joal, why ask the least knowledgeable person for help?
dben and his friends know as much as you.
You could read the SEC filings and that would tell you everything.
If you took the time to read the last 200 or so posts (yeah, it'll take a long time... so what) you'd know even more.
But I'll be nice and summarize. Matech has been in business since 1983. They've never made a profit.
They are in the bridge inspection business, but since about the mid-2000s, they got into the business of developing and selling systems for monitoring stress and fatigue on metal structures.
They have 2 products: the first is the fatigue fuse. It's primarily used on heavy equipment. Fatigue fuses are nothing special and very common. Matech has no advantage in that product. The second is the one that brings everyone here, it's the very product that MTCH touts as their holy grail. That's the bridge monitoring system, the EFS.
MTCH did not develop EFS. It was developed at the University of South Carolina in the early 1990's. Somehow, the patent came into the possession of UTEK, a private investment group that specializes in patent holding. UTEK, for some reason, traded the patent to MTCH for MTCH stock, I think around 2004-2005. We don't know the reason why. I'd guess after so many years of this patent floating around and coming close to expiring, they decided to let someone else try and market it.
In my opinion, the EFS is outdated and will be obsolete soon.
In 2009, MTCH came under the control of Tony Cataldo, who was forced on the company by their primary creditor, Palisades Capital LLC. Palisades is in the business of lending to distressed companies and taking over their stock should they fail to repay.
Palisades then uses company resources to buy and sell stock in blocks to various brokerages and boiler room operations. They make the market, and push the PRs so the stock sells.
They aren't interested in EFS. They aren't interested in MTCH. They aren't interested in shareholders. They just want their money back plus profit, and they do it by converting the debt to equity by selling more stock. They squeeze the value out of this company like a juice orange, and discard the remains when no more value can be extracted. This company was already dying before Palisades came into the picture, Palisades' involvement just artificially prolonged the life of MTCH.
Because they are the primary lenders - they made themselves bondholders - when the company goes belly up and the creditors line up to get their share, Tony Cataldo and his friends get paid first before everyone else. It's a very shady operation that skirts legality.
