Yeah but most of Funcom's stock is held by the company principals and a few financial intitutions. It's not even on the market. What Gaute Godager does with his is a question.
Yes, I'd personally love to see the package that was inevitably thrown in to make Gaute leave the company he co-founded quietly. More than the shmuck deserves, I'd wager.
While I agree with you there we might not as a community realize or appreciate the tremendous amount of work Gaute probably put into AO and AoC and not to mention the intellectual property he produced. So for those reasons any severance package provided to him is probably reasonable given the circumstances and is probably very little considering what other top corporate executives in the United States get for leaving a company in bad financial shape (as opposed to mediocre!).
When I decided to short it a large part of my information came from a Funcom analysis done in July...here is a snippet: Edit: This is copyrighted crap...if you present it on the AoC boards make sure you present it as such.
Recommendation Funcom stock has bounced from $25 to $55 and all the way back to $21 in the last 4 months. This type of volatility is directly associated to the risks involved in investing in a company that has its fortunes essentially tied to one product. In addition, it is heavily institutionally owned and lightly traded, resulting in larger fluctuations due to smaller outstanding share amounts. Investors should be prepared for internal fluctuations in Funcom stock and also external fluctuations due to the uncertainty in the macroeconomy of Europe and North America. Understandably the volume of trading in Funcom stock increased prior to Age of Conan's release. Since then the volume has decreased considerably, and the news from this post-release analysis is not good. Despite a low volume of trading the stock has fallen to development levels to the mid-20s. Investors are not willing to invest in Funcom and this seems directly related to a lack of confidence in its flagship product Age of Conan. Fundamentally Age of Conan seems to suffer from many of the same afflictions that plagued other massive multiplayer games. It is resource intensive, buggy, and unfinished. Resource intensive games can severely impact retention from initial sales due to unsatisfactory performance upon installation. Buggy games drive away the more casual players who are unwilling to accept anything less than a polished game experience. Unfinished games that make wide scale changes to mechanics or leave players with nothing to do lead to subscription cancellations by dedicated players. And even if these concerns are not completely accurate it remains the consensus of the game's community. It does not help that Funcom has been absolutely silent to any requests for information. The only information to this date we were able to obtain came from Funcom CFO Olav Sandnes, who promised us a subscription portfolio three weeks ago. Five days later we were told that such information was unavailable and that we would need to wait until the Q2 report August 15th. As mentioned before, all things being equal, Funcom requires a subscription base of 200,000 to maintain its current operational and personnel expenditures. Without these subscriptions Funcom will have to cut back on its aggressive growth model or it will have to raise additional capital via private or public equity offerings. Either of these options will significantly dilute the value of Funcom stock. Additionally 200,000 subscriptions is the threshold number (all other segments being relatively stagnant) to justify Funcom's 1.2 billion market cap. Any subscription number less than this means that Funcom is overvalued. Given the state of Age of Conan as of this moment, this type of subscription rate is unlikely. It is obvious from the various communications we have had with Funcom investor relations staff that something is awry. A direct investigation into the forums where subscribers of Age of Conan congregate reveals a far more grim picture. Many of the different "worlds" that subscribers participate in are facing massive attrition. There is a point of no return for such worlds as they require a considerable number of players to be functional.[1] Although estimates for these types of games are notoriously hard to make, it is a fair assumption that the number is nowhere near 200,000. Although boasting 49 servers/gameworlds Age of Conan would be fortunate to have more than 1000 active players on half of these. The high end requirements seem to have struck the European playerbase especially hard. Overall, using all the empirical data histories from other games and an admittedly subjective analysis of the game's current health, the number of subscriptions from initial box sales is going to be ~90,000, +- 40,000. Given our estimate range of 50,000 to 130,000 subscriptions a price target is hard to formulate. In such cases a range is more appropriate. Eitherway, it is very hard to validate Funcom's current stock price. It is recommended that current investors should sell Funcom stock and future investors should short Funcom stock until a justifiable market cap is reached. 50,000 subscriber 6 month target (Feb 15th): $8.50 90,000 subscriber 6 month target (Feb 15th): $11.20 130,000 subscriber 6 month target (Feb 15th): $16.60
[1] For those unfamiliar with the mechanics of how these "virtual worlds" work, imagine an arcade game with 5000 joysticks. Everytime that "game/world" with 5000 joysticks is filled by 5000 players, another arcade "world" with 5000 joysticks appears, is filled, etc.. You can never switch between worlds, and each world has exactly the same game world as the other. Some game worlds stay filled, while others die off. These game worlds become essentially non-functional below a certain number of players, as many aspects of the game require multiple concurrent human users. Popular games introduce more game worlds, while games losing subscribers will move players from worlds with few players to other worlds with more players to fill the gaps and reduce maintenance costs.
HAHA funcom now is at $5 which means this guy must think Funcom has like 500 subscribers which shows that it is flawed and that Age of Conan is actually booming look at xfire!
HAHA funcom now is at $5 which means this guy must think Funcom has like 500 subscribers which shows that it is flawed and that Age of Conan is actually booming look at xfire!
Not according to the math, 500 subs would be in penny stocks.
By the way, $5 is not something to be boasting about, unless you are short selling.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
HAHA funcom now is at $5 which means this guy must think Funcom has like 500 subscribers which shows that it is flawed and that Age of Conan is actually booming look at xfire!
Not according to the math, 500 subs would be in penny stocks.
By the way, $5 is not something to be boasting about, unless you are short selling.
Isnt 5$ actually 5 Kronur or whatever it is? like 1.25$ US?
As for your sig they put their faith in government when their greedy actions have driven the whole nation into an economic slide.... Then they cry for help... otherwise they know it all.....
