So much to unpack.
1. Read the Q and the K. You will learn that Foote's salary is $1/year. He cannot... Let me repeat, he cannot take a salary and call it G&A because any compensation is legally required to be reported as... compensation... which is listed as a buck.
2. Surf has stated more than once that Foote is taking things like personal trips on HMBL's dime. He isn't saying that Foote is taking a salary and calling it something else, but in business, you might buy a pool for your back yard and call it a remote therapy room. Those things can sometimes fly under the radar in a private company, but not in a public one - for the most part. A CEO might be able to get away with a few things here and there, but not in the range that Surf suggests. Sarbanes Oxley was passed around 2008 and makes Accounting firms of publicly traded companies verify that stuff like this isn't happening. Since the fines and jail time can happen to accountants now, chances that Foote is doing any of this is very slim.
3. Foote and his family have money. Lots.
4. Foote's vision was Blocks and it's eventual use with web 3, peer to peer and business transactions, and identity. He started this business with Mark Grado and gave Grado a ton of preferred shares as one of the founders. Grado must have had a falling out, because he dumped his shares all the way from $7 to pennies. Might still own some now, but probably not much. Grado's dumping was the initial cause of the major drop in price as he was selling 10's of millions of shares daily. You can compare the S1's (there are 5 of em) and see how much he dumped. The drop in price also screwed with financing of debt. Now the stock was never really worth more than maybe $.75/share since the SEC got involved in trying to regulate the ETX market, but before the dumpings and debt, there was a plan that could have worked.
5. HMBL's product is software. It is not just software, but it is attempting to use technology like Blocks and facial recognition, and data management, and encryption and web 3 to create a whole new platform that we have yet to see. Other companies are attempting to do similar things, but I am told that HMBL is about 3 years ahead of very large companies.
6. HMBL's main revenue was from Tickeri. Before that it was ETX. The SEC just let ETX be a thing again, so expect HMBL to get back into that soon. They already have the platform, but are working on improving the verification. Tickeri was sent packing, but they kept the business model. The removed the ticketing business while updating it (see recent PR). I mentioned a name in a previous email yesterday. Erik Leino. He signed a deal with HMBL under Sumsub. Learn what they do - not a wild goose chase. Then, google Erik Leino and look what he is doing competing against little companies like Fandango and AMC in the ticketing arena. Coincidence? No.
7. How long does it take to change an industry completely? Even web3 with Blocks verification will require a learning curve in industry first, then for the consumers. Compare it to the dot com rise and fall. Compare it to Apple's journey into the phone market. Compare it to Tesla's car. It may be that radical of a change. Three years is nothing. Especially on a shoestring budget.
8. Last one. Foote did what many people do when they find more money in their checking account than they ever dreamed of... buy a hotel room from Hard Rock Hotel, Spend big bucks on your own ticketing company, on a movie trailer company, hire the former head of marketing of the premier baseball trading card company... All because he had a vision of how everything would tie together, but didn't have $3bil in cash to make it all happen. So he got a quick lesson on how not to spend money. He made some very promising moves - likely some were imposed by the gov of California in order to do business with them. The biggest one was to eliminate debt. Cost the shareholders a percentage of their ownership, but made the company substantially stronger.
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