RE:RE:RE:Anyone want to guess at RBC's new target price?When it comes to votinig on board members and other items before the annual meeting, every shareholder has to make up their own mind as to how they will vote. In a recent post, someone suggested voting against everything the company brings up - that would not be wise as most of what shareholders vote on is not controversial. It is also rare that shareholders have a chance to vote on a broad compensation plan, so the only way to express displeasure on that front is to vote off the board the members you think are responsible for compensating management too heavily. So, maybe you vote no on the directors on the compensation committee, if they have one, if that is your issue.
Now, I feel certain that if we all agreed we wanted to remove certain board members, we likely have the votes to do that among those of us on this board. Voting to remove board members is every shareholder's right and is not something that makes one an activist shareholder. Suggesting a replacement board and starting a proxy battle for control would make us an activist shareholder and we are not going down that route. They may have taken advantage of our stating we are never going to be an activist shareholder and if so, that is simply a cost of not being an activist which we are willingto bear, but I don't think they were thinking too hard about such matters. Still, you may have noticed the change to the by-laws last year that we voted to put in place which more or less gave the company a lot of power over board control. Perhaps we should have rallied everyone to oppose that but we chose to go along with it as we really are freindly investors (even if I do hold management's feet to the fire on days like today).
Now, if someone else took an activist position and tried to unseat the board, we have an obligation to our clients to consider that option and vote in what we believe are the best interests of our clients. So, while we will never start a proxy battle, we can still be dragged into one by someone who is unfriendly.
One reason why the board and management may have wanted to do a deal like this, that involves so much dilution, is because they recognize the people on this board control a lot of shares and could easily unseat board members. By diluting us more, that risk, to the extent it really even is a risk, is lowered. I seriously doubt that, but you never know. That resolution about the board last year indicates to me they were thinking at least a little about such matters.
Increasingly, I have the impression that shareholders like ourselves are being viewed as a nuisance to the company. Maybe even an impediment to what they are trying to achieve since we own so much of the stock that institutions cannot buy it easily on the market (thus today's deal). I hope I am wrong about that but many of the large shareholders I know have noted there is zero outreach by the IR person or management to them. They are very responsive to requests for info and calls, but they never proactively interact with us. For example, I know of three large shareholders including ourselves and none were contacted last night with an attempt to talk us through the rationale for the share offering. Maybe that is because they knew the rationale was so weak. In any event, that is not an optimal shareholder communication policy. But we are paying such close attention to what they are doing, they likely are tired of dealing with our comments and feedback. Management are just a bunch of humans like ourselves and don't like being reminded they make mistakes from time to time.
The AGM is a long time from now so we have some time to see what happens from here before considering our options. It is a good thing it is not next week though!
Wino115 wrote: SPCEO, you think your avowed disinterest in being "activist" was something they took advantage of -- completely ignoring your logic and your past discussions and warnings? They may have known you wouldn't really do anything from past behavior. It's certainly a smack in the face from them though. Maybe it will be time for us to be more forceful at the meeting this year -- especially on comp and pay plans. I'm good with the new board members coming in.
Jasonthehumble wrote: Since the majority of us are retail investors, we should all ban together and vote against everything the board and management recommends the next quarterly earnings. They need to see who really is in charge and my hope is that they see how disgruntled we all are.
SPCEO1 wrote: I will guess $1.65.
Of course it will also be interesting to see what changes, if any, Mackie, Canaccord and NBF make too.