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All posts by Gxeremio Dimsum

Aug 17th 2007, 06:58
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Frequent aquisitions vs Dividends
Re: Frequent aquisitions vs Dividends
IntLibber, I appreciate your focus on growing the real value of our company, but these concerns from investors (after all, many of us have been with BNT since before your IPO!) are not to be treated lightly.

130 million shares is enormous, and you have done several multi-million share payouts for various deals and acquisitions, which have diluted the value of shares for smaller investors like me. I too would like to see more regular financial statements, to get some sense of the cash flow and a better sense of what kind of dividend might be coming at the 100-sim milestone. I'm also interested in seeing how much of our investment has gone to salaries and benefits so that if any corrections are needed we can vote with our shares.

Also, growth in sim ownership is sporadic and not linear, which is understandable, but since 100 sims is the milestone for investors to receive a dividend, I for one would like you to focus on sim acquisition rather than portfolio diversification. It's taken half a year to get to 39 sims, right?

In short, BNT seems to be well run and seems to have a good strategy for growth. However, it is by no means a "blue chip" company and investors are reasonably concerned when there is little solid financial information and no dividend payout. We need better metrics to judge the health of our company.

By the way, regarding the Microsoft analogy, Microsoft's shareholders were rewarded by capital appreciation (a rise in their stock's value) even though they didn't receive dividends for many years. Between 9 stock splits and the growing price of stock, shareholders gained 30 times their investment during that period (and you had better believe many of them sold off part of their shares to cash in that value). Then, as you will no doubt remember, Microsoft began paying dividends like crazy, at one point paying out $32 billion in one fell swoop ($3 per share), and now gives out dividends on a quarterly basis. BNT's shareholders, on the other hand, get no dividends AND get no capital appreciation - not a great deal. As John D. Rockefeller, who was no day trader, said, "The only thing that gives me pleasure is to see my dividend coming in."
Aug 17th 2007, 09:11
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Frequent aquisitions vs Dividends
Re: Frequent aquisitions vs Dividends
Well Dezmond, I don't think there's a "large flood of share holders trying to cash out". When someone is selling several hundred thousand shares at a rock-bottom price, it probably has to do more with that shareholder's need for liquidity than lack of faith in the company. As well all know, with the gambling ban and the subsequent Ginko failure, liquidity is hard to come by without an infusion of RL cash. And no one wants to throw good money after bad.

And to put it in perspective, last week less than half of one percent of BNT stock changed hands, and this week will probably be the same. Hardly a panic selling environment.

However, I do agree with you that I'd like to see a large-scale stock buyback, if for no other reason than to decrease the number of outstanding shares in BNT. Now, those stocks need to be held and not given out in acquisition deals or stock options for them to have any effect.
Aug 22nd 2007, 11:48
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Totally Flabbergasted
Re: Totally Flabbergasted
"Firstly, your day trading doesn't put capital in the hands of BNT."

Not directly, but in the long run a stock with growing value DOES bring more investors eager to support BNT. I'm having a hard time understanding your obsessive phobia of "day traders", who seem to be by your definition people who hold stock for less than 2 years. Do you basically think a stock should have an IPO, then no one should buy or sell for years and years? Wouldn't that, you know, stall the stock price?

"BNT stock has dropped for one reason: Ginko held 11 million shares of it, and now holds 10 million shares. They have had bills to pay, and the way the GPB is being rigged by the management at WSE, Ginko is in for a rough ride."

This is actually a golden opportunity for the company to buy back stocks at less than half the price it sold them for. Putting these stocks out of circulation would be a HUGE boost to your shareholders. And that's what your job is: to deliver value to your shareholders. So c'mon, help out GPB and your shareholders by buying back as much stock as you can below, say, .60 a share. If we could get the number of outstanding shares down from 130 million to, say, 100 million, you'd really be doing something great.

"As for our growth rate: this shows another lack of perception. We started at 1/2 sim in October, we grew to 10 sims in December, 12 in January, 27 in June, and 39 in July. Thus we exhibit a growth rate that varies between 270%-6000% every six months, or between 45% - 1000% per month."

