RE: going private:
Not going to happen for a number of reasons:
1) if they were keeping positive info confidential in an effort to constrain the stock price to facilitate going private, I would suspect that would be illegal and they'd get busted for it rather easily. There's no difference between doing that and insider trading. supposing they did just that, it's not like the data remains confidential forever. It's only a 2 year thing and then it becomes public for all to see - and then sue.
2) The value of this thing is so high that it would be near impossible to find anyone willing to finance it. It's current market cap is $135mm and a take out would likely cost north of $160mm. It's burning cash like they've got plenty of it and they only own up to 25% of their projects. unless Berhooze and Tom have $160mm burning a hole in their pockets, I doubt even Lynn (the salesman extraordinare) could convince anyone to finance an MBO. The reason going private take-outs rarely happen is because the public markets typically offer higher valuations than the private markets.
On the other hand, if anyone was stupid enough to finance a take-out, they might be banking on dumping the completely worthless CEO, Lynn, and refloating it shortly after with a new CEO for a nice and tidy profit. Then again, he wouldn't have to buy the whole thing, just enough to get the board to dump Lynn. That would be the best thing for this stock.
Note: All just one man's opinion...
AI
