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SCO Shares Plunge, Canopy Management Change
bretberger writes "Shares in Utah's SCO Group went into a tailspin late Tuesday as news spread of both deepening losses and an apparent coup at the software company's corporate parent, the Canopy Group."
12/07/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 10,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $45,870.00
12/07/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 6,100 Open Market Sale proceeds of $28,745.00
12/01/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 15,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $61,767.00
11/30/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 70,500 Open Market Sale proceeds of $273,550.00
11/24/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 60,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $216,181.50
11/22/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 37,500 Open Market Sale proceeds of $131,250.00
11/19/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 10,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $35,000.00
11/17/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 10,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $35,465.00
11/08/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 100,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $372,615.00
11/05/04 BAYSTAR CAPITAL II L P Beneficial Owner of more than 10% of a Class of Security 22,000 Open Market Sale proceeds of $80,900.00
Anybody who "bought low" today (around 10:00 AM) and sold at market close made a cool 14%. The price started its correction near the market close, and will probably return to close to its Monday levels.
I mean dude, look at the charts. Notice the volume spike at around 10:00 AM. It was this sudden accumulation move that caused the prices to turn back around. The whole game is purely psychological. Today was certainly a good day to buy SCOX.
As seen here:
:)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=5y
SCO started the attack on Linux first (early 2003) when their stock was at the lowest point, and it paid off a bit - until now - and they are back where they started, except now everybody hates them
Shares in Utah's SCO Group went into a tailspin late Tuesday.
So what? The stock is higher now than it was when they started all this litigation in 2003.
SCOX isn't like a normal company though. Having followed their stock for well over year, it tends to go *up* on bad news, so thinking of it like other stocks doesn't really work.
:)
Of course, it may well go back up again, even though it really *shouldn't*.
But, who knows.
Shares in Utah's SCO Group went into a tailspin late Tuesday as news spread of both deepening losses and an apparent coup at the software company's corporate parent, the Canopy Group.
SCO shares closed at $4.51 in regular trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, down 33 cents, or 7 percent. Then came SCO's dismal earnings reports for the fourth quarter and fiscal 2004; within minutes shares plunged another 46 cents, or 10 percent, in after-hours trading, to $4.05.
SCO, embroiled in multibillion-dollar federal litigation against IBM and others over its purported rights to the Unix and Linux operating systems, more than quadrupled its fourth-quarter losses. For the quarter ending Oct. 31, SCO's loss sank to $6.5 million, or 37 cents a share; the company had lost $1.6 million, or 12 cents, in the same period last year.
Investors already were absorbing news, leaked out in bits and pieces earlier Tuesday, about an apparent weekend coup that ousted Ralph Yarro, Canopy's longtime president, chairman and chief executive, along with Chief Financial Officer Darcy Mott.
Secretaries at Canopy's Lindon headquarters confirmed that Yarro and Mott were "no longer with the company."
Callers to Canopy were told the company's new CEO is William Mustard, believed most recently to have been a managing director at Smooth Engine, a New York-based consulting firm that provides both interim and permanent executive replacements.
Mott's replacement had not yet been named. Questions regarding the ousters were referred directly to Mustard. He did not return several calls seeking comment.
Messages left at the home telephone numbers of Yarro and Mott - both former proteges of former Novell chief and networking tech guru Ray Noorda - also went unanswered; so did questions about how their departure from Canopy might affect SCO and its now 21-month-old battle with IBM, the world's largest computer company.
Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio called the ousters "a changing of the guard at Canopy. It is quite literally out with the old and in with the new.
"With the departure[s] . . . go the last vestiges of the Ray Noorda era. Yankee Group expects that other, equally significant changes will be in the offing for 2005," she said. "The fate of SCO is one of the big question marks. New management at Canopy . . . may push [SCO] to try and settle."
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Of more immediate concern to investors, though, were SCO's finances. In addition to growing losses, the company's quarterly revenue also tumbled more than 50 percent - $10.1 million compared with $24.3 million a year ago. The decrease was primarily due to a precipitous slide in the company's SCOsource revenue - a paltry $120,000 compared with more than $10.3 million for 2003's fourth quarter.
For fiscal 2004, revenue was $42.8 million, down sharply from 2003's $79.25 million. Shareholders lost $16.2 million, or $1.07 per share this fiscal year, compared with $5.3 million, or 34 cents, the year before.
The SCOsource division manages the company's Unix intellectual property, and oversees SCO's largely unsuccessful attempts to sell licenses to Linux users under implied threat of copyright infringement lawsuits.
SCO CEO Darl McBride, anticipating victory in SCO's lawsuit against IBM, believes SCOSource revenue is destined to revive. The suit, awaiting rulings on motions for dismissal and evidentiary discovery, is not expected to come to trial until next fall.
"We're in a challenging business environment," he said during an earnings teleconference. "[But] we believe there is value in our Unix licensing business and we offer our customers . . . value they need to be made aware of."
McBride also pointed to a recent deal SCO made with its chief Linux litigator, attorney David Boies of New York. His law firm agreed to cap the overall cost of SCO's lawsuits to $31 million in return for a bigger piece - 33 percent, instead of 20 percent - of any settlements.
McBride said that p
This guy is way out there
The state of California putting an end to sneakwrap EULAs!
eric
Canopy's investment in Trolltech is absolutely tiny. As far as I am aware nothing that could possibly happen to Canopy would affect Trolltech at all.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Reading the article, It looks like the "cap" just means that $31 mil will be the most Boies & co. can charge when this fiasco is finished. This was in exchange for more lucrative terms should SCO win a settlement/be bought out. It doesn't mean "as soon as we spend $31 million, we're dropping the suit".
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Especially when the stock was 25% lower less than two months ago.
I do have to thank SCOX for one thing, though. They got one of the Groklaw readers to pester UCal for a copy of the secret AT&T/BSD agreement under a Freedom of Information request. As it turns out, there wasn't any thing scary in there after all.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Naturally, the truth is somewhere in between. This is bad news for SCO's strategies. That does not mean McBride won't be able to convince his minders to hold the course and continue with litigation. Strictly speaking, at this moment, they're still convinced. Neverhteless, it's obviously a bumpy road ahead for them.
So, don't throw a victory party yet, but I think we're all entitled to spend a few minutes smirking.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Hold your mouse over the main graphic SCO Partner Webinars and it says: "Click to learn more about the latest Weinars"
Then there were a series of mergers and renamings that I didn't really follow. And there they are now.
They sold their Unix licensing business (which they had bought from Novell) and their name to Caldera. Caldera changed it's name to SCO, and (old) SCO changed their name to Tarentella.
So, that's not them that are there now.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.