Isnt 5$ actually 5 Kronur or whatever it is? like 1.25$ US?
As for your sig they put their faith in government when their greedy actions have driven the whole nation into an economic slide.... Then they cry for help... otherwise they know it all.....
As for the $5, I assumed that Champion Defender ILOVEFUNCOM was telling the truth and was using the $5 as USD since the dollar sign was in front of the number.
For the signature, by meaning, "they" you are referring to Pessimistic Conservatives, right? Which my signature is still correct as is, "they" would have not wanted a government free-money bailout (a gift from the Prince), but rather have the market execute mergers and buyouts (as what happened with Wachovia recently). Worst case, have the government provide loans to be repaid, such as with the automaker Chrysler in 1979.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
Isnt 5$ actually 5 Kronur or whatever it is? like 1.25$ US?
The currency actually makes no difference. A company whose stock is selling $1.25 stock might be doing quite well. It’s the delta that you look at. If a company drops from $30 dollars a share to $10 dollars a share, that sucks. If a company goes from 25 cents a share to $1.25 a share, that’s great. In Funcom’s case they went from over 50 to sub 5 in fewer than six months. That’s a 90% drop. Imagine you put your life savings in Funcom stock when it was over 50. You would be looking for the tallest building in your area about now.
Isnt 5$ actually 5 Kronur or whatever it is? like 1.25$ US?
The currency actually makes no difference. A company whose stock is selling $1.25 stock might be doing quite well. It’s the delta that you look at. If a company drops from $30 dollars a share to $10 dollars a share, that sucks. If a company goes from 25 cents a share to $1.25 a share, that’s great. In Funcom’s case they went from over 50 to sub 5 in fewer than six months. That’s a 90% drop. Imagine you put your life savings in Funcom stock when it was over 50. You would be looking for the tallest building in your area about now.
I understand what you are saying.. but it is slightly wrong because of instituitional investors (the majority of trades).
once a stock gets under $2 (USD), which Funcom currently is, everyone except individual investors will avoid it... it's termed a junk stock or penny stock. Companies can't invest their pension funds in it, most mutual funds can't touch it etc. In other words, its MUCH MUCH more likely for a $5 stock to go to $10 then it is for a $1 stock to go to $2. You could see this in the 'slide' after August 16th. On August 16th, the stock tanked because of the financial report, but the slide after that came becuase institutional investors were being forced to sell their shares once Funcom entered the 'penny' arena.
Comments
Yes, I'd personally love to see the package that was inevitably thrown in to make Gaute leave the company he co-founded quietly. More than the shmuck deserves, I'd wager.
While I agree with you there we might not as a community realize or appreciate the tremendous amount of work Gaute probably put into AO and AoC and not to mention the intellectual property he produced. So for those reasons any severance package provided to him is probably reasonable given the circumstances and is probably very little considering what other top corporate executives in the United States get for leaving a company in bad financial shape (as opposed to mediocre!).
HAHA funcom now is at $5 which means this guy must think Funcom has like 500 subscribers which shows that it is flawed and that Age of Conan is actually booming look at xfire!
Not according to the math, 500 subs would be in penny stocks.
By the way, $5 is not something to be boasting about, unless you are short selling.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
Not according to the math, 500 subs would be in penny stocks.
By the way, $5 is not something to be boasting about, unless you are short selling.
Isnt 5$ actually 5 Kronur or whatever it is? like 1.25$ US?
As for your sig they put their faith in government when their greedy actions have driven the whole nation into an economic slide.... Then they cry for help... otherwise they know it all.....
-Lum
As for the $5, I assumed that Champion Defender ILOVEFUNCOM was telling the truth and was using the $5 as USD since the dollar sign was in front of the number.
For the signature, by meaning, "they" you are referring to Pessimistic Conservatives, right? Which my signature is still correct as is, "they" would have not wanted a government free-money bailout (a gift from the Prince), but rather have the market execute mergers and buyouts (as what happened with Wachovia recently). Worst case, have the government provide loans to be repaid, such as with the automaker Chrysler in 1979.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
The currency actually makes no difference. A company whose stock is selling $1.25 stock might be doing quite well. It’s the delta that you look at. If a company drops from $30 dollars a share to $10 dollars a share, that sucks. If a company goes from 25 cents a share to $1.25 a share, that’s great. In Funcom’s case they went from over 50 to sub 5 in fewer than six months. That’s a 90% drop. Imagine you put your life savings in Funcom stock when it was over 50. You would be looking for the tallest building in your area about now.
At 9:12AM : 3.79 Down 0.61 (13.86%)
The currency actually makes no difference. A company whose stock is selling $1.25 stock might be doing quite well. It’s the delta that you look at. If a company drops from $30 dollars a share to $10 dollars a share, that sucks. If a company goes from 25 cents a share to $1.25 a share, that’s great. In Funcom’s case they went from over 50 to sub 5 in fewer than six months. That’s a 90% drop. Imagine you put your life savings in Funcom stock when it was over 50. You would be looking for the tallest building in your area about now.
I understand what you are saying.. but it is slightly wrong because of instituitional investors (the majority of trades).
once a stock gets under $2 (USD), which Funcom currently is, everyone except individual investors will avoid it... it's termed a junk stock or penny stock. Companies can't invest their pension funds in it, most mutual funds can't touch it etc. In other words, its MUCH MUCH more likely for a $5 stock to go to $10 then it is for a $1 stock to go to $2. You could see this in the 'slide' after August 16th. On August 16th, the stock tanked because of the financial report, but the slide after that came becuase institutional investors were being forced to sell their shares once Funcom entered the 'penny' arena.