he don't want the job or he's not their man. We should know soon I hope if the board has a plan but anything is better than the dark ages of Raefield. They need a CEO with substantial corporate janitorial experience and a technology vision. The minute I hear who the real CEO will be is the minute I decide whether I buy or dump. If they pick another technocrat with big company credentials I'm the first off this bus with whatever I have left.
Perhaps I missed something but did they actually have a conference call after announcing that they released their Q2 results but then didn't bother to release them? There was no link to the Q in the press release, nothing on their website, nothing on the SEC website, or yahoo or anywhere I can find.
PS. I stopped listening to the calls because between myself and several friends not a single question was ever answered on the calls that we submitted. I think they basically do their blah blah blah, have some canned/pretend Q&A questions and ignore us all.
sounds like the new group can't get their act together, Last 2 Q's have been late filed.
The only action here is the sound of the wind.
I am referring to being a shareholder in a dead mining deal and the company could have just folded the tent since the market for microcap mining is dead. So now that they have gone the tech route as Wolverine Technologies there is hope and hope is better than a tax loss.
A wise account once told me if you have a choice between something and nothing, take the something. They could have wrapped this thing up and we'd have nothing but chose to go the Phoenix approach and try to rise from the ashes. I'll take my something as a shareholder in Wolverine Technologies.
I noticed the latest 8k about Viscount's 16 year CFO resigning. I checked with someone who told me the following:
Viscount has about 25 staff. Before Raefield became involved Viscount had a happy staff and low turnover, maybe one a year.
Since Raefield became COO at Viscount they have seen the following departures:
CEO
CFO
Primary Mobile app engineer
Homeland security software engineer
2 regional sales managers
marketing director
2 production managers
Microsoft business development
VP of distribution sales
Tech Support Manager
Also recently:
VP Gov't Sales
Manager of Gov't Sales Support
Gov't Sales leader
* basically the whole US gov't team
- not to mention 2 Board members and all 15 manufacturing rep agencies
I'm not sure about the numbers or if this is totally accurate but it seems that they're running at about 50% turnover per and many were Raefield hires.
This tells me that the warnings about this guy being toxic may have been right.
PS. There's only one big departure that would really count!
Looks like another investor conference flopolla by Raefield. Interesting 8k today. Their CFO of 15 years is stepping down, probably had enough.
I just noticed that the company's annual proxy/14a seems to be much later than usual. Perhaps the board don't want us knowing what kind of compensation and bonuses the investors have paid to the CEO to lose 75% of their investment.
I see today that they announced that they are doing an investor conference sponsored by their new auditors. Not sure how this works. For example, if Viscount commits to pay for this conference every year will the auditors be "very agreeable" to providing financials in the most favorable ways possible?
Usually auditors are arms length and perhaps to some investors all that matters is the stock price and having the independent auditors on board to help promote the stock would be very cool. My only issue is if the books get cooked a bit to favor insiders and at the expense of retail shareholders this could look bad.
Darn. I missed the call too. I'll listen online if they post it. I think they held the Q call without the real numbers because of stuff that they don't want public.. like cash or loss. Somehow they know "preliminary" sales and gross margins but not "preliminary" net profit, c'mon. And cash is cash, not something accounts would need to calculate.
My old complaint was that VSYS did not address investor relations very well but was very clean. Now it seems to be just another penny stock seems to hold retail investors with contempt.
$1.5M is non stock compensation is a huge amount for as company this size. It would be nice if the investors had a clue what it was all for.
I just get very frustrated that they have a management team that can't even properly word the best news release they've possibly ever had. In fact if USCIS reads this they could even be upset since gov't guys have a think about accuracy when they are publicly mentioned.
Being able to charge for recurring software licenses is huge. And we get a confusing piece of crap. No matter, even properly worded the stock can't do much without promotion or IR.
The latest word is that this news release is another confusing Raefield mess. The news has nothing to do with installing Freedom systems. It's for Freedom Access Control Solution ("Freedom") software .
Simply put they got an order for $2M in software. They can still get orders for $millions over the next several years for the hardware installations they have been releasing as news. Much better news than what I thought but who writes this crap?
Hope this solves a bit of the confusion. Another great news release that gets mishandled and leaves people yawning when it is actually exciting.
My guess is that since they fired their auditors the new guys needed extra time to sign off. I hope it's not because of disputes and irregularities.
I don't get this news release. A order for "up to 200 sites" sounds like a blanket order not an order and if the upgrades are $800K then new sites are only $1.2M which is peanuts.
My interpretation is that they received an order to upgrade the existing sites and a commitment of some kind that they will keep getting the new ones.
I'll go with the theory that they're trying to help the stock with something, not a bad idea.
