Everyone keeps talking about dilution for the sake of acquisitions. That may be true. However, every scrap of information we find on how they financed acquisitions points away from dilution. They use cash. And mostly they use preferred shares just like they said they would when they raised the A/S. Their pattern has been buy-backs, common to preferred conversions, anything to decrease the float, because in the end, lower float means a higher pps for Paul and Ron's shares to. We all know they have been buying. But why would they start buying now using common primarily. Hell, it would take like 200M shares to buy Best Jets at these prices when they can pull that same purchase off with 200K of preferred and $1M in cash.
Personally, I think they took advantage of the Katrina spike and sold shares into it to turn this ship around. They sold at $.03-$.10 and I know that was bad for some of you real old timers. But in the end, it was a good strategic business move and they have been buying back ever since. The way I look at it, maybe they shouldn't have diluted back then, and we still have no proof that they did. BUT, if they hadn't, this company would have multi-faceted revenue streams right now. We'd still be scraping along with a couple small pool companies and a pit that doesn't have enough equipment in it to really be mined.
Again, so far, outside of some aggrevating delays in transparency ("soon," "very soon" etc), PBLS has done what they say they are going to do. They said decrease O/S not dilute, and they will do what they said they will do IMO. After all, it's still in their personal best interest to do so.
"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn." C.S. Lewis
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