10K Filing Suggests Grim Outlook for SCO

dacarr writes "SCO has filed their 10K with the SEC — and according to this, their own assessment of the company's outlook is pretty grim. As usual, PJ of Groklaw has a good synopsis of the filing highlights. In short, it boils down to one thing: unless there's a miracle, even SCO doesn't think they're going to come out of this. 'As a result of the Chapter 11 filings, realization of assets and liquidation of liabilities are subject to uncertainty. While operating as debtors-in-possession under the protection of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, the Debtors may sell or otherwise dispose of assets and liquidate or settle liabilities for amounts other than those reflected in the consolidated financial statements, in the ordinary course of business, or, if outside the ordinary course of business, subject to Bankruptcy Court approval. In addition, under the priority scheme established by the Bankruptcy Code, unless creditors agree otherwise, post-petition liabilities and prepetition liabilities must be satisfied in full before stockholders are entitled to receive any distribution or retain any property under a plan of reorganization.'"

Comments

Debtor's Prison

[bhima]

Unless this includes all the SCO management doing a stint in some medieval debtor's prison, it's not nearly grim enough.... On the other hand I think this is a great opportunity to start a Linux distro with SCO personality to provide all the remaining SCO user base a less painful transition after the death of SCO. We could even call it Pescadero Linux, because we all know how well the last project with that name turned out.

Money spent on litigation

[gihan_ripper]

For me, one of the interesting facts in the report is the amount they've spent on litigation since Oct 31, 2004: a massive $13,167,000. At least they're honest about their chances of survival: "Our limited cash resources may not be sufficient to fund continuing losses from operations and the expenses of the SCO Litigation."

Chapter 11 Statistic

[webword]

From Maximizing Chapter 11 Success:

"A staggering 85% of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy cases never make it to a confirmed plan of reorganization. In fact, lack of cash causes many companies to liquidate within a few weeks after filing."

Maybe it's not all bad...

Several companies has come out of it: United, Dow, Texaco, Delta, Toys R Us, Macy's and others.

What they really mean

[Jason Levine]

We have filed a post-effective amendment to a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), which has been declared effective, covering the potential resale by two of our stockholders of up to 923,019 shares of common stock, or 4.3% of our outstanding common stock. The selling stockholders are bound by certain selling limitations, which limit the number of shares of our common stock that may be sold at one time.

In other words: "Our outlook reeks to high heaven and we are afraid that people will dump their stock as quickly as possible. In order to slow this down, we're limiting shareholders in how much they can sell at once. Hopefully, this helps keep our stock from going to worthless (instead of the near-worthless that it is right now)."

The share price right now is 6 cents. It should be interesting to see how low it falls today.

Re:Finally!

[Lumpy]

The other problem is the stigma on your resume now.

"I see you have a long.... Oh.. you work for SCO right now? I have heard enough, we will be in touch. Have a good day."

The rank and file are not responsible for the stupidity but it does affect you when you are out there looking for jobs.

Tough shit.

[dj42]

This company spent $12M on sales and marketing in '05, and $12M in '06. Meanwhile, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT was $8M / year in 05 and 06.

In 07 they slashed all spending by about 20-30%.

They've been losing 20% / year in UNIX revenue since 06, in spite of price increases.

Obviously, in '07, someone in charge got a realistic expectancy of the company and started cutting cost (as they should), given the fact they had no chance to sustain their business model.

This is how business works. It is fucking cut-throat, and if you can't get your shit together, afford the lawyers, and sustain an operational model, you fail.

Re:R.I.P.

[Tuqui]

>Not yet... If M$ successfully buys Yahoo!, I predict that M$ will trade BSD in with SCO products to legitimize their support to SCO

That will mean that MS is accepting that Any Unix is better than their Win Server.