123c wrote: I was one of the shareholders that Karen Keyes (V.P. - Investor relations) spoke with at the AGM and I was unimpressed, other than that she is a championship stonewaller. She failed to introduce herself or name her role in the company which left me asking “Who is this person and why is she defending the board ?” the whole time she spoke with me. When questioned about Mittleman, Breach Inlet and Laughing Water’s statements before the meeting, she first was dismissive of Laughing Water’s saying something like “Well how many shares do they have” implying their opinion didn’t matter, as mine didn’t seem to either. She went on to say that the board fully support the current plan - yada yada yada - and that shareholders need to give the board time for this to translate into shareholder value. She persisted on that position in the face of my pointing out that shareholders do not support this, based on Mittleman,BI & LW’s statements as well as the comments on various bull boards. Further I pointed out that the market does not support the plan as demonstrated by the evaporation of value following the first share repurchase. I got more “it takes time” yada, yada yada.. Neglecting the fact that if it was clear that if the board was taking a different path, the market would support a more favourable valuation. McEwan also sang the “it takes time” song and also acknowledge that there was execution risk, which no doubt is a major cause of depressed valuation.
While Keyes said there would be no business reason to have another meeting, that denies the fact that we know that without Mittleman’s support, none of the other directors would have been elected. At the meeting, we were not aware of that, but we had every reason to question the direction this board is moving. Now we have more reason to say they don’t have the support.
We need to know where Mittleman stands. He either needs to make a statement that he, at least for the present supports the company’s plans, pending further announcements if there is something in the works, or that he will be requisitioning a Special Meeting of Shareholders when his preparations for re-organization are complete, ie, he has a clear business plan and new board members to nominate.
I expect that if Mittleman were to make his plans known there would be an immediate improvement in shareholder value. For now the valuation is speculation on either the success of the current business plan or that Mittleman will make a move that creates shareholder value. I’m betting on the latter.