Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
I mean proof as in several times when I suspected that insiders (people like Emil and Mike are insiders, do a good portion of the selling and yet do not file form 4/5's for some reason, Nelson sometimes files his late) were selling, when the filings came out later, they in fact were.
You can never invest with absolute certainly. If you demand absolute proof as a reason to sell, but embrace unbridled speculation when it is time to buy, you set yourself up for lopsided risk and eventual financial devastation.
And that is precisely what can lead to these kinds of situations. A little hint of something and imaginations run wild and turn it into something big. Like seeing a picture of a map or something. And in the madness of the excitement massive red flags are ignored because greed blinds you to the truth.
A lot (compared to the new normal of tiny volume) of selling into two PR's within 24hrs....
Not saying it's insiders dumping shares, won't be able to prove that until later.
But in the past it has been time after time. Selling into PR's is how insiders of this company dump shares. Every volume creating opportunity is exploited to the maximum.
The growth came from the Cowen raise + M&A.
Look at the finances and growth before the Cowen raise, almost no growth and cash bleed. They would have been bankrupt without it. They should have stayed private, they were supposedly profitable then.
The growth was extremely expensive however both in terms of dilution and cash and now most of that Cowen money is gone. Since it's mostly gone, growth is stalling and the company won't even issue guidance anymore. Not to mention the crappy California solar market this year.
The point he is making is that (old) Sunworks no longer exists. New Sunworks does as a result of Solar3D changing their name. They are probably doing it because it makes their warranty sound more stable. Goes along with the "Here Today. Here Tomorrow" slogan they started after their financial situation deteriorated.
Sounds a lot better than saying "Sunworks was founded as MachineTalker about a decade ago. When that company failed and went under, they changed their name to Solar3D. These guys touted a solar cell which was used to raise money to buy old Sunworks, and then promptly abandoned. Then then changed their name to reflect their acquisition."
Abe and co-owners got millions up millions of dollars to sell his company with <$500,000 net assets. Right after selling they almost went bankrupt and only the Cowen raise prevented it. So yeah of course he is happy.
All of those quotes are "status quo maintained" statements.
The communications from the company during the time you are referencing time was that nothing has changed. They never actually retracted any of their older statements about their progress or about the viability of the cell. Nothing stated by the company in the meantime would cause someone who analyzed - and believed - their statements about their cell to believe it was no longer worth pursuing.
The first time the company walked back old statements was in a private conversation with an investor who shared his comments here a few weeks ago - assuming that he was accurate in relaying his account of the conversation he had with Nelson.
Details like this matter. If you took every statement the company made at it's word the timeline is more like this:
2011-2014: Cell in development, it's great, our "tests" show it is very efficient and cheap to manufacture. Could upend the entire economics of energy.
Early 2015: Major Capital Raise, which includes the cell on the prospectus.
2015-2016: We aren't focusing on developing it anymore, just need to find someone to make it. <---- This is what you are pointing out.
2017: It's dead.
At no point did they give any indication that whatever delays they had gaining a manufacturing partner had anything to do with previous reported information being untrue (especially about manufacturing costs). In fact the company touted the low manufacturing costs of the cell time and time again.
What nobody can answer is why did they not take an intermediate step and get crucial data from producing a prototype panel? Probably because they knew it was dead years ago, nothing else makes sense. If you think you have some incredible breakthrough worth billions you don't just abandon it without spending some petty cash to find out if it actually works or not.
They spent more on stock promotion than it would have cost to make a test panel, which tells you all you need to know about what this cell was ever about.
This is from an interview with Nelson from 2011:
A little late don't you think?
National expansion strategy + $4M in bank = capital raise
Hope you are ready
Not to mention they blew half their money last year in part from shifting their focus TO residential at precisely the wrong time, then shifting it away about 6 months later.
One more mistake like that or if it just rains again = bankruptcy
Latest investor deck using solar outlook for whole country when they do almost all business in CA, and CA outlook is much much worse. So far it's looking like a 30-40% falloff in residential business compared to 2016. Seems like if you are doing 95%+ of your business in one geographical area, you should present the data for that area.
I hadn't seen that Chuck was a director from Reeds. This probably helps explain how he came to SUNW.
Nelson is friends with the Haag brothers, and a former (possibly current secret client) of their firm IR firm IRTH Communications.
The Haag brothers have also worked with Frank Hunt, the head of the audit committee at the now bankrupt firm Cereplast.
They do various things including paying authors to write articles on Seeking Alpha that are only disclosed as "paid by third party". They were behind the promos of SLTD on Microcapresearch, via an intermediary named Darren Lopez (himself a CEO of his own company (TSTS), which appears to have been a shell used for pump and dumps), a few years ago as well.
Anyway Reed's has a long relationship with IRTH Communications that goes back many years. Obviously more work needs to be done to flesh all this out. But it seems the Haag brothers have a hand in the current realignment of SUNW.
