Third Bench Inc (THBD)

[tigerpac]

Sales down about 10% from 2022 to 2023. Expenses up a lot. They decided that their legal woes are not material enough to disclose. Guess a Federal lawsuit and getting sued by the owners of the company you bought are immaterial?

Doing a decent enough job of paying down some creditors but the Canouse/Hicks overhang is wearing down the stock price. Employee retention credits saving them much needed cash. Easy money from factors is nice but becomes addictive and the 25% cut they give up hurts the bottom line. At some point they revive the S-1 but it will be at prices much lower than I even previously thought.

Bottomline, the company wasn’t capitalized enough to take on the debt. They used the stock as currency to pay note holders and preferred holders. Don’t know if Fair underestimated how much that would be. If Fair had $5 mil free cash going in, the business would be prospering , but he didn’t so he tried to cut ever corner he could and borrowed heavily and is now paying for it, even more so with higher interest rates.