Chew On This I placed two phone calls yesterday...one to the IR of Poseidon, and one to Valiant Trust, the issuing agent for their dividend payments.
The call to Valiant Trust was framed from the perspective of a shareholder that was anxious to get his dividend cheque and worried that it would come late. The question was received very well by them (nobody felt this was an unreasonable thing to ask) and I was transferred through multiple people until they were finally able to connect me with someon that knew the answer, unfortunately she was busy but I left a message with the person that would be able to answer it.
Both Poseidon IR and Valiant Trust reps were busy all day and phoned me back after the market closed (although this was because they are out west and not for any other reason).
A very nice person from Valiant called me back to reassure that me Poseidon was a bit late getting their paperwork organized and signed this time around, but they they finally did sign yesterday and agreed to transfer the funds on Friday so that the dividends cheques and direct deposits can reach their targets by the payment date of January 15th. Co-incidentally, the Poseidon rep from IR called me back right after and simply mentioned the news release from December 27th and gave the same old story without confirming or denying anything regarding the upcoming dividend payment.
To me, this means one of two things:
1) Poseidon is going ahead with their January 15th dividend payment but haven't prepared the overall release yet (dividend go ahead meaning that the company is ultimately not going to go under immediately) but they didn't realize that as soon as they signed with their transfer agent the news of this would be available to anyone interested in the status of their upcoming paycheque (clawing back a declared dividend is uncharted territory).
2) They were not ready to make a decision yet, and went ahead to sign with their transfer agent to keep their options open. They may ultimately decide to not transfer the money on Friday. Either way, something should be released either at the open today, or by the close at Friday at the latest because they will have either transferred the funds by the date they agreed, or not. Given that Valiant is now telling people that Poseidon has signed agreements to proceed with the dividend though, I would imagine that Poseidon would be opening themselves up to even more pain if they renegued at this point.
This is a good sign (they probably shouldn't pay this dividend, but clawing back a previously declared dividend would have ultimately been a sign that they don't plan to operate much longer). Personally, I think this might take the immediate bankruptcy factor out of the equation, however it still doesn't give the status of the amount of cash flow moving forward that anyone can use to value the company. Proceed with caution, but given the uptick in price of late, I have a feeling that cautiously good news might be on the way.