Red Six........I don't know about "lucid thoughts" as those were just a random jumble of some things off the top of my head. IMO, we need to challenge the management to think with more depth in its business propositions on the business side of the ledger- at least as deep as on the oil field side.
As far as "the vote count" goes, we had about 210 responses in total. Some commented on multiple accounts, or accounts held for loved ones. Thus I have estimated about 250 to 260 accts in total. Thank you for asking me to clear that up. When somebody says there are about 400 shareholders, does that mean actual shareholders, or does that mean separate accounts where multiple accounts can be held by one individual?
In terms of the "vote count" I have no confidence at this time that management will give much weight to it even if we had responses potentially representing 80% of the shares. The significance of the "count" really lies in a couple of different areas, IMO. First, the "count" immediately created a very loosely knit grouping of the shareholders. A loosely knit group of shareholders asking very intelligent questions can be a powerful and intelligent thing.....and a loosely knit group like that can easily be organized in different ways. If the mangement and a large number of shareholders square off in some way, then a loosely knit grouping also diminishes in-fighting and fragmenting of shareholders, allowing them to use their time more constructively evaluating all aspects of what is being offered. I will not comment on the other potential uses of the "count" at this time.
I have read shareholders suggesting that comments by management suggest that the share price has been negatively affected by the comments of disgruntled shareholders on public venues such as here. If that is true, I suspect that they are wrong, and that management is ultimately responsible for having dropped what seems to be considered by many shareholders as an unreasonable proposal filing on the public with no official comments or explanation for so many days. Doing so should have been anticipated to elicit such a reaction when the board devised such a strategy. Does this jive with the fiduciary responsibility of the board? If the board/ management intended to drop such a bombshell on shareholders, but to not immediately release some kind of supportive comments, then why are shareholders reporting publically that the management is responding to investors through private communications? And if those reports are true, why the jumble of inconsistencies and change in direction of those private comments by management if this whole thing was properly thought out in advance? Why in this proposal do we have a section where the first few items say the board considered some general statement of options that were not found to be "in the company's best interest", yet the last item states something else is "not in the shareholder's best interest?" Since when does the company's best interest not equal the shareholder's best interest if the shareholders own the company? Freudian slip? Were the shareholder's best interests considered in the first few segments? What were the specifics of the general statements listed in those first few items? Is it possible that the specifics might suggest that what might have been considered to be in the shareholders best interest by the shareholders, might have not been considered by management to be in the company's best interests?
Trust is earned. Trust can also be un-earned. When trust is lost (un-earned), then many more questions beg to be asked.
Take care........Joe........GR
AI
