5 more miserable years
Over lunch today with a long time friend that is involved with 4 Venture Exchange pubco's I got a sense of how bleak the outlook is for the majority of the pubco's on the Venture presently. The conversation went along like this.
"5 years until there is a come back....do you know what the value of a Venture Exchange shell is right now? Zero, guys just want to unload the liability of running one of these right now. It is even worse if you have an obligation on a property that you have to fulfill, your asset is now your liability."
At one time a clean off the shelf shell that one could deliver the majority of the trading paper was worth nearly $1 million, today's promoter would be happy to give up the liability of running a pubco and the head ache of filing 3 quarters of financials and a yearly audit, let alone the filing fees, exchange fees, transfer agent fees and a cut to the lawyer.
The great Venture Exchange cull has still yet to materialize as the 100 or so change from a year ago are probably the 100 that followed Ned Goodman to the CNSX.
Another Vancouver enterprise that is dead is the outsourced contracted IR model that would charge $5000+ month plus expenses and a hand full of options.There are a few outfits around still doing business, perhaps for an oil and gas play or some tech start up but for everyone else it is just tumble weeds and crickets.
Outside of the doom and gloom it was really great to catch up with my buddy, have lunch and a few laughs.
100 companies down and 1300 more to go, think it will happen over the next 5 years?