Hang on. It's almost the end of August, and there are still 39 sims. So that's a monthly growth rate of 0%. If you want to maintain a 45% growth rate, you'd better buy another 18 sims this week.

"As previously stated in our prospectus, we understand the economics of exponential growth, and we know how to achieve it. Dividends do not achieve exponential growth."

Perhaps. But the current system is creating not only a loss of share value, but untold opportunity cost for your shareholders who are NOT selling. Unless you're an employee of BNT, the growth rate of the company is no boon UNLESS IT RESULTS IN INCREASED SHARE VALUE. Please focus on increasing the value of BNT stock by issuing dividends and reducing the outstanding shares.
Aug 22nd 2007, 13:36
Gxeremio Dimsum 		SLCapEx Suggestions » Shareholders meetings requirement
Shareholders meetings requirement
I would like to encourage you to add to the monthly meeting requirement that minutes from the meeting be posted each month as well. That way, the many investors who cannot attend will still be in touch with the discussions and announcements that took place.
Aug 22nd 2007, 13:41
Gxeremio Dimsum 		SLCapEx Suggestions » Shareholders meetings requirement
Re: Shareholders meetings requirement
On a related note, is there any plan to set up a system for shareholder voting and/or proxy voting using the Capex platform?
Aug 23rd 2007, 05:27
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Totally Flabbergasted
Re: Totally Flabbergasted
Int, thanks for responding. You know well that in spite of my disagreements with you on what constitutes smart strategy in this market, I do respect the work you do and consider you a friend.

I was not aware that you personally held 110 million of the 130 million outstanding shares. When there is an acquisition deal, do those stocks for swapping come out of your personal portfolio? It might be a good idea to distinguish more clearly between what YOU own and what the COMPANY owns. As CEO, of course it makes sense you would be the proxy voter for the company's shares, but I'd like to know which are yours, and which are "ours." Otherwise we're not really shareholders; we're just loaning your our money and hoping you pay it back.

Defining P/E (price/earnings ratio, for those of you just joining us) WOULD be a valuable exercise if we had more metrics to make such a calculation, and even more valuable yet if we had metrics from multiple companies to compare stocks. To my knowledge, those do not exist in any easy-to-calculate form. Calculating PEG (price/earnings divided by growth over a period of time) is impossible for BNT since the company is less than one year old. If you had to take a stab at it, what would you say the P/E ratio is of BNT stock if valued at L$.5? How about L$1?

Also, when I've wandered around BNT's mini-continent, I see a lot more "for rent" signs than I used to - what percentage of BNT land is lying fallow?

Guardian, you raise good points about the "S-curve" as well as your point about former casinos (such as Myth) entering the land business. It would be wonderful to put them out of their misery by buying up those companies as fast as possible, but I wonder if BNT would have any more luck filling them with renters than the former casinos are having. It seems to me from casual observation that we have slightly lower concurrency rates in SL, combined with a glut of casino land being repurposed for rentals and a pullback of the RL money that flowed in during the first half of 2007. Oh, and don't forget about the giant bank collapse and stock market crashes that have made investors poor and scared. :-)

All in all, it makes me feel just a little better to have the chance to talk about it.
Aug 29th 2007, 07:29
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Totally Flabbergasted
Shocked
"The shares put up for sale at IPO were my shares in my company, built by me, that had a pre-IPO auction value of over 65k USD. It is therefore presumptuous to presume that the non-IPO shares belong to the IPO shareholders."

Whoa. This should not be a publicly traded company, then. It's a privately held company. You abused the IPO process to present yourself as a publicly traded company when in fact you were just selling your own shares. "Stockholders," who in your view were offered a paltry 20-25% of the company, are really just loaning you money and can never have a substantive say in how the company is run. In fact, technically anything that was purchased with company stock doesn't belong to the non-Int shareholders in any substantive sense, right?

