re: Tellium Takeover Plan BrewingFrom an overall economic standpoint, liquidating the bad investments of the bubble era is exactly the right idea. Capitalist system makes mistakes, but the key to its vitality is the ability to correct and learn from mistakes.
There are any number of "zombie companies" (a term much in vogue in Japan), which have no real prospects but who hoard huge amounts of capital. I bet if you add up the total cash piled up in Nasdaq companies that are trading below cash, you will find billions in "zombie capital". This capital legitimately belongs to the shareholder, and the companies have proved themselves utterly incapable of deploying it profitably. Now they are busy destroying that capital.
But the economic losses don't stop with the loss of capital. The people employoed by these zombie companies are mostly going through the motions until the inevitable happens. Their talents and efforts are utterly wasted, and they actually become more unemployable due to years of make-work projects.
For those who need a primer on this, Japan in the 90s is a classic illustration. Their system has proved itself incapable of shutting down zombie companies - indeed they have funnelled more bank loans and taxpayer subsidies to zombies in a vain effort to keep them alive - and the result after 10 years is an utter societal crisis.
The public sector companies in socialist countries have been on the same trajectory, with similarly poor results. Making the mistake of funding these companies is not the problem, refusing the correct the mistake is utter folly.
One of my friends recently lost his job at a zombine company, and the fact is he feels utterly liberated, after more than a year of "wait and see". That tension was more painful than finally getting fired, and he is already thinking up creative ways to make it. Since he saved up well, I am confident he will figure something to do. Truth is most people, if only they applied their minds, will figure something out. That is the magic of a free system.
re: Tellium Takeover Plan BrewingCareful there LR, you are getting schooled.
No self respecting buyout guy is going to announce to you, or anyone else, that he is preparing a bid, accumulating stock, etc. Why would he want to leak it and drive the stock price up???
You are getting taken advantage of by someone who has already established their position and just wants to get a quick pop, or is trying to get someone else to do the heavy lifting.
For all the moralizing LR does on shady stock deals, you have just helped out on one!!
re: Tellium Takeover Plan BrewingIt is finally happening.
Given that Tellium's market cap is worth less than half its cash on hand, and with its non-existant prospects for meaningfully increasing its revenue in the next 12-18 months, this is the only thing that makes sense.
Let's look at the facts:
- Dynergy network build is done. With Dynergy a tier-2 player whose carrier business is barely tenable itself, they will not be expanding anytime soon.
- Qwest business was a one-time "get this off our books" deal so that Qwest could live up to its part of the deal when it got stock warrants from the Tellium IPO. Otherwise Qwest's core switch is CoreDirector which is not yet fully utilized, and their network growth will not justify more deployments of OXC for a while also.
- Cable & Wireless contract was exposed as the fraud it was when it was renogotiated. C&W has deployed CoreDirector everywhere, it is very under-utilized, and they have slashed their CAPEX so much that even if Tellium got a piece it would be tiny amounts of $.
- The "rumours" of a potential deal with Deutsche Telecom was just unethical market hype put out by Tellium themselves to stabilize their stock price, and will never materialize as DT has selected and deployed Lambda Unite from Lucent.
And there is nobody else even remotely on the horizon as a potential customer for Tellium.
Once you back off severance pay, lease commitments, etc... , and add in whatever assests can be sold at auction, the shareholders will still get a cash distribution that I estimate will be worth about 50% more than Tellium's current market cap.
And there's even upside to that - maybe they can be paid back the loan amounts that Tellium made to its executives to buy their stock pre-IPO.
Too bad this can't happen to Corvis as well. They are in the same boat, except that Huber has a controlling stake to block such a move.
re: Tellium Takeover Plan Brewing >Careful there LR, you are getting schooled.
>No self respecting buyout guy is going to >announce to you, or anyone else, that he is >preparing a bid, accumulating stock, etc. Why >would he want to leak it and drive the stock >price up???
