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SCO posts Q2 Loss, Gets $11k from Linux
Paul Hands sent us linkage to SCOs Q2 Financials. "The highlights are that SCOX only collected $11k (yes, K) for that much-discussed license for EV1 and other Licensees. Cost of that $11k was well over $4M.
Overall, revenue was just over $10M, and they made a net loss applicable to common stockholders of $14,959,000, or $1.06 per diluted common share." Update According to the SCO conference call, this isn't accurate.. their Linux extortion income will be listed in the Q3 financials.
Yosemite Darl is the meanest, toughest, rootin-est,tootin-est cowboy there ever was and you should be ashamed of yourself for rustlin' away his code, pardner. Why its getting so a man can't earn a dishonest livin no more.
... "I can't get a long little dogey, I can't even get one that's small, I can't get a long little dogey, I can't get a dogey at all". (Profuse apologies to Yosemite Sam)
Now let's all sing with Darl (while reading the SCO finances)
What's next? CNET gets a "Cease & Desist" letter from SCO because the company's name was used in this story?
Hmmm.
Darl's going to turn around and claim that this is proof that the Linux Business models don't work.
SCOwned.
If SCO is having Q2 losses, maybe they should upgrade to Quake 3, or at least get a new videocard.
--Kevin
Link to the realease on the SCO's site
From SCO Keeps SinkingThu Motley Fool
"Management blamed the slow sales on a "lack of SCOsource licensing revenue." SCOsource is the Linux users' shakedown program. Apparently, no one is paying up. It took in $11,000 last quarter. That's not a typo. President and CEO Darl McBride paid more lip service to "increasing shareholder value," but you really have to wonder about the viability of his vision when his firm's most engrossing initiative brings in less money than the guys who mow lawns in my neighborhood."
rofl :)
I mean, this post might be modded funny, but I swear, I didn't make it up. It's right out of the article.
"Our revenue for the second quarter was consistent with our expectation and we also incurred significant expenses for the impairment of goodwill and intangibles and for the exchange of our Series A-1 Convertible Preferred Stock. Both of these charges negatively impacted our second quarter results," said Darl McBride, President and CEO. "As the company looks forward to the last two quarters of fiscal year 2004 we are committed to increasing shareholder value through profitable operations and increasing cash flow from our UNIX division as well as remaining focused on our intellectual property lawsuits and licensing strategies."
Sometimes you don't even have to try to make a funny post, because the dialogue you'd put in Darl's mouth is actually less funny than his own idiotic ramblings.
From a similar article
"A legal victory looks highly unlikely, and even if a decision went SCO's way, the probable remedy would not be money for SCO, but a rewrite for Linux, something the open-source community would accomplish in the blink of an eye."
The listing appears to be part of an effort by domestic and foreign brokers to circumvent recent National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) restrictions against so called "naked short selling." Naked short selling involves groups of people working together to manipulate the market by selling fictitious shares of stock in an effort to force a company's share price to go down. Not that I care.
By listing the Company's common stock on the Exchange, market manipulators sought to benefit from an "arbitrage" loophole that none of the present regulations was designed to close.
Wow, at $699 a go, they managed to license 15 copies!
Go SCO!
John.
In any case the ploy was a success - the goal was never to increase SCO revenue, but to bolster the stock price so execs could sell. The issue now is whether this will be investigated as a pump-and-dump scam that Darl and co knew from the outset had no basis in law. Don't scoff Darl - you still may end up in the cell block with Worldcom and Enron execs.
Maybe we should ask him...
Bill, what do you think?
Hope Darryl clarified on this during their 11am EDT conference today.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
During the conference call earlier in the day, SCO stated that the EV1 revenue was not included in this quarter, and will start showing up in Q3.
