Slashdot Mirror
SCO Stock Continues Downward Spiral
tobiasly writes "TechNewsWorld reports that three and a half years after SCO saw its stock price increase tenfold to US$20.50 following the filing of its lawsuit against IBM, it closed Tuesday at US$2.28 per share, or two cents less than where it was before the lawsuit. This follows a sustained slide fed by poor earnings results and courthouse reversals which, according to OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen, shows that 'Linux and open source software are bigger than any one company. Linux has won in the courts and is winning in the marketplace.'"
They did a 1 for 4 reverse split in mid '02, which brought the price up to about 2.30.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
A lot of people think this is what SCO wants. "Sue IBM and get lots of money when we're bought out!" IBM, apparently, does not think this is behavior it should encourage, and so it's simply attempting to squash SCO like a bug. I've got no problem with this.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
* Opinder Bawa has one filing for having sold 15,000 shares, and another for 8,000 shares. He would appear to have sold all the shares he possesses (but he still has a lot of options).
* Robert Bench has three filings: 7000 shares, 5000 shares, and 4100 shares.
* Jeff Hunsaker sold 5000 shares at the beginning of June.
* Darl McBride sold 7000 shares just after the suit was filed.
That's millions of dollars in stock sales. Given that the stock price skyrocketed when they announced the lawsuit, and the executive stock dumping began shortly thereafter, what do you make of this situation?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
The reference price of $2.30 was in March *2003*, after the reverse split.
Time is running out for SCO. Check the scheduling order. We're past the stalling of pretrial discovery. We're past wondering if SCO has some surprise evidence. Discovery is over. Now things speed up. Expert reports are coming in now and end on September 22. On September 25, summary judgement motions start, and undoubtedly IBM will make some. Things can only get worse for SCO in the summary judgement phase, where some or all of SCO's case may be thrown out and IBM might win on some of their counterclaims. This whole thing could end in September.
If not, trial starts in February 2007.
In theory, the realistic minimum price for a stock is the point at which the stock is worth precisely the company's assets. A company with a net value of 20 million, with 1 million outstanding shares, would therefore have an absolute minimum price of $20/share. (This isn't actually true, but if your stockholders believe your company is worth less than its asset price, perhaps it really is time to just break the company up for scrap.)
:)
I suppose, if a company's assets were negative - if the company was in major debt - and there was some way to force the shareholders of the company to pay the owed money, then yes, indeed, the stock could and likely would go negative.
Possibly unfortunately, though, there's no way that can happen - although I personally would be vastly amused if all the SCO stockholders were forced to pay IBM for owning part of such a doomed company, I suppose it would open up an incredible number of legal problems
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
If somebody were to purchase the company, they'd acquire its liabilities, too. Pending lawsuits with Novell, IBM, RedHat, AutoZone, as well as many more potential ones. These claims and counterclaims don't just "go away" if the company changes hands.
Liquidation is the only solution.
Yes, it would be such an injustice if SCO were actually forced to prove their case. If SCO's only way of winning is by making sure IBM doesn't have enough time to discover the legitimate source of whatever SCO picks out of a hat, then they don't have a case, and should lose. If there is no legitimate source for the code in question, IBM can't magic one up. The only reason for SCO to stall giving evidence is that they don't have any, gambled on their bluff paying off, and lost. It's a rather twisted idea of a fair trial to insist that just because somebody has less resources, they should be allowed to get away with not having their evidence examined properly.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
LOL. That's what you're supposed to do. It's called discovery. You can't file a claim against someone without showing them the evidence you have against them regarding that claim. This enables them to mount a defense. Both SCO and IBM have asked for evidence as part of the discovery process.
On December 12, 2003, SCO was ordered by Judge Wells, "...to identify and state with specificity the source code(s) that SCO is claiming form the basis of their action against IBM". SCO claimed that they couldn't do this without access to IBM's code, and requested the entire source base to both AIX and Dynix including all versions and changes. SCO's motion was granted by Judge wells.
On March 18, 2005, IBM delivered to SCO everything they had requested. The 80 GB of code and a server machine to put it on was was delivered on time. SCO, then claimed that this information wasn't enough.
SCO has been objecting in one way or another to a judge's order for almost three years.
Who is holding up the trial again?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.