Taken a look at Cosine recently (COSN)? This is pretty much the same story as LR reported at Tellium except ... this is a public run at the company for apparently the same reason - buy it, take a cut of the cash and liquidate the rest.
re: Tellium Takeover Plan BrewingThe earlier the massive merge/liquidation happen, the more beneficial to the economy, the industry, shareholders, and the employees GÇô the employees who left or laid off early got good surveillance package and found better jobs while the employees wait until the last days often got very little.
Actually, the best approach is self-liquidation by the board- shareholders-executives.
For example, with $183 million cash, TELM has a cash value of $1.60/share. However, TELM could announce a $50 million stock buyback plan, and then quietly purchases its own shares at $1 each on average. When the purchase is complete, TELM will still have $133 million cash in hand, while there are only 64 million shares outstanding. Then, if the board/shareholders/executives agree to shut down the company, and sell its asset for $20 million (10 cents for each dollar of asset/equipment/plants/inventory value), each share is worth about $2.40.
Sounds like a better GÇ£dealGÇ¥?
It's not easy, but certainly doable. The only resistance is the executivesGÇÖ ego and self-interests.
I wonder why this kind of self-liquidation has yet to happen.
re: Tellium Takeover Plan BrewingIf the shareholders want some of the money back, they should push for a dividend. Who knows, might even be tax free!
The LBO guys won't return much money to the shareholders. Their aim is to buy the company cheap and liquidate the assets. They will then keep the difference. It is assumed that towards the end of their "acquiring shares" process, the value of the shares would approach the cash value of the company. But- most of the existing investors would not fully benefit from this.
BTW: I complete agree with the first positing. A real LBO company (like KKR) would never do this. Plus, it takes serious amounts of money to be a player in the LBO market. Most of the funds are quite large. $40M isn't even enough to qualify as a Tier 3 seed venture fund.
re: Tellium Takeover Plan Brewinglitewave, i was out of commission for a few days and didn't see this article until i got in to work about ten minutes ago. my thoughts: liquidating the company is not going to get the shares back up to $10 (which is about the lowest offer i would consider) and i think someone would have to be insane to sell at the prices i've seen in some of these earlier messages. bottom line is that TELM is still the leader in core grooming switches and it's going to be a major player when the market comes back in june (or maybe july at the latest). harry carr is a smart guy who will pressure some big carriers out there to build out their networks... my prediction: we're not far from another $350M contract to replace c&w (those guys need to learn how to stomach a downturn). to all you TELM shareholders out there-- trust me, this stock will see all-time highs by the end of 2003. TELM to $100!!!!!!!!! (gotta be ambitious in these bleak times.) -twisted
bad investments of the bubble era is exactly the
right idea. Capitalist system makes mistakes, but the key
to its vitality is the ability to correct and learn
from mistakes.
There are any number of "zombie companies" (a term
much in vogue in Japan), which have no real prospects
but who hoard huge amounts of capital. I bet if
you add up the total cash piled up in Nasdaq companies
that are trading below cash, you will find billions
in "zombie capital". This capital legitimately belongs
to the shareholder, and the companies have proved
themselves utterly incapable of deploying it profitably.
Now they are busy destroying that capital.
But the economic losses don't stop with the loss of
capital. The people employoed by these zombie companies
are mostly going through the motions until the
inevitable happens. Their talents and efforts are
utterly wasted, and they actually become more
unemployable due to years of make-work projects.
For those who need a primer on this, Japan in the 90s
is a classic illustration. Their system has proved
itself incapable of shutting down zombie companies -
indeed they have funnelled more bank loans and taxpayer
subsidies to zombies in a vain effort to keep them
alive - and the result after 10 years is an utter
societal crisis.
The public sector companies in socialist countries
have been on the same trajectory, with similarly poor
results. Making the mistake of funding these companies
is not the problem, refusing the correct the mistake
is utter folly.
One of my friends recently lost his job at a zombine
company, and the fact is he feels utterly liberated, after
more than a year of "wait and see". That tension was
more painful than finally getting fired, and he is already
thinking up creative ways to make it. Since he saved up
well, I am confident he will figure something to do. Truth
is most people, if only they applied their minds,
will figure something out. That is the magic of a
free system.