RE:What are you expecting? I agree with a few things you said Part123. However, I don't believe they are poor managers and I defintely don't believe they will drive down the share price to buy more shares....because they never buy shares.
I too was considering selling a good chunk after the earnings (haven't pulled the trigger yet). The reason is because I don't trust that they can use the cash to profitably buy companies in the ITS space because they don't have the resources to assess the worth of a business properly. They have the brains within IRD to understand the industry and the products, but to value opportunities, negotiate a good price, and manage these companies, I don't see the infrastructure there to do this well. I think they did OK with IRD, not great, but OK and they did well with VIZIYA not sure about how successful the other tuck ins were but it doesn't mean they are great at acquiring companies - maybe they just got lucky. They also can only do this 2 times in the 4-5 years they've been doing this so that doesn't bode well either.
I've come to the conclusion that the market isn't giving the WiLan business a near-zero valuation, they are giving the cash on hand a zero valulation because they think they are going to throw good money at bad and buy some crappy companies. Now with the Q4 earnings they announce that they are very oopen to levering up the company to buy more things (maybe) that they don't understand fully - that is why the stock has sold off since the release -- not because the earnings were low for Q4.
My solution is to raise the dividend to 10% and stop thinking that you are the next Constellation Software. If they did that the stock would shoot up to $4 very quickly. The market will know they aren`t going to waste their money. That will also make the market sit up and notice that the firm is confident they can make money and their current cash hoard shows that they can. By my calcs a 10% dividend would cost $29 million a year so they can do this for 5 years without generating any more cash (which we all know they can). I know they won`t do this because they are drunk on the idea of acquisitionis but I can dream, can`t I.
Chi