InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[jai]

I got the impression Merritt is running the show when it comes to licensing. He certainly has the confidence, drive and overall enthusiasm for the job. But...

A couple of points disturb me. First, I beleive he stated at the ASM that he does not need any outside help and they have enough people to accomplish this task. This squashed my question about adding some heavy weight business development or sales types that have proven track records from established technology companies.

Second, the overall company attitude is that they have as a group, licensing included performed outstanding. One only has to look at the share price in the 1 1/2 years since Ericsson and see that we have been basically flatlined.
3/17/2003 InterDigital Signs Royalty-Bearing Global 2G GSM/TDMA And 2.5G GSM/GPRS/TDMA Patent License Agreements with Ericsson and Sony Ericsson

17-Mar-03 16.71 19.70 16.67 19.54 6,413,400 19.54

I disagree with this premise. They have performed good but IMO, far from the kudos they feel they deserve. I beleive their are way too many deals left undone and I'm not satisfied with the pace at which Merritt and his team is approaching this task. While I'm happy with Sharp this was basically selling into IDCC existing customer base. We are now a year away from the RIMM signing and we have an HTC deal, a Sierra Wireless deal and an upgrade to Sanyo, good not outstanding.

6/04/2003 InterDigital Signs Research In Motion to Worldwide, Royalty-Bearing GSM/GPRS/EDGE Patent License Agreement

At this pace I estimate it will take 6 years to do all the deals that need to get down. 3 new accounts a year will no exactly qualify him for salesman of the year.

We can talk about Nokia being a Dam blocking the watershed all we want but at the end of the day Merritt needs to get more deals done or be replaced. Nice guy but so was Jimmy Carter.