announcement..are we serious?

Please board do something…anything really! In my view, the sp is affected by much more than just general market sentiment.

I recently outlined my concerns with what the company is actually doing strategically. These concerns are still very much relevant.

However, the situation is compounded further by today’s baffling announcement. Clearly there is no communication expert involved in the announcement process and, more importantly, imo, the announcements show a complete absence of common sense about how to communicate with shareholders/stakeholders.

Communication lesson 1: do not unnecessarily repeat bad news! The information about previous issues was out there in the market – more than half of the current announcement repeats the problems HOG has experienced before! Why???? What are you possibly seeking to gain from that other than to push just a few more shareholders into the “sell” column? Tell us instead about what you are going to do next to fix issues and give shareholders something to look forward to. We know things have been bad…we don’t need reminding (my avg. price was 7x the current sp – I really don’t need reminders that things didn’t go well in the past!).

Communication lesson 2: if you do not have anything “nice” to say, don’t say anything at all. (obviously this does not hold true for material issues given continuous disclosure obligations). You have been extremely good at non communication over the past year or so. Now, for some reason, you feel the need to communicate non-essential, pre-testing, bad and confusing news. Again I ask myself,…why????? Why not wait until you have the results of the re-testing itself?? Like the sp needed just a bit more uncertainty!!

Communication lesson 3: don’t purposefully create more uncertainty and un-ease when your sp is already at historically low levels! The announcement, once all the semi bad news has been put out there, says nothing about time frames when re-testing results, etc. can be expected. So, are we now living in expectation for the next few days, weeks or months??

Frankly, if you controlled the register, surely you would exit the guys running this. This process is just a reflection of the endemic problems this company is experiencing imo. The Board has some respected names on it….can you please provide the direction and oversight this company so desperately needs? Yes, that may mean having some serious discussions with your CEO and spending a couple of days in the office as a group setting a clear strategy and prioritizing actions (and overseeing those actions). Just do it!

If I sound frustrated, that is because I am.