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Recent Sunworks disciplinary action:
https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/CitationViolationDisclosure.aspx?LicType=LIC&LicNum=441690&LmfPre=&Class=2&FiscalYear=2016&SeqNbr=2134&ActionCde=C&Status=COMPLETED&LicName=SUNWORKS&StatusDt=05/16/2017
MD too:
https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/CitationViolationDisclosure.aspx?LicType=LIC&LicNum=1001915&LmfPre=&Class=2&FiscalYear=2016&SeqNbr=2134&ActionCde=P&Status=PENDING&LicName=M+D+ENERGY+INC&StatusDt=01/19/2017
More detail: http://law.justia.com/codes/california/2015/code-bpc/division-3/chapter-9/article-10/section-7157
Looks like they are accused of using some illegal sales tactics - desperation?
Who is Edward Corbet Wasson?
According to this document he owns over 10% of the company as of February:
https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/LicenseDetail.aspx?LicNum=441690
I have never heard of him.
Has anybody else?
https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/PersonnelList.aspx?LicNum=441690&LicName=SUNWORKS+UNITED+INC
A little more info.
It a way this is actually a positive to me to the extent that it signals they are focusing on what they are good at. It's just that what they are good at is a pretty narrow set of things compared with what expectations they gave to shareholders.
The question is how much of the current stock price represents these misplaced expectations in regards to broad national expansion, big government deals, hopes for work with Amazon, a worthless Chinese patent, and other things that the company hyped up under Nelson.
This company is an agricultural installer in the Central Valley, that is basically the entire company.
I think you meant to send this message to the Sunworks PR department, because if installing a normal sized project right next to their HQ is the best thing they have to PR in the first half of 2017, that is not a good sign for those hopeful for crazy growth.
Especially because they spent all of last year talking about Federal Government contracts, that map everyone got excited about, and some other things.
That said it's probably actually good they are focusing on one thing and doing that thing well: installing for farms in a few counties. That reality is much different than the dreams they have been selling for years.
Speaking of that warehouse...
You know how I said they were copying Coldwell Solar... why don't you look up where Coldwell's two big locations are?
It's not really a negative though, if everything you try on your own fails you might as well copy someone who isn't failing.
While investors might be thinking this, the company did revoke their guidance for the year in regards to revenue.
I think the only guidance left is that they expect to make a profit in the second half of 2017, not necessarily for the year as a whole though.
Volume was 18K yesterday... do you think anybody would invest in hiring a team to push a stock with those kinds of numbers?
Ridiculous!
This has not gone down from $5 two years ago because of shorts, it is because it is a crummy stock whose leadership purposefully harvested shareholders for everything they could.
The decline was completely predictable, it was only a surprise if you trusted con-artist Nelson and his criminal friends not to lie to you.
That p-note STILL isn't done converting by the way, and Mike and Emil (who previously sold almost all the shares they obtained) just received a bunch more shares to dump on you all again.
It's amazing that people are so comfortable with the financiers of this company getting options to buy millions of shares at $0.33 when the stock was trading at $3.00, which they were able to sell right away. Literally indistinguishable from a fraud.
I say he confirmed some things because he posted first, and then what he said came true.
This was also the same guy who first told us that Danny Mitchell left the company, before there was any public information about it, and he was right. He was also the first to confirm that Don Carlson was gone, and then he was. Hardly anybody even knows who Don Carlson was, much less capable of randomly guessing he was fired.
Whether or not it's inside info or public info is a little tricky right? On one hand it's public information, posted in a public place. On the other hand, it takes some analysis and a pretty deep understanding of the company to figure out who some of these people are and that the stuff they are saying there is different from the random ranter. 99% of the stuff is garbage, so you have to separate what is important from all of that.
It's simple: If someone is posting rumors of very specific things that require inside knowledge, like the employment situation of mid-level management, then it's likely they have inside knowledge. This causes me to spend some extra time investigating their entire post history for clues to their identity to see if they have any reason to know these things. Most people aren't very careful about hiding their true identity and I can usually figure it out. This guy was easy because he used to post before he was hired as well.
Whoever bought those today has live with the bid being 50% below the last traded price.
Not very liquid market for those.
The guy ranting on ST was even corroborated by an employee of Sunworks.
Another of the guys he said was fired was removed from the investor presentation shortly thereafter.
A certain St. Louis based executive of Sunworks also has been posting on ST under a Scottish pseudonym and also confirmed some things.
So far the least accurate source of information has been company statements and guidance. Even randomly guessing would have had a better track record.
Is IR scamming people too now!?
No. But I did get this email from them:
Actually: someone seems to have hacked them. Since there are probably others here getting it who may be unaware of this scam, you probably shouldn't wire them any money!
Also since the hacker is asking for a reply directly, it's likely they have taken over the email completely and now know everything IR does.
VSLR still does a lot of leasing, and has a lot of legacy leases still producing.
For example if SUNW installs a project for $1M - they record the $1M as revenue immediately. No assets are created.
