Once upon a time in an oil company far far away, there was an...

Once upon a time in an oil company far far away, there was an alien fly on an alien wall who heard this snippet of conversation.

”but the share price is crap, I’m down lots, what are you guys doing about it?”

”We know, we don’t understand it either, the market doesn’t appreciate our potential, it isn’t rewarding us for our success”

” yeh well, I don’t understand it either, and there’s a lot more like me”

”We know, we’re shareholders too, we share your frustration.”

”yeh well, what are you guys gonna do about things?”

”we’ll keep working diligently on our operations, we have one of the finest on ground teams in the whole region, and we will make sure everyone knows about our success, we’ll leave no stone unturned in our quest to demonstrate how undervalued our company is”

”yeh well, that sounds good but is that all you can do?, how about buying some shares yourself if it’s so undervalued?”

”that’s a possibility, but we’re just about to release a share buy back announcement , and we’re sure that it will help in bringing our market cap more in line with what the company is fundamentally worth”

”yeh well, I only know the share price is in the shitter, nobody likes the business we’re in and the galactic economy is heading for the pits. Are you sure this buy back will help?”

”of course, give it a few weeks* and you’ll see, none of us on the board want to see our shareholder value go down under our watch”
. * one alien week = 6 Earth weeks

” ah ok, I suppose I’ve hung on this long, but some times I wish I had put my money into dilithee-M stocks”

”Trust us we are management, we know what we are doing”

At this point the fly dropped to the ground, it had a very short lifespan and had spent most of it listening the conversation.

This was a story originally published in Galactic tales of wonder and suspense.