Insidious paranoia.
I was doing research on another company right now who appears to be in an interesting place because of moves made by what is believed by many to be a group of financial terrorists. It got me thinking about how effective such a strategy could be if used against a company like Tivus.
In short, the suggested strategy was to drop the value of the company's shares drastically, and-therefore- the investors' confidence, by going on a campaign of short selling, sometimes referred to as "naked" shorting.
The result has been that the shares are available at a stunning bargain. This company, however, has the financial power to weather out the storm. Tivus, on the other hand, is more vulnerable. The same same campaign waged by a competitor with deep pockets could quickly remove Tivus from the field of competitors and render the Tivus concept practically up for grabs.
As for LNET creating their own software to mimic what Tivus does, well, it had always been my understanding that companies do not like to spend money recreating a wheel that's already been designed by someone else. From that perspective, a partnership could makes more sense. LNET could just used the Tivus model and merge it with their own, probably for less than it would cost to redesign it from scratch. Strategic partnerships can be very lucrative, but I do not know if SP is the kind of gentleman who would rather see how far he can take it on his own even if such a partnership made more business sense.
Somehow, SP has gotten this far. Questionable financial decisions not withstanding, he must be placing some level of faith in his lawyers, accountants and advisers that they have his best interests at heart, that they know more about this aspect of the business than does he and that by keeping the competition guessing helps to keep them on the defensive instead of the offensive.
Since it has been shown to work at least on some level, then with minimal tweaking it is fair game for partnerships, mergers, franchises, buyouts. SP may now be "dumb as a fox" as the saying goes.
In the meantime, would it be a good move for SP to start quietly buying back shares in small amounts to start removing ongoing dilution from the table of inquiry?
Pretty chatty this morning for a vulcan, yes?
