RE: RE: NCIBI think it's reasonable to be patient in waiting for a business plan to come to fruition. But it's also reasonable to expect the management to be prudent in managing its R&D costs with respect to realistic revenue expectations. Investors are investing in the company to earn future profits - not on-going charity of paying for R&D indefinitely.
Further, I think it's reasonable for the BOD to compensate management for A) meeting their stated revenue goals and B) meeting their stated profitability goals. This can come in the form of salary, stocks, or options. However, it's reasonable as an investor to question whether granting options at the lowest strike price ever is considered equitable to existing investors. I think a much better show of integrity is to issue options with a strike price at the highest trading price of the stock for the year. This would encourage management to drive the stock price high and subsequently higher each year. Management can do this by creating a stronger sales force, focusing on marketing activities, trimming R&D fat, utilizing their working capital to increase margins, and making strategic bolt-on acquisitions.
It's also reasonable for the BOD to evaluate opportunities that will create larger shareholder value then continuing to run operations. That means a potential sale of the company or merger.
I think that a large part of the sell-off we're seeing is due to the failed acquisition attempt by HEM for some unknown company earlier this year. My suspicion is that an opportunity was brought to them by one of the investment houses involved in the bought-deal. The opportunity would have been accretive to HEM's earnings and likely would have cleaned up the Q3/Q4 loss mess. It required HEM to have capital - and hence the bought-deal was brought forward to management. Management took the cash and investigated the opportunity - but ultimately turned it down (who knows why - perhaps due diligence showed some funny accounting on the side of the potential acquiree).
This situation left the bought deal investors will a crap load of shares they did not want. They were hoping for the acquisition to boost the share price and make a quick buck - but instead the share price has been languishing due to questionable profitability going forward. Hence, they started to dump to clear out their books before the end of the year.
IMO