| Is Deathwatch still
being updated? |
| No. We've frozen
the predictions as of January 1, 2001. Deathwatch remains as
a record of the dot-com bubble. |
| What
about companies whose death dates have passed? |
 |
They're dead,
or close to death.Some were bought out by other companies
at bargain prices. Some cut costs drastically and are
on life support. Some have ceased operations. Some have
taken on heavy debt. We note their fate on Deathwatch.
If you owned
any of them, you're not happy.
|
|
| How
does Deathwatch work? |
|
Deathwatch is an
automated screen for money-losing companies running out of
cash. It's based on the 10-Q quarterly reports filed with
the Securities and Exchange Commission, retrieved directly
from the SEC's online system, Edgar.
|
| What
are the criteria for Deathwatch? |
|
The liquid assets
(cash and securities) of the company are added to determine
how much money it has left. This is divided by the losses
for the quarter to determine how much time the company has
before it runs out of money. The time left is added to the
date of the last quarterly report to determine the death
date. Selected companies are sorted in order of death
date, soonest first, and reported on our Deathwatch
page.
|
| What
does this predict? |
| When
the cash runs out, something has to happen. There are
only a few options - another public offering, taking on debt,
a merger or acquisition, or bankrupcy. All those options are
bad from a stockholder perspective. It's a valuable reality
check for money-losing "growth" companies. |
| How
can a company get off the Deathwatch list? |
|
Report a profitable
quarter.
|
| How
accurate is the data? |
|
The fundamentals
data is from official filings with the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission. Companies do make errors in their filings;
we've seen several companies report zero liquid assets to
the SEC. (We note bad information where we are aware of it.)
That's their error and their problem; if they file a corrected
10-K or 10-Q, like they're supposed to, we'll pick it up on
our next scan. The market data shown is simply a link to NASDAQ,
with which we have no connection, and we are not responsible
for that data.
.Please let
us know of any other errors.
|