They still have $6,767,000 worth of goodwill - I guess they didn't subtract out the badwill.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Midnight, January 1, 1970
Remember, these aren't techies talking about the technical merits of the case. These are financial guys commenting about SCO's quality as an investment. It nice to see someone other than technical folk scoffing at this sideshow.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
and if they keep heading down down down the DOW tube, they just might be de-listed by the end of the year :)
Would that not be perfect.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I think they'd be better off if they fired all their lawyers and put the rest of their money into lotto tickets.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ok here is the Bittorrent of the SCO Conference Call today in mp3 format.
http://sco.penguinman.comWhat you mean to say is, you have Google:
Results for the 1 Darl McBride in Utah:
I seem to remember once reading that a few yeard ago Darl was the CEO of a company that sued IBM over intellectual property rights. The article stated that on that occasion IBM bought out the company and Darl received a big payout from the shareholders.
Some people say that SCO are only attacking IBM this time in an attempt to be bought out. In fact I just found this, an open statement by Darl that he would welcome IBM buying SCO to make the problem go away: SCO's CEO says buyout could end Linux fight. I think that settles it. SCO doesn't want to win in court they don't even want to go to court, they just want to scare IBM into buying them out.
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
The stock has been around $5 ± 0.50 for weeks. You can't short a NASDAQ listed stock when the price is below $5, so the bears drop out at that point. Trading volume has been down for weeks. SCO's concern with being listed on some additional exchanges may be that they have different rules on short positions, allowing shorting at lower price points.
The full numbers from this quarter aren't out yet, so it's hard to figure out when they run out of cash. It looks like they have three to six quarters of cash left at their current burn rate, but that's a rough estimate. Unless they get new financing, it looks like they won't make it to the IBM trial date in 2005.
At this point, the remaining stockholders who think SCO has a case against IBM might well ask why SCO wants additional delay. SCO can't afford much more delay.
"You-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept."
This is SCO we're talking about, they can make anything up!
October 2003, stock hovers at a high of $22.
Now, stock is at $4 and from the looks of things could easily drop back down to $2.
Hype over. The put up or shut up phase where people assumed they had a case is over. They must have known there was a point where the stock price couldn't be inflated any more by innuendo and "maybe sorta" proof, so I'm wondering why they'd continue down this path?
-- The unsig...
Here is a link that made me laugh..
This morning, however, McBride had to face the music with shareholders during the Unix vendor's quarterly earnings call, where he reported sharply reduced earnings and sparse revenue from its licensing business.
McBride put the blame squarely on his rivals for raising doubts in the minds of potential licensees about the legitimacy of SCO's ownership of System V Unix. SCO alleges that IBM illegally contributed Unix code to the Linux kernel and has levied a $5 billion suit against Big Blue.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
How about a business karma modifier?
I am very happy to read that SCO has made such a large net loss. This is not because support for Linux as much as it is because I do not support the type of business practice employed by SCO.
I strongly believe that companies have a duty not only to their owners, but also to their customers, suppliers, and even to their competitors. The last one, the duty to competitors, is a duty to compete based on a better products and services, better marketing, better pricing, a better overall customer experience, etc.
I think that, while litigation is sometimes necessary, most issues can be settled outside of the court system in a mutually beneficial way, or at least in a way that minimizes the damages to all parties involved. Further, litigation and other legal actions (lobbying for legislation, etc.) should not be employed as a source of profit for a company, but only to solve legitimate problems.
In the case of SCO, I think they have thrown all good business practices out the window, while embracing litigation as a potential source of profit. Essentially, instead of elevating themselves by making sound decisions and consistently improving themselves, they are trying to become elevated by pushing others down. Kind of like the "everything is relative" argument - if you push someone down, then you could say that you have elevated yourself even though you stayed in the same place. This is what SCO is trying to do, and it is not beneficial to anybody except, if they manage to pull it off, themselves. This is a very egoistic and self centered company with no desire to make anything of value. And companies like this should not be supported.
For those reasons, I am glad that SCO had these losses, and I hope that investors pull their investments, new investors don't buy SCO stock, and potential customers go elsewhere. This evil company should not be supported by anybody.
