Replies to post #239217 on Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[john_galt]

MIB,

To use your own phraseology...May I remind MIB that at Gettysburg, it was, Dan Sickles, a political general with no military experience prior to the Civil War who screwed up badly on the second day of battle, left the entire end of his line exposed at the round tops...

[aleajactaest]

information that is different.

this isn't a game of comparing folks credentials as a historian, a financial officer, an investor, a general or a ceo, is it? i daresay there are folks who can make each of us look uneducated. i admit the truth that some posters erroneously believed. i am not a general! i thought this was just a place for folks anonymously to share their corn-pone opinions, and have them judged for their quality by everyone else.

but there are more ways of measuring progress of a company financially than the net profit. return on capital is one. investors often think about their expectations of future cash flow also. for myself, i like to watch cash because accruals-based accounting can deliver some misleading figures (eg enron treating capacity swaps as income and costs).

i think most accept that wave's historical performance was poor under ss. the question we are addressing is whether solms can turn the company around.

few would expect that he can swivel the performance of wave on a pin. he has had to clean the spraguean stable to begin with. then he has developed a new product, supposedly with market feedback. third, he reports he has dozens of pilots running. his declared timeline is that these should demonstrate growth of the income generation sort in the second half of this year.

in the end, we all hope he can demonstrate growth using measures that are easy for everyone to understand. but for myself, i don't expect to see net profit as the immediate sign of a turnaround. that will come once the turnaround is complete.

right now, we are all trying to figure if the processes he has begun are capable of delivering the growth wave requires. will his hard work translate into cash flow? will that cash flow cast as a net inflow or at least avoid reducing wave's cash balance?

maybe we will see green shoots in q3. maybe things are taking longer than solms expected (and he is able to convince investors to hold on). maybe it's a hopeless cause. all three options are in the mix. but a net profit in q3 looks very unlikely to me. and i won't think worse of solms for failing to deliver it.

[dig space]

MIB, fwiw from my perusal of congressional testimony and sworn statements of record, the Generals (Caldwell and Patton) arrived at a cesspool of corruption, abuse, incompetence and negligence (this is Afghan on Afghan stuff we are talking about)... and when they left that had been largely fixed, at least according to reports.

In dispute is their methods, not their efficacy. It has been variably asserted that there was political motivation, some claim the US 2010 midterms, but the LG Caldwell assert politics as well, that their task was going to require the removal of a Afghan General, something only the Afghan President has the authority to do, that it was going to be a difficult and sensitive matter.

Patton claimed his use of the words "stay in your [f*] lane" is a well recognized military phrase instructing one to stay within their expertise/duty (the issue at hand was a lieutenant with a nursing background judging the quality of surgery by looking at an x-ray of a femur, Patton asserts that was the domain of a surgeon, which the lieutenant was not) and the IG seems to acknowledge that use but nevertheless the result was documented that the lieutenant subsequently declined to provide the information on two other patients that (s)he had planned, that the lieutenant felt intimidated, such that the result was effectively one of interference, and interference with an IG communicating info to Congress is against USC. On balance it looks to me (pure speculation) that they did indeed stall, in an effort to accomplish the mission of cleaning up the joint and perhaps (even more speculation) considered the actions of congress to be interference, or at least problematic with respect to the intersection of its timing and their efforts.

At issue for Congress was among other things the misappropriation of tax dollars, if e.g corrupt Afghans were stealing medicine and selling it on the black market (and they apparently were) then the tax payer was being defrauded.

The preponderance of Congressional inquiry regarding cover-up/failure to note or communicate was regarding the several years prior to Gens Caldwell and Patton being assigned there.

Congress seemed to trip over themselves to acknowledge that things had largely been righted, their complaint being why didn't they know sooner.

Me lacking experience with asking foreign leaders to sack their own generals and so on, I just don't know how to interpret MG Patton's role in that context in terms of suitability for a management position at a public tech company.

the hiring of MGPatton may be brilliant, awful, and anywhere in between, I have largely no opinion on that.