I have a friend/client who was the president of a locally owned bank - a bank founded by and run by his family for many decades. Maybe 10 years ago, they sold their bank to a conglomorate - one of the top 3 banks in the country. They owed nothing on their bank or their branches - all local; had always run a clean, well managed bank close to the hip AND they had just within a year or so, built a new multi million dollar main downtown bank. The bank had assets of many hundreds of millions of dollars. They had NO debt; They had NO GOOD REASON to want to sell. There were at least 3-4 brothers - all MBA's who were in the early 40's who managed various branches, etc. Probably one of the most well run, stable banks I've ever known or heard about - and my dad was a great banker for 50 years from 1940 - 1990, so I know a little about banks. Long story short, this sale took place when the big banks were gobbling up all the smaller, privately held banks (which, IMO was a major factor into our economic downfall), so when they "came-a-callin" to want to buy HIS bank, he told me personally that he really had NO idea of what to ask for it - as it was rock solid, NO DEBT, NEW headquarters building - PAID FOR, their large family very wealthy in their OWN right - owning much land, and other assets as well, etc. So, he said he added up what the assets were worth (maximum appraised value), added a TEN YEAR consulting fee for ALL members of his family who actively were involved in ANY aspect of the banks, THEN he added 400% to THAT TOTAL figure! Then he presented the conglomorate with their "what it takes to buy us" and said: "here it is, take it or leave it." One month later. They took it.
The bottom line is: REGARDLESS of "precedent, train of thought, P/E ratios, MBA bean counter input, etc., WHATEVER a company MIGHT be worth to whomever, whatever, or by whatever scale - if you WANT something that someone else has badly enough, you'll pay the price to get it. If THAT SOMETHING happens to be UNIQUE, has a SOLID market potential with MULTIPLE application probabilities (not possibilities); has SOLID WORLDWIDE patent protection; state of the art technology and hardware; nearly perfectly fulfills a need/desire; requires little to no maitenance; never wears out; has no shelf life; so simple to operate that a child could do it; has NO downside; is COMPLETELY GREEN; EVEN SAVES money for the end user IN ADDITION to all other feature/benefits it possesses; has NO CLOSE competition...you WILL pay the price to get it! In our case, practically EACH market probability (not possibility) is SEVERAL BILLION dollars. How many market probablilities are there? I don't even know if you can even set a limit on them. I can come up with 8-10 in just 10 seconds! How many can you come up with in just 5 minutes?
IMO, a SMART conglomorate would NEVER WANT/LET us get to the "full retail" stage before they would "make their play." There are SOME things in life in which you "never want to be the first and at the same time, never want to be the last" to own, but THIS is not one of them!
I'd be VERY surprised if there's not a bidding war to even be a PARTNER with MZEI much less buy us out
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