Great post professor, and it is no surprise that I am in total agreement.
You say that you are going to hold until they succeed or fail. If the orders roll in soon everyone can celebrate and reap their hard earned rewards. If they fail, after licking their wounds and cursing Mark Cola under their breath, investors can move on to hopefully greener investment pastures.
There is a third outcome for the stock however that in my opinion is more likely than either a grand success or simply going out of business and that is to simply bump along the bottom as a bit player in the industry. The three concerns you cite at the conclusion of your post: evidence of industry acceptance, need for better management, and an independent board may not be changing any time soon. Despite the proponents claim that SGLB is just ahead of it's time and that is all that is holding sales in check, I think it is incredibly naive to think that SGLB's major competitors with thousands of times the resources as SGLB are not working on their own solutions. When the market is ready for an IPQA solution for mass production I would expect there will be countless competitors. Mark has a good thing going with SGLB and I would not expect to see him leave any time in the near future. Despite his acclaimed technical prowess he has proven to be a very poor businessman and that is not likely to change. As to the independent board hopes, SGLB has clearly signaled that they intend to declare Thacker as an independent member and thus avoid the need to bring in any outsiders. With the current stock price, acceptance by any major exchange seems a long ways in the future. Given this scenario, should it come to pass, investors will have dead investment money on their hands for perhaps years, before throwing in the towel. Painful as it always is it's often better to exit and deploy your funds productivly elsewhere than watch them wither away in a company that is consistently struggling. If industry acceptance comes tomorrow and the orders roll in then your decision is an easy one. If industry acceptance remains a question mark it's clear to me that the management situation and the Board composition is not going to undergo much change. Your decision then becomes more difficult.