And so it goes. I wonder if the .09 investors of last year are still Raefield fans. We've only lost about 85% of our market cap from earlier last year. It actually might be time to start buying. If they need to do a financing they might have to get some support for the stock.
If I was a cynical betting man I would think that they fired their auditors because Marcum LLP has an annual investor conference and it was the price of admission.
If so it's ridiculous that they would fire a BC based auditor and hire an American company with the associated increase in cost (paying in US$, paying to fly auditors to Canada to do 10k's etc.) just to do a 20 min presentation but who am I to think that Raefield thinks logically.
Just my guess. Perhaps we'll get another exciting Dennis is talking to some investors news release in the next week or so.
I can see how you read it this way. But, putting a term like "rooting out issues" is actually telling. Rooting out indicates a witch hunt or fishing expedition, not the sign of pre-existing problems.
That whole paragraph about rooting out issues at the bottom of exhibit A with the COO as the new boss and leader is weird regardless. That the CEO needs to support the COO against staff who "go around" the COO to complain to the CEO? It could be that the COO was up to no good and wanted the employees feeling intimated?
Perhaps there were no issues between the CEO and staff but the issues were between the COO and staff. After all the CEO had been there 15 years and the old board would have done something if there had been dysfunction. Linkedin is an interesting tool. An ex-employee I messaged earlier this year indicated that they had very little turnover until Raefield and the turnover since he came is up around 25% and climbing. The employee I contacted said he's damn happy to be gone.
Finally, if you read that agreement as a whole it seems to paint Raefield as bureaucratic and paranoid, not a recipe for a functional work space in a small tech company.
I could be wrong of course. There could be a Vsys fairy land of happy elves... not.
IMO
It was posted an amendment to their Form 10k for last year as a 10K/A.
The 14a shows he made $121K but it was US funds which is around $150cdn. The 14A simply left out the minor issue that somehow he had taken over the company but was only working part time, however that works.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1158387/000106299314001649/exhibit10-2.htm
It's interesting reading. No wonder the CEO got fed up. It says that the new COO is the new boss and leader of all staff etc etc. Staff weren't allowed to talk to the CEO anymore. etc. First time I've ever heard of the CEO reporting to the COO. So ridiculous, sounds like some banana republic where the President gets locked away and the new strongman simply "filters" information.
I got into this stock because it was as clean as the OTC gets. Since the new CEO took over I feel like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters.. slimed.
Not getting pumped? Nothing illegal or wrong with pumping (promoting)as long as it's based on truth and not speculation combined with manipulation. You're breaking my heart.
If there are no bonuses I suspect it's because there's no cash and the new guys on the board couldn't be bullied.
If you really think Raefield has a conscience consider this. He convinced the board the CEO "needed help" and got himself hired as COO around Jan 2013. The public documents show that he worked 16 hours a week and he made around $160K CDN for his trouble as CO for 2013. He was "managing" certain departments and the company was also paying for the cost of flying him back and forth from California. Read the contract. It's really a self serving load of crap.
On the other hand the CEO put in his 50-60 hours a week and was paid $117K.
Anybody else see this as odd. It was my first big warning sign that he is bad news. I guess for the shareholders the positive was that he only did 16 hrs /week damage until he became CEO.
Bottom line. If the board really needed a COO (which they didn't) and if Raefield was putting the company first (which he didn't)they could have found whatever "help" they needed locally for less money and FULL TIME.
They could have simply saved the travel, hotels, restaurants by running a craigslist ad. I bet they'd get some responses locally.
"Small local supplier of security and software systems seeks part time COO. Light work of 16 hours/week. No accountability required. Salary $150K + $175US/hour for overtime."
Aside from a lack of information what is available seems confusing or misleading especially relating to cash.
In that vein I reread the 10k on the weekend and found more stuff that doesn't make sense. For example:
"Selling, general and administrative expenses for the years ended December 31, 2014 and 2013 were $5,624,312 and $3,064,786, respectively, an increase of $2,559,526 or 83.5%. Included in the selling, general and administrative expenses for the year ended December 31, 2014 was $1,519,950 of non-cash stock compensation expense for the issuance by the Company of warrants and stock options to management, staff and consultants. Excluding this non-cash compensation expense from selling, general and administrative expenses, the year ending December 31, 2014 would result in a total of $4,104,362, respectively, a significant reduction in true selling, general and administrative expenses, excluding the non-cash charges." (bold italics added)
So if "cash" SG&A was $3,064,786 in 2013 and $4,104,362 in 2014 how can this represent a "significant reduction in true selling, general and administrative expenses."
Am I reading this wrong or is this more misleading excuse making crap?
I'm not an expert but isn't there always an equal amount of buying and selling by definition?