Modlam, I've been a shareholder for about as long as you have. So I understand your frustration. However, unlike you, my average share price is nowhere near yours since the majority of my shares were bought years and years ago at a split adjusted rate of under a penny.
Being that you've been a shareholder for so long, by now you should really be used to how this company operates. Deadlines, timelines, schedules, etc. are rarely met. If the company says it's going to do something in a certain amount of time, a good rule of thumb is to add at least six months to a year or more onto that time. For example, the company says its goal is to have a working Stratellite by 2013. Ain't gonna happen. So add a year on to that and you're looking at 2014 at the earliest. Looking at the current testing schedule, I posted a while back following the hanger mishap that I thought testing could be pushed into November. Mide posted that he thought late October. Either case, it's not late October or November, so I think you and others on this board need to chill out at least for that long.
My biggest beef with management (both past and present) is that they have no clue on how to manage expectations. CEOs are notorious for being overly optimist about their companies and their ability to manage them. Call it confidence, call it ego, call it whatever you want to call it -- CEOs tend to promise the moon. Why they can't be realistic in their projections is beyond me. There is one simple rule all executives should live by: Under promise, over deliver. Yet this current management doesn't understand this. They make wild projections that they just can't possibly meet. And the result is that shareholders like yourself get p*ssed off. Apple is always so conservative with its quarterly guidance that it has no problem blowing past and exceeding analysts' expectations.
I'm still here after all this time because I believe some day this company will be successful. When that some day is, I have no idea. Hopefully before you and I are dead. Potential will not drive this stock any more -- only concrete results will. I remember seeing a billboard years ago for the Economist magazine which sums things up well.
Potential is great, if you're 12.
Good luck.
Madmonks
PS With regards to your calls to Barbara Johnson and her response that they're working their butts off, I just have to say that that's what I do every day at my job so I don't get fired. And most days I don't feel like I'm accomplishing anything either.
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