If true this means two things:
1. These guys are good at their job of pumping their clients. They will probably be able to get results in the short term in regards to price. They use all kinds of what I consider to be shady methods of pumping their clients (including what I said above). Whatever the ethics of it, they often work in the short term.
2. Whatever new strategy they are doing is designed primarily to gain investor interest in the company with the goal of raising capital at a higher stock price. This is what they do. Almost all of the clients raise capital fairly routinely but otherwise have horrible business models in terms of generating sustainable profits. Shareholder value tends to suffer in the long term for them.
Note well that those two bullet points depend on the level of involvement the Haag brothers have with Sunworks now. It's more than zero, but the actual level is unknown.
This is the key point. People saying that JN told them something close to the truth in private conversations is actually more incriminating against Nelson since the public statements at the time contradicted what people report being told by him in private.
In fact it seems hearsay from private conversations between Nelson and individual shareholders that get posted are the only source for anything close to reliable info about the cell. The fact that all of this "truth" that was supposedly out there only exists in this form and not in an official form is a huge red flag.
Developing a personal relationship with the CEO of the company should not be a prerequisite for being able to obtain reliable information about the company.
It is absolutely unacceptable to insinuate that Nelson was honest about the cell because a few people were able to infer the truth based on private conversations. Especially because these interpretations of their conversations contradicted public statements made by the company.
This is another private conversation someone had with the CFO about the cell, this time from the shareholder meeting in late 2015:
Tons of people have "invented" 3D cells (including a little kid), it is not even close to a new idea. What supposedly made theirs unique (and I could make a 5 minute compilation of him saying this over and over) is that it was cheaper to manufacture. Apparently it's not, which means there was never any hope to this all along. That it actually was expensive to manufacture has not been to my knowledge disclosed until just now in a private conversion between the CEO and a random shareholder.
That you, two years ago, could figure out there must be problems isn't the same.
An expert engineer (who works at a company you have heard of) looked at the patent application laughed at it and basically called it a joke. The US patent examiner, nearly four years later, did the same by rejecting almost every claim. Please don't make me laugh by mentioning the Chinese patent, everyone knows exactly what that is worth.
The fact that they had to rely bilking unsophisticated retail investors instead of getting financing through more legitimate means is the biggest red flag of all.
The cell was a scam, the cell is a scam, and everybody who bought shares because of things Nelson said about it got scammed. Nelson said many things that were not true, and got rich by doing it. At the end of the day he is a coward, and probably can't even admit to himself what a piece of scum he is. A lot of people lost a lot of money because of him, and he and his friends got rich doing it. That is the only legacy left from the cell. Nothing more.
Agree. Thank you for sharing. This marks the first time the company has admitted what I knew all along, that the cell was not a practical idea and that they were lying when they made up their cost projections. The ability to produce a CD cell with current manufacturing methods was the only thing that made their cell unique, since there are other variations of 3D cells already that were too expensive. Fortunately the insiders and pnote holders were able to sell almost everything when they were lying to you. Now that they have made themselved weathy with this fraud, I suppose we should be grateful that they are at least now admitting what a sham the cell was. They said time and time again that manufacturing costs were not an issue. That we have to hear about it as hearsay from an investor meeting is rediculous, but expected.
It's not a range though, it's a definite number. You have to do a little math to get to it, but it's still a definite number. So you were wrong. Not that it matters that much because they revoked it anyways.
The issue is not:
1. Whether or not the issued guidance - as buckylaw said - because they did. That has been proven.
2. Whether or not that guidance was revoked - it was.
These are just facts.
The real issue for discussion is why it was revoked. The guidance was set right as Nelson was giving up the reins, what did Cargile see that led him to believe he could not be confident in meeting the guidance set by Nelson?
If it's because of how they recognize revenues... that is not changing and hasn't changed very much. Which means we will never get guidance again.
Are you kidding? It's referencing the known 2016 numbers.
Yes they did.
Why was full year guidance revoked during the CC?
They had a big backlog this time last year and lost half their money. If the weather is bad again, they could lose the other half. It's a huge risk to loan money to someone who will go bankrupt if it rains. If they run out of money they won't able to complete projects, obviously. This is the exact same issue that RGSE had right before they diluted the stock into oblivion. Go check out what people were saying about their backlog and what it meant in the first half of 2015.
I will say that the new management appears to be much credible on the surface, but so far it's just words.
He should have been put in charge a few years ago when it might have made a difference.
That ends in November, the current position of the company is a lot worse now than when they created that. Won't do them much good unless they can get it extended, which is in doubt.
If it rains again they go bankrupt.
They are in an extremely weak financial position.
Without the Cowen raise they would have been bankrupt a long time ago, so the business has been a failure outside of financing activities since JN bought them.
Supposedly they were profitable prior to acquisition. No longer.