Not to mention that I strongly believe that there is no legal issue of any SCO code being copied into other software. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: Either:
I'd just like to give a big Thank-You to SCO for scaring the bejesus out of any other company who might try this line of attack again, and for helping keep Linux in the news.
** Thank You, SCO!!! **
Linux users in the future will be able to take pride in your accomplishments in making businesses lose their fear of some company trying to do what you did and costing them money, while at the same time pushing awareness of Linux as a real alternative to proprietary products and companies which pursue legal whims like this.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
To find the $11K number, you have to dig down into the numbers below. Lining things up on Slashdot is very difficult, so I'll just paste the relevant line:
That's telling you they made $11k in the prior three months, and $31K in the prior six months, as compared to $8250 last year. In 2003, it would appear, they made all their money in Q2, 8.25 million." it turns out that EVERY SINGLE company listed on NASDAQ is traded on the 'unofficial regulated market' at Berlin-Bremen.
Note that Darl, during the call, said that these were "unregulated" markets, which is clearly not the case."
"About Berlin-Bremen Stock Exchange: Like all other German exchanges the Berlin-Bremen Stock Exchange is separated in three market segments: Official Market; Regulated Market and Unofficial Regulated Market. Special significance is attributed to the Unofficial Regulated Market at the Berlin-Bremen Stock Exchange. With more than 8,000 national and international companies admitted the Unofficial Regulated Market unparalleled -- both in terms of size and diversity. .. All companies listed on the NASDAQ, NYSE, and several OTCBB companies are listed on the Unofficial Regulated Market of the Berlin-Bremen Stock Exchange, giving investors the largest choice of American stocks in Europe."
Help fight continental drift.
You're looking on the wrong exchange. SCOX is listed on NASDAQ, not NYSE.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Just to clarify. Goodwill in this case is an accounting concept referring to accounting treatments of premium paid in a merger. Until fairly recently Goodwill used to be amortized (i.e. company would write it off over time). Under new rules, it's carried indefinitely and assessed for impariment. According to SCO's March '04 10-Q, most of their goodwill comes from acquisition of Vultus, Inc. Not very much related to the loss of face in the Linux debucle.
SCO is not like m$. Every few days they have a new exciting story' some believable and some not, but what will we do when they're gone? I shudder at losing my sole internet entertainment and so far, you readers have been very stingy with your money. SCO has come up with a lot of ideas for emergency funding, but none seem to be working well.
What can we do? Well, I have a plan. It's called "SOSco" for "Save our SCO". Shortly, I will be starting up a small company to help provide "stay alive" funding for SCO, at least until their court case. Except for my salaries and actual overhead expenses, the remainder will all go to SCO. With nearly 100,000, /. readers and just a few dollars each (we will accept non USA currency also) I think we can keep things going for one or two more years. That's a small price for this kind of entertainment. Oh, I forgot! I will have to put aside enough funds for a good lawyer team just in case someone tries to sue us for using SOS (since it may have other meaning)and most likely from SCO themselves for using a derivitive of their name without their permission. Be watching daily, because this will be an exclusive story on /. as my company will depend on you readers for it's major funding.
Thanks,from the team as SOSco
lcsjk
DOn't tell me that *foreign brokers* are evading SEC rules *which don't apply to them* by *trading in their own countries*! What fiends!
Now, if we can only link them to terrorists, we can torture them.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
All the while this CEO got paid a huge salary:
Management blamed the slow sales on a "lack of SCOsource licensing revenue." SCOsource is the Linux users' shakedown program. Apparently, no one is paying up. It took in $11,000 last quarter. That's not a typo. President and CEO Darl McBride paid more lip service to "increasing shareholder value," but you really have to wonder about the viability of his vision when his firm's most engrossing initiative brings in less money than the guys who mow lawns in my neighborhood. By the way, McBride was paid more than $1 million last year -- most of it in cash -- to preside over this impending disaster.
It really is sickening. And there seems to be no hope in sight for regulatory reform in this area, when public companies can perform goofy shit like this with impunity.
