I remain convinced that Duchess is the single biggest problem facing this company. This is a years-ago mistake made by the former BOD and one the General inherited and has to grapple with. I guess the number is now 30,692,000 shares sold by duchess. At least we know what a good portion of that volume was the last couple of trading days. Bylo's charts of share increases are very stark, but a bit misleading that most of the issuances occured of late. No doubt this convertible has no floor, so the fate of the shareholders to see those shares eventually come into the market was sealed when the deal was made and further when no one decided Duchess was a high enough priority to deal with.
Still, I hold out hope for the support of a "yes" vote to at least give the shareholders a chance to recoup value.
A theory to throw out. Unfortunately, Fool, I do not think Chapter 11 will necessarily help since it would appear that a good majority of the company's assets are its engineering staff led by Ferris. A company who files for Chapter 11 protection needs to have bona fide assets to work through a plan (albeit reduced) with its creditors. If its primary asset is people, and they all leave during a bankruptcy, you have the scientific equivilent of "bupkus". With a negative equity position (from the Q) of over (3,400,000) we don't necessarily need to file for bankruptcy to let the IRS or duchess know we're technically broke. Having said that though, it begs the question as to WHAT our assets are, and it seems to be the oft maligned Ferris and his engineering team, who make the technology that will hopefully translate into sales with the General's contacts and help.
So the company who offered to buy the "simulation assets" of VTSI were buying what...exactly? There's very little on the "asset" side of the balance sheet when that deal was supposed to go down so the only conclusion I can come to was that they were buying the engineering team! Ferris and Co. must have been headed to those greener pastures in exchange for payment to VTSI, which may have been what caused the rift between the BOD. Then it became emotional and blah blah blah...The point is, the previous BOD's deal, if for 'soft assets' may have been the deal of the century for the shareholders and the previous CEO simply didn't like that he wasn't included in the 'key people transfer'.
Mr. Werner's thoughts look to be openly one-sided and one again, in the absence of the real facts, leave us uninformed subjects to speculate on what really occured and the credibility of management, past and present.