VSLR - $1M lease project is recognized over 20 years, or 80 periods. This means they would only record $12,500 rev / quarter for similar project. But crucially, the lease is added to the balance sheet as an asset.
This makes head to head comparisons, especially ones written by a bot on a fake news website like the linked article, of dubious use.
SUNW does pretty bad anyways.
It's from 2015, which is basically an eternity ago for this stock.
Also most of the positive reviews, all but two, were written on November 25, 2015.
I guess a lot of people were feeling really thankful by taking time out of their day on the day before Thanksgiving to leave very similar reviews to each other.
Either that or their social media manager just posted a bunch of fake positive reviews. Conspiracy theory or common sense?
Travel for meetings only it seems. A few other salesmen for Sunworks have complained about lack of travel pay for more general work purposes.
Coincidentally it reads like that dvjhnsn guy on ST who rambles about similar talking points on the company. Writing style is similar. Wouldn't be surprised if it's the same person.
I didn't take him seriously at first, but then Robert Lopez an exec from Sunworks who also posts on ST using his real name (in his profile, not display name), confirmed some of the rumors that he was stating, which gave a lot of credibility to the other things he was talking about despite the poor spelling.
He seemed to be aware of large rounds of layoffs among the staff they just brought on from Coldwell solar.
From insiders posting reviews + company statements it seems that the history of last year started with a focus on heavy residential sales, then shifted suddenly and dramatically to a complete focus on AG (Coldwell model). This happened the same time they poached the Coldwell employees.
They seemed to then fire most of them just a few months later, presumably after harvesting as many of their clients as possible. If they were able to harvest some leads from these guys before sacking them after a few months, it would set up the scenario neatly that the company is laying out for this year.
Because the costs of these sales would be tied up into the salary / bonus of these guys when they were with the company, it won't be linked to the specific projects at the time of completion. Doing this would create larger than expected losses at the time these employees were with the company (Q3 / Q4), while showing better quarters later on when the projects are completed.
Whether or not this was the intention from the start, if the company did indeed harvest any leads, this will be the effect.
Interesting recent review on Sunworks from former employee.
I like that his favorite thing about the company is actually horrible for shareholders.
He is claiming what I thought all along - that the company sells at a loss to inflate revenue with the hopes to drive up share price. Seems this guy doesn't quite understand stock markets, but it appears he thinks the reason they can sell cheap is because they can just have shareholders pick up the burden. Their financials certainly do not contradict this account at all.
This company already sucked 40M out of the public markets to fund their operations and they have what like 5-6M in assets to show for it? How many more suckers they can find to do another offering will determine their fate.
There is only one that the warrants don't expire worthless: A capital raise.
A capital raise of any size will reset the price of the warrants to the price that the raise occurs at. Because of this any capital raise will suck big time for normal longs.
But by resetting the conversion rate of the warrants it gives them a chance of not expiring worthless.
Too much dilution has happened for the stock to get to the conversion point normally. The implied probability of it happening if you look at the price of the warrants is basically 0%. Only the most reckless gamblers are buying warrants now.
Anybody telling you to buy them probably already bought them and wants to sell them to you.
You misunserstand the point of that statement. The main point is not to say they will likely go bankrupt. It is to counter those who argue that the company did fine in 2016. That is to say, if doing the same thing twice makes you go bankrupt... maybe its not fine. Now that some time has gone by since then and when I said that, less people try to make the point that 2016 was anything other than a huge disaster financially. But at the time people were talking up the cash balance at end of Q4 as an example of stronger balance sheet. This evaporated in Q1 as predicted because most of it was a result of increases in account payables.ä
All i said about bankruptcy is that if they perform in 2017 as they did in 2016, they will go bankrupt or dilute. Thats not a prediction just a fact. They lost more money in 2016 than they have now. Pretty simple.
I have also said that stock price will probably go up into q2, as it has been doing. But stock is being priced at company achieving everything they have promised. We will see if they do, they usually dont. They already removed rev guidancr so I expect a smaller maybe profitable company, but much smaller than people expect.
Altman Z test for bankrupty risk is a standard test that takes 1 minute, not hours, to do.
SUNW does poorly for two main reasons:
1. They lose much more money than they make
2. They dont have much money left to lose
Therefore unless they are sucessful at dramatically changing conditions in short term they will go bankrupt. The new CEO knows this and adressed the issue in the call, but was vague on exactly what they would do differently. It is easy to say "we are focused on making money now, and not losing it anymore", but reality can and has been very different from predictions.
Also: I dont hate Nelson, just because he is a lying scamming charlatan does not mean I hate him. If I realized these things about him after losing money maybe I would. Really I should thank him... his predictable pumping (combined with predictable dumping) makes for some easy trades! But truly he is a very incompetent and when it comes to his shareholders, unethical, businessman.
Grüßen aus Österreich!
Clearly, especially when you dont delete the mention of the 3D Cell from the quote, the sentence implies that the cell itself is the market opportunity.
