I had to listen to it twice, live, the sound was garbled in a lot of places.
I'm not as impressed as everyone else.
The beginning of it made me want to gag. I really doubt, Benny and the board cares about shareholders, that much. It's like a CEO that says his employees are like family, but doesn't hesitate to lay people off to preserve profitability.
Before I get to far, Benny went , "umm" a lot. I don't think it was because he was nervous. It seemed to be in places he was talking about things that were uncomfortable. It hit me when he started talking about "Japan Needs Heroes", then the CPM rate. On watching it again, it becomes even more apparent. I'm not sure if it means anything, but it makes me wonder about the validity of the things mentioned at those points.
I really didn't need to hear how busy they are. It didn't add anything. Nor did I care to hear how penny pinching he is. I don't hear it from other CEOs, I don't need to hear it from him. My basic assumption is that they are working.
I'm skipping things like the Bandai mobil game, it is unlikely to make much money. Most Mobil games don't make much money.
Benny seemed to work on his justification for the TRU deal as being big. I can certainly see his side. But, it seems they are handling more than 75% (maybe more than 80%) of the GSL. If anything makes this deal fall apart, the GSL is done. I don't dispute that much of the GSL needs to be distributed outside of comic book stores. I do like that TRU was handling much of the distribution. Still I would be nervous about TRU being able to cancel the deal with only 10 days notice. I had hoped they would not handle more than a third of the GSL (even that is a lot).
I don't know why Benny could not be more clear on the advertisers and CPM. He said about half the advertising slots were taken. Why not just say they have X number of advertisers taking up Y number of ad pages? Same with the CPM rate. They are competitive, low end $25 (no one signed at that rate) $35 on the high end. Would it have been hard to just average what they currently have? Not being clear makes me think he is trying to hide something, I'm not sure what.
It was positive to hear that their CPM is not lower than $25. Having half the ad slots filled, tells me getting advertisers is hard.
Benny probably got the "Factoring" financing idea from this board, as we have talked about it (not with that name) for sometime. I'm a little confused why he hasn't talked to financing people about it, yet. That tells me that financing the GSL isn't a done deal, and could still cause problems.
I think we all know that convertible notes are a last resort, and they are not a good form of financing. The stock price when you sign the papers doesn't matter. There was no justification for Benny to say otherwise ( one of the reasons I don't trust everything he says, putting a $1 share price, out there, is another).
On "Last Blood", I wondered why he didn't just repeat what has been made public. Why didn't he do that? It also seemed to be the case, he did not want to say, they haven't started filming, yet.
I also initially thought it was positive when Benny said that they might be profitable, right out the gate, or at least break-even. I guess you have to take into account the costs of Factoring and taxes (probably on the full advertising take).
I'm still guessing "Plan B" for financing includes an increase in the authorize share limit and more notes. I'll have to look up when their fiscal year is over. He didn't mention any of that.
It wasn't as bad as I expected, well Benny was still stiff. It wasn't even close to being as good as I hoped.
AI
