I agree with you
@attitudes that hotcopper is used by many potential investors as a perusal prior to investing in a company; shareholders discuss company history, they can search company announcements and holders discuss these in detail, particularly long term holders who have studied the stock and are more intimate with the finer details than an outsider reading one announcement in isolation.
I however do disagree with your view that OBJ management underestimated the power of hotcopper. For anyone who has been watching this stock for many years (> decade in my case) they will remember well read posters talking up this stock and extracting details about the company that make you wonder where they got this information, I am not implying any insider trading, but more like an inner circle if you are catching my drift. The time spent drafting the posts for hotcopper amounted to many hours of 'work'. I did however see correlation between posters and the standard times of their posts were between 9.00am to 5.00pm on weekdays...kind of like they were doing it as a job...see what I am saying here
This was around the same time as Baker & Young were brokering positions in OBJ, since then I understand Tom Booreman has moved on from B&Y...I haven't heard from ABDM for about the same amount of time...I think even if the OBJ executive didn't know much about hotcopper they knew enough to hire companies that did....
Even the old watch of OBJ have moved on, they might be like me and predominantly watch from the sidelines but my reason is not to look for openings to buy in, but to understand the how a company can influence a crowd even though from the outside without rose coloured glasses it is the most clear case of chasing a rainbow on the ASX. But the rainbow doesn't have the blue sky potential as it did in 2014 when the crowd thought that signing up one behemoth FMCG company meant the OBJ would be worth 65c. Since then the company has only lost money and share value, and yes that includes last quarter because even though in theory they broke just green of even it was because of the tax incentive but that is only paid annually so should be divided over the four quarters, so yes in reality OBJ still running at a loss. And remember, the idea is not to break even, it is to pay a dividend to the owners of the 2 billion shares . Something at least equivalent bank interest rates sounds reasonable. There is nothing in the products OBJ has in the pipeline or on the market that can achieve this. And we saw in 2014 how long it takes to get a product on the market globally and even then still not break even. So what's next...my bet is a capital raise to keep the executive team in a job, that is certainly a priority of any executive. When this will occur is the only bet worth taking with OBJ. The only reason I have come out of sitting on the sidelines with OBJ is people may be thinking of buying shares in OBJ due to perceived hype, hiring consulting firms etc...look at the maths...even with another product should it ever eventuate, the purpose of a company is to make money to provide this to the owners (shareholders as dividends), how can anyone say that this will occur, even with bodyguard or anything similar being put on the market. By that stage there could be 3 billion shares on issue to try to pay dividends to owners; and that dog will never reach its tail however hard it tries. It's just a matter of how long it tries for which is the game here.
All in my opinion of course, all conspiracies are in jest, good luck to all, no one wants to see people lose money and for potential investors, please don't consider going all in with this puppy for Pete's sake.
Wanderdog
(20min delay)