Leaked report from shareholder meeting in late 2015:
They don't respond to any question that is actually interesting. For instance: why did they hire a PR firm to promote their contract with Amazon when they had an NDA with Amazon. This forced them to ask people to take down posts linking to their own PR. What a mess.
The EARK thing was a pump, but more of a pump for EARK. They got pumped big time right afterwards with the only catalyst publicly being that the executives received convertible debt (not a catalyst). They then immediately raised capital and went back down to almost where they started.
The main link between the companies was attending the same micro-cap investor conference shortly before announcing the partnership. Nelson and SUNworks intentionally implied that EARK had some kind of relationship with WalMart that could get them business, but the only relationship I could find is that EARK sells a few products with WalMart. Mainly a cheap Trash can. Hardly the kind of influence one would need to land major solar projects.
Isn't this old news?
From April 5:
https://www.solectria.com/company/press-releases/yaskawa-solectria-solar-and-sunworks-partner-to-offer-industry-leading-inverters/
Came out same day as the SUNW version: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/sunworks-powered-by-program-initiative-selects-qualified-products-meet-companys-standards-nasdaq-sunw-2207867.htm
Which didn't mention the project.
Kind of strange they are announcing this twice.
They really want people to pay attention to them.
They aren't quite identical, but almost: https://www.diffchecker.com/ieKeNS9x
The BoD already got their dictatorial powers last year right before things went south.
Nelson has already sold 100% of his shares once before back in 2014, I guess that should have been a warning sign of things to come.
And these shares?
He literally just got most of these shares a few days ago for retiring.
Not only that he changed his options to grant them early on retiring instead of waiting for another year or so. He even got a new stock option right before he completely embarrassed himself and everybody who believed in his spiel with Q3+Q4.
Why does he need to get the shares earlier than he would have otherwise? If he was so confident why the need to change the terms?
(constantly changing terms is a red flag in itself)
Maybe he was worried about being able to cash in his stock if he waited too long, as he is now competing with the original SunWorks guys who just got a bunch of new shares to get as much $$$ from you as possible. May it's not a coincidence he changed his options right after the original SUNworks guys met their targets?
This guy doesn't even file his own paperwork on time and he is supposed to be taken seriously?
Insiders have dumped so many shares it's hilarious to see people say "well they wouldn't keep giving themselves more free shares if they didn't have confidence in the company." Emil and Mike both now have 800K shares each that seemed to have come out of nowhere (the stock comp wasn't nearly enough to account for it), and both of them sold almost everything they had last time they got shares.
The only thing they have confidence in is the ability to continually dupe people into buying shares as the price keeps plummeting. Although, given the volume, they are running out of marks for their scheme.
There are so many red flags you would think the USSR is still around. Most likely everybody who still hasn't sold at this point never will, and those who never sell will most likely lose all of their money.
An analyst wouldn't ask whether they had plans to tap them unless they thought there was a chance they might.
They only said "near future" whatever that means.
There is another play with the warrants. If the company does an offering below market price, and because of the warrants they would have do it it well below market price, then the warrants would convert at that lower price.
This would immediately make them much more valuable than now.
That would be a bet on the price of the warrants, but not the long term health of the company.
Here is that enforcement action BTW:
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2017-79
Great stuff, took a few years and all those companies involved are basically zero now, but the wheel of justice is finally turning.
The fun has just begun!
Stay tuned...
Your money went to p-notes, not theirs.
It's not illegal to hire your cousin who came from your former auditor, an auditor that has been punished in relationship to their poor work overseeing fraudulent companies. It's also not illegal for then switch to a new auditor that failed an inspection by the accounting board for being unable to do such basic things as verify revenue. It's also not illegal to put that cousin in charge of making sure that your own companies internal finances are in good order.
The people who should be doing something about it are investors, and they are.
This stock is down 80% in two years and is struggling to get any volume.
Who cares about this company is a good question!
The answer: Hardly anybody anymore.
It's an almost irrelevant failing company.
Ahh the old "If the SEC isn't investigating it, it's not happening" thing
A lot people said that about Enron, and Madoff.
SEC doesn't have unlimited investigative resources.
But when you have a situation where:
- Both their current are former Auditors are failing basic aspects of inspections
- Their former auditor was suspended and fined related to work they did on a company accused of massive fraud that went bankrupt right after the accusations.
- A partner at that auditor is now in charge of making sure the reporting here is solid
- That partner happens to be related to the Chairman of the board and long time CEO
^ Those are all facts
Of course those facts alone won't put anybody in jail, but is your standard for investing "As long as someone isn't going to jail, my money is safe!"
How can you just say... ohh that's nothing unusual... nothing to see here.
Robert Jensen was actually recently suspended as an auditor.
https://pcaobus.org/Enforcement/Decisions/Documents/105-2017-001-HJ-Associates.pdf