SCO Admits They Might Just Not Win - Maybe

inetsee writes "According to Groklaw, SCO has admitted in a 10K filing that if the court grants any or all of IBM's six motions for summary judgement, 'We can not guarantee whether our claims against IBM or Novell will be heard by a jury.' The site goes through a statement by statement run-down of SCO's filing, noting things like the absence of employee numbers (a piece of information they told investors they would disclose). Elsewhere in the document, it is revealed that SCO's stock is in danger of being delisted from NASDAQ, they may come under further litigation from an unrelated legal matter, and SCO is now claiming that OSes like HP-UX and Solaris are derivatives of code that they 'own'. Despite the dire pronouncements throughout the filing, if everything else runs according to plan their 10K indicates they could keep fighting the good fight for another 12 months."

Comments

Re:Stock price...

[KokorHekkus]

Short answer: No

First: The board of SCOX has adopted a poison pill plan which pretty much allows them to set any price regardless of what the company is worth on the stockmarket, should anyone be as daft as want to buy it. If you buy a company you also buy their liabilities. (And remember that some 45% of the shares is still held by insiders in the company) Darl McBride said in 2004:

In an apparent response to industry rumors that SCO may become the target of a hostile takeover bid, SCO's Board of Directors has implemented a "shareholders rights plan" designed to deter unsolicited takeover attempts, McBride said. "We believe that this will basically keep any outside offers or potential takeovers that are not in the best interest of the shareholders at bay," he said. The plan, which was adopted by the board on Aug. 10, gives SCO's board the right to determine the "fair value" of the company in the event of a takeover attempt, McBride said.

And that fits pretty well with the suspicion that their original plan was to force a buyout from IBM (Source http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/08/31/HNscocap s_1.html)

Second: as many others have pointed out - give in to extortion tacticts and they will just keep coming again and again and again.

Re:1000 times par value, still.

[Otter]

Par value is a non-zero value that the stock needs for regulatory reasons. It's as meaningless as, well, cautionary statements made in a 10K filing. It has nothing to do with how much profit any stockholder has made.

Re:1000 times par value, still.

[tessaiga]

Not sure who modded you insightful, but in today's regulated markets, par value for stocks is essentially a meaningless concept. Companies can basically set it at whatever value they like, and it has no relation to the IPO value or any other meaningful quantity. From the Motley Fool glossary:

Par value (stock)

An arbitrary dollar value that a company assigns to its shares. Par value has no economic significance. The legal significance of par value is, roughly, that if shares are issued below par value, the holders of those shares might be assessed the difference between par value and the issue price. Most stock certificates state that the shares are fully paid and nonassessable to indicate that holders are not on the hook for additional contributions because the shares were issued at a price greater than par value. Companies usually assign a very low par value to common stock.

Not to mention, most CxOs and other highly-placed insiders make their money from option grants, whose strike price the company's board can set to guarantee a profit for the recipients no matter where the current stock price is.