Comment by mrmoribundon Oct 27, 2023 12:51pm
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Post# 35704349
RE:Comment
RE:CommentThis company is such an interesting puzzle.
I admit I wonder sometimes if I'm the sucker at the table. I also own shares in Titan Logix, also based in Edmonton. They're super conservative and, as such, keep tons of cash on their balance sheet which sometimes, in part, they're looking to invest. I've considered sending Titan a suggestion to the effect that they might think of sinking some into cross-town Vertex.
(They currently have a position in Bri-chem. Vertex looks more intriguing to me.) But then I imagine them quietly laughing to themselves, like, oh look, another out-of-province pigeon buying into Vertex. Ha ha.
And there is that post from earlier in the year about management allegedly being a gongshow.
One other interesting detail. Noteworthy how you have three directors each owning 10+ million shares while the other three directors own zero shares. Zero. Just options. But I've seen situations where that kind of thing is a bad sign--but others where it means nothing.
My best guess is that TS has, over the years, "built" a reputation as not a great CEO (and that has turned alot of people off), but that he has quietly been getting better at it. People can change. The accounting background of him and others at the top leaves me pretty confident that the books are legitimate.
One thing I do like about this story. If you go back over the past, say, three years of the MD&A and look at the Outlook section . . . it has never been, as far as I can tell, puffed up. So if you look at a quarter that was weak, the Outlook section in the MD&A from the previous quarter tends to acknowledge that things are soft. So credibility-wise that's a positive.
Better visibility coming soon with the release of Q3 results.