It is absolutely NOT presumptuous to think that non-IPO shares belong to the IPO shareholders, unless that is clarified otherwise. Name one RL company that is publicly traded but which has assumed all non-IPO shares belong to the founder.

If this is in fact a privately held company, you need to get it off the publicly traded markets. This would never ever ever be considered acceptable by SEC laws.
Aug 29th 2007, 19:59
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Totally Flabbergasted
Founders get the lion's share?
"“Name one RL company that is publicly traded but which has assumed all non-IPO shares belong to the founder.”

Wal-Mart Stores Ford Motor Co. Samsung Carrefour Group
Martha Stewart Omnimedia Fiat Group Ito-Yokado
Ifi Istituto Finanziario Industriale S.p.A. Motorola etc. etc."

Source?

The issue here is not whether the founder gets stock options at the IPO - there is a clear precedent for that. The issue is whether a founder keeps 100 million shares, releasing only 30 million (less than that, actually, since they didn't all sell) to the public, and without making it clear that such is the case. Again, it's the <i>assumption</i> that all non-IPO shares belong to the founder that I take issue with. Also, I have yet to find a publicly traded company where one founder owns a controlling interest.

And one more thing - some of the companies in your list above (Koch Industries, Robert Bosch GMBH, ALDI Group, Auchan, and many others) are not publicly traded. They are privately held. http://familybusinessmagazine.com/topglobal.html
Sep 1st 2007, 05:43
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Is there still somebody out there who gives a damn
Re: Is there still somebody out there who gives a damn
I also am still concerned and closely monitoring the situation, but I'm not interested in rehashing the same things over and over, and certainly don't want to be part of the flame wars that have caused several discussions to be locked.

But like you said, these forums have provided quite a bit of valuable information I wouldn't have otherwise:
- BNT founder and CEO isn't concerned about the value of BNT stock, and believes that anyone who is is a "daytrader" who adds nothing to BNT's future. He has no plans to keep the stock at a minimum value by buying back shares for the treasury.
- BNT founder believes he was really selling his own shares in the IPO, rather than the company's shares to raise capital.
- All acquisitions that involved stock swaps were paid for by BNT CEO's private portfolio of shares.
- Because so few shares are actually owned by other shareholders (less than a quarter of the outstanding shares), the selloff by one major shareholder (Portacarrero of Ginko fame) is what started the slide in stock value.
- BNT will almost certainly not meet its projections to have enough sims (100) to provide a dividend this year.
- BNT's latest product (which may or may not be against TOS) is primarily designed to raise the value of private estates like BNT's Ancapistan by forcing Lindens to become more responsive.

So I'm not really interested in the tit-for-tat that often happens here, but the forums have provided valuable intel. I just wish I had this info BEFORE I bought up all those stocks when the price was L$.50, thinking I was getting a bargain! :-)
Sep 1st 2007, 13:18
Gxeremio Dimsum 		Brautigan & Tuck Holdings Public Forum » Is there still somebody out there who gives a damn
Re: Is there still somebody out there who gives a damn
"By the way did you dump your BNT stock?"

No, I'm not dumping it, for now anyways, for several key reasons:
1. I think the price to earnings ratio of BNT is better than the current stock price, even if I disagree with the way the company is run. (Note: company value is not easily calculated by looking at the cost of sims. There are a lot of other factors, such as customer base and build quality, that set BNT's continent apart from other, similar attempts.)
2. Too many people are dumping right now. The price has gotten to a point where a single large investor could buy up hundreds of thousands of shares fairly easily. I'm waiting for something like that to happen.
3. I *need* to sell for more than I bought for. Selling for less than what I paid at this point, when I don't need the liquidity right away, would be a dumb move.

By the way, for those of you confused as to why IntLibber keeps calling me Red, I have two alts in SL - Gxeremio Dimsum, and Redaktisto Noble. It's no secret they're both me (that info has even always been in the profile of each). But Int knew me more as Red, since that's the alt I used to do work for SLNN when I was an editor there. Now that SLNN is behind me, I use Gxeremio more often. In case anyone cared. :-)