Ah, then obviously they're listing the gross goodwill. I doubt they have any net goodwill at all.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Here's a list of what they have going FOR them.
Goodwill is a term of art in accounting. There's a brief summary on Wikipedia. Essentially, "goodwill" is the magic dark matter of accounting that is used to explain whither otherwise inexplicable money goes and whence it comes. For instance, say one of your company's buildings appraised for $1 million but somebody else bought it for $2 million. That goes down as $1 million of "goodwill" so that the numbers balance out. Conversely, if someone else's building appraised for $2 million but he sold it to you for $1 million, that's another example of $1 million of goodwill on your books.
Hint relevant to this situation: it applies to securities as well.
All's true that is mistrusted
Shares Outstanding: 14.42M
Float: 7.80M
Shares Short (as of 10-May-04): 4.62M
Short % of Float (as of 10-May-04): 59.27%
Shares Short (prior month): 3.95M
Bwa hah hah! What a ridiculously mismanaged company.
And to clarify further: Goodwill is where you will find SCO stock certificates in about 6 months. They will be used to wrap fragile pottery and dinner plates, so they will not break on the way home.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Apparently BayStar wanted SCO to get out of the Unix business and into the lawsuit business. But what if they did the opposite? What if they stopped forking money over to lawyers and concentrated on developing and selling Unix? They still had 10M in revenue from this quarter. They only spent 1.9M to make that revenue plus another 2.8M in R&D. That's a potential operating profit of 5.3M. There are many small businesses that would be glad to make 5.3M every quarter. The IP-licensing side of their business with all their lawsuits cost SCO 4.4M (see the line about Cost of SCOsource licensing revenue) and only paid back 11K. I think you can see where the money is hemorrhaging.
I was never a SCO Unix user, but I understand it was (at one time) a repectable unix back in the day and I don't see why it can't be again with a quarterly R&D bugdet of 2.8M. If I was a serious shareholder (not a speculator) interested in growing the business, I would want to know why they don't stop wasting money on this longshot lawsuit crapshoot and start concentrating on what they themselves describe as their "core" business.
Most of the rights to SYSV belong to Novell, not SCO. From a Linux point of view, nobody has shown any infringing code, but some variants of Unix really ARE based on SYSV and the ownership of code might matter. I doubt that even Novell can actually prove ownership of everything in SYSV or clearly define their rights in a way that would hold up in court. Therefore they collect revenue in some areas where their rights are not disputed, using SCO as a sort of collection agent.
There is a theory out there stating that Sun's attempt to open source Solaris is just a ruse, so as to pump up whatever is left of SCO's credibility.
Sun: "We are going to GPL Solaris".
SCO: "No you can't, we own Unix and the license you bought from us does not allow you to GPL Solaris".
Sun: "Oh, that's right. You own Unix, and that's why we paid for a license. Silly us."
If IBM somehow becomes the owner of SCO's IP (whatever that may prove to be), they could possibly remove the SCO "obstacle" to Solaris/GPL and therefore call Sun's bluff. In that case, Sun would just make some other excuse for declining to GPL Solaris (probably blaming Novell). It would be fun to watch, but not quite so much fun as seeing the "For Sale or Lease" sign at SCO headquarters or Darl's resume on monster.com.
This sure smells like the minority owners (Canopy) are bleeding cash out of a publicly-traded company (SCO) by selling it a loser.
Canopy has done stuff like this before. When one of their companies goes bankrupt, they (Canopy) wind up with the assets that matter, whether or not the company was publicly traded. They do this by making sure that the company that is going under owes Canopy money, so that Canopy is a creditor at bankruptcy time.
In other words:
1. Create a private company (company A).
2. Take company A public. Company A now has lots of money.
3. Create another private company (company B).
4. Sell company B to company A.
5. Profit!
But wait, there's more...
6. Make sure company A owes you money.
7. Let company A go bankrupt.
8. Using the assets that you get back from the bankruptcy, go to step 1!