I have nothing derogatory to say about Marty and E
Post# of 3844
Many astute, aging executives look for an alternative to finishing their careers working for someone else. The "big hit" shall we say. Lots of money to be made, short time period. They have excellent experience, solid business acumen, and good resumes and thus the credibility to logically be at the helm of something new. The real money in business is always starting your own company. So you pick an upcoming industry with the wind at its back (ewaste), a new cause celebre everyone's talking about, and configure some offering that's unique and has a fast, reasonable chance of a big payback. Ideally, it's a simple, easily executed plan, one that doesn't take much start-up cash so you're not going into debt yourself, and even better if it can pay you $350,000 per year as you execute it. You bring in a few key players with the horsepower to make it happen, offering them a big, fairly short-term pay back (1-2 years) along with yourself, as the brass ring. "Hey, put your nose to the grindstone and you'll retire wealthy in a year". Relatively small players for the grunt work, not anyone like Lee Iacocca or Melissa Mayer. They're not needed, plus they'd be too expensive. (Too bad Nixon's not still alive.)
This is my opinion only. Marty is not an evangelist bent on zero landfill and saving the world. Neither is he interested in slow organic growth thru more and more marginally profitable ewaste plants. What Marty espoused, when he thought the China plan was in play, 50% Q over Q growth could never be achieved this way and it would take years for what would always be a risky, chump change payback anyway. It was (is) the China strategy that held the real potential. The real brass ring is teaching a service business to the Chinese who are thirsty to develop past their heavy manufacturing success. Huge numbers of U.S. companies are jumping on this lucrative band wagon. But most are dealing in a much bigger realm, with bigger players, and they can more easily solve the accounting problem. The plan? A quick in and out: $20 million in last part of 2013, 20 Q1 2014, 30 Q2, 45 Q3, and 67.5 Q4. Bingo! Now what do you do? You use your M&A experience not to grow it any further. Why bother. You're done! You use it to sell it for a nice multiple of earnings and walk away very rich. No harm, no foul. The American dream. Just like developing a new unique internet media company or a killer APP. Of course, if massive growth can be predicted ongoing you stay in the game that much longer and amass an even bigger fortune and get your picture on the front of Business Week. No problem, an even more impressive legacy. Hell, who wouldn't do it.
But Marty missed one key element. As a new, tiny player how in the hell can you post China revenue, especially from partnering with schlock companies with questionable business practices. They were the path of least resistance, but it back fired. Now he's stuck with giving endless interviews and posing for myriad photographs, hence the worried, almost guilty look on his face, and keeping up the front, doing what he hoped could be avoided. China was the lightening strike, the genius behind it all. But it got stopped dead in its tracks. Is it still achievable? Who knows at this point
The U.S. plants are for show and to look like serious intent and buy-in to the ewaste dilemna (just like GOEz partnering with EWSI is for show only, or BP Oil commercials about how "green" they are).
So the investment community is sitting back to see if he can still pull it off.
What does this mean for investors? Short term EWSI is merely a flippers stock like so many others on the OTC, plain and simple. Take a position on a dip, sell on a pump. Buy back in for free shares. Wash, repeat, rinse.
Mid-term? 1.) If in 6-8 weeks we see China 2013 monies included and a re-start with all those partners who are now "on hold" for that 50% Q over Q growth, then as Sherlock said "the game is afoot". Without it Marty will walk, sell cheap, try something else.