Money Narrative I would like you to give a honest explanation of the unfolded events of the last 10 months and you really need to touch on what Lisa did or didn’t do that caused this situation. Is Chris Shields basically rebuilding the company from the ground up or are his statements to date truly represent the conditions that exist. We have been told this is essentially a document issue that is being rectified.
Themoneynarrative replies (10:22 AM): Former Reliq Health CEO Lisa Crossley has always been very devoted to the company, and worked hard to build a business that would be an industry leader and create shareholder value. Certain aspects of the plan, such as product and client development, worked well. Other aspects, such as patient adherence and collections, less so. Investors should focus upon the reality of building a service company from scratch in a regulated industry: it’s difficult. As much as they bear ultimate responsibility, it is way too simplistic simply to blame management for every failure or missed objective and to treat their explanations as excuses. Are we giving them a pass? No. We are simply understanding what starting a business (we have done it successfully) really means and how long it can take to achieve goals. Remember, we are not talking about a major enterprise with a huge budget, tremendous human resources, established connections, marketing, supply chain, legal, accounting ….
Reliq Health management did not pay sufficient attention to the administrative sides of the business. A good example is their admission many months back that some patients were not adherent and thus fees were not collectible. The problem was greater than the simple fact of non-adherence – more importantly, they were not aware of the extent of the problem (and should have been), which resulted in a delayed response. We could cite a number of examples, but the point is that the key administrative focus that every business must attend to was lacking. We see no purpose in playing the blame game; rather, as investors we should be concerned about having the right leadership (both executive management and board) who have the requisite expertise and focus to attend to all aspects of the business, with the necessary insight to fill any gaps. Money will be an issue, since collections are not yet at the level that will allow aggressive expansion to take place, and rather significant bills have been incurred these past months. That being said, progress is being made, which investors should see when the financials are released. So is the company being “rebuilt”? To a degree, yes. Should management have communicated this better and sooner? Absolutely.