Here are some positive things I see about Sunworks as a company:
1. Abe and the on the ground management team have done a pretty good job expanding the company. To the point that their segment eclipsed everything else going on.
2. The current focus of grinding out installs at a profit is the best thing they can do in their current situation. M&A was always a money pit for shareholders and moving away from that will help.
3. The agricultural market niche they operate in may benefit from the end of the drought as farmers feel more confident about the future and are more willing to make investments.
If all of this stuff had been done a year ago, they would be in better shape. However they didn't and now their financial position has significantly deteriorated, they even state this on their investor presentation. As of now the company is fairly expensive given their weak balance sheet, and that is after dropping over 75% from when I started watching it. The company is at least starting to act like a normal company and not a company that blatantly rips of their shareholders, now they need to prove they can execute which has historically been their problem. I wish great luck to Chuck because he has his work cut out for him. He inherited a mess.
The continued defense of Nelson is what makes no sense to me. It appears loyalty to him transcends his performance. Some people just worship him, I wouldn't be surprised if someone had printed out a T-Shirt with his face on it.
He refers to the cell technology as a multi trillion dollar market opportunity, it's still on his bio right now. His stated vision was for the cell to be a multi trillion dollar deal. It's on his bio right now. Don't take it too seriously, I know it's just bogus marketing hype, but I still find it hilarious he had the audacity to use the term "multi trillion" in relation to the cell.
No the cousin is on the board of directors, in charge of overseeing the audit of the company, he was also a partner at their former auditor.
Even if we don't agree on whether it is a big deal. Why do you think Solar3D used the wrong name for their own company in their own filings? Instead they mistakenly called themselves by the name of another one of those Santa Barbara tech companies founded by Pearl et al.
Is this normal? Do companies that are unrelated typically use the wrong name for themselves in their own paperwork?
They did this in a quarterly filing so it can't be blamed on the auditor.
Here is someone I found bulls will like to end the week:
https://secure.lni.wa.gov/verify/Detail.aspx?UBI=604080696&LIC=SUNWO**832J5&SAW=
Enjoy!
It's a court document signed by a Federal Judge... it's not a flimsy piece of paper.
The person involved was one of the founders of Solar3D, before even Nelson. They were the people who hired Nelson to run his little gig, they are not irrelevant people.
Also that number goes to a law firm, not the SEC, it makes me think you might not know what the SEC government agency is.
Altman-Z test says otherwise:
It's about one of the founders of the company who worked at the same place as Nelson, not just some random guy who knows a guy. Also founded lots of the other Santa Barbara tech scams.
The CEO claimed a multi-trillion dollar value for his cell, but then does nothing to prove it was actually real and then quits and cashes out.
Inventing a multi-trillion dollar product is a pretty extraordinary claim, usually the burden of proof is on the person claiming that.
Instead it's apparently some kind of conspiracy theory to think that maybe... just maybe... some random dude with no science background whose biggest expense by far was his own salary wasn't that close to upending the economics of global energy markets.
It's not even that complicated of a "conspiracy"... some guy told lies to make money, not exactly a novel concept.
Currently on their website (my italics):
Roaming Messenger and Nelson are related.
Roaming Messenger (the company in the FBI sting) became Warp9 which became CloudCommerce.
Address for CloudCommerce:
1933 Cliff Drive Suite 11
Santa Barbara, CA 93109
Address for Jim Nelson venture (before he was SLTD CEO:
1933 Cliff Drive Suite 1
Santa Barbara, CA 93109
https://www.scribd.com/doc/267064466/Last-Filed-Report-5
Surely this is just a coincidence right?
An FBI Stock Manipulation sting nabbed one of these guys a while back.
This company was founded on a scam.
This isn't the past. It's right there now on their website. Multi-trillion dollar opportunity. Maybe the new management aren't "worldview strategic thinkers" like Nelson and need some encouragement to get this project rolling again.
Here is a chart comparing $60M to $1T which is what the company website currently claims this could be worth:
That's not an error, $1T is just so much bigger than you can't even see the puny pathetic $60M dream down there.
If there is even a small chance that the cell wasn't a complete lie and fraud, and that Nelson didn't lie in his bio, then there is NO reason not to keep working on this project.
Why settle for less? Those things are all peanuts compared to the multi-trillion dollar opportunity they are sitting on.
Even if we are being conservative and say that it's only worth one trillion dollars instead of multiple trillion like they claim... that would lead to a share price of about $43,478 per share.
That's a modest 2,898,550% increase over the current market price!
Remember we are being conservative and assuming they are overstating the potential by 2x.
Even if the install business does well, really well, it's not going to come anywhere close to this.
The chairman of the board and longtime CEO of this company has a bio claiming to be perfectly suited to exploit a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. Oh and instead of exploiting it he just quits a few months after that was written. How can anybody take this crap seriously? It's so unprofessional and gimmicky that it's honestly hilarious.
https://sunworksusa.com/why-sunworks/company/leadership/