Archive for May, 2008
SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Axesstel, Inc. (AMEX:AFT) announced the staff of the American Stock Exchange (Amex) notified Axesstel that Amex has accepted Axesstel’s plan to regain compliance with Amex’s continued listing standards.
As previously announced, on March 5, 2008, Axesstel received notice from Amex indicating Axesstel was not in compliance with Section 1003(a)(i) and Section 1003(a)(ii) of the Amex Company Guide. Specifically, Amex staff noted Axesstel’s stockholder’s equity was less than $2,000,000 and losses from continuing operations and/or net losses were incurred in two out of the three most recent fiscal years, and that Axesstel’s stockholder’s equity was less than $4,000,000 and losses from continuing operations and net losses were incurred in three out of the four most recent fiscal years. In response, on April 7, 2008, Axesstel submitted a plan of compliance to Amex. The plan of compliance outlined the actions Axesstel is taking to increase its profitability.
On May 2, 2008, Axesstel reported first quarter 2008 financial results demonstrating significant improvements over first quarter 2007 and fourth quarter 2007. First quarter of 2008 revenues were $24.6 million, including data products revenue of $13.6 million. This compares to first quarter of 2007 revenues of $25.2 million, including $5.1 million from data products, and fourth quarter of 2007 revenues of $13.8 million, including data products revenue of $9.2 million. Gross margin for the first quarter of 2008 was $6.6 million, or a record 27 percent of revenue, compared to $4.6 million, or 18 percent of revenue, for the same period last year and $2.9 million, or 21 percent of revenue, for the prior quarter. Net income for the first quarter of 2008 was $257,000 or $0.01 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $1.2 million or $0.05 per share for the first quarter of 2007 and a net loss of $5.0 million or $0.22 per share for the fourth quarter of 2007.
On May 5, 2008, Amex notified Axesstel that Amex accepted the plan of compliance as it made a reasonable demonstration of Axesstel’s ability to regain compliance with the continued listing standards by September 7, 2009. Accordingly, Axesstel was granted an extension until September 7, 2009 to regain compliance with the continued listing standards.
Axesstel is not currently in compliance with Amex continued listing standards and its listing on Amex is being continued pursuant to the extension granted following Amex’s review of the plan of compliance discussed above. Axesstel will be subject to periodic review by Amex during the extension period. Continued listing on Amex is dependent upon making progress consistent with the plan of compliance or in regaining compliance with the continued listing standards by the end of the extension period.
ABOUT AXESSTEL, INC.
Axesstel (AMEX:AFT) is a recognized industry leader in the design and development of fixed wireless voice and broadband data products. Axesstel’s best in class product portfolio includes wireless web computers, broadband modems, 3G gateways, voice/data terminals, fixed wireless desktop phones and public call office phones for access to online computing, high-speed data and voice calling services. The company delivers innovative fixed wireless solutions to leading telecommunications operators and distributors worldwide. Axesstel is headquartered in San Diego, California with a research and development center in Seoul, South Korea. For more information on Axesstel, visit www.axesstel.com.
© 2007 Axesstel, Inc. All rights reserved. The Axesstel logo is a trademark of Axesstel, Inc
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SlideShare, Inc., the world’s largest community for sharing presentations, today announced it has secured $3 million in series A funding, led by Venrock. As part of this round, SlideShare will be adding David Siminoff, a general partner at Venrock, to its board of directors.
Siminoff joins an esteemed group of SlideShare investors and advisory board, including Hal R. Varian, chief economist at Google; Guy Kawasaki, founder, Truemors and Alltop and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures; Ross Mayfield, co-founder and chairman at Socialtext; Dave McClure, startup advisor and angel investor; Marc Cuban, founder of Broadcast.com; Ariel Poler, internet entrepreneur and investor; Yee Lee, entrepreneur and startup advisor; Jonathan Abrams, founder and CEO at Socializr and Saul Klein, founding partner of The Accelerator Group.
SlideShare will use the financing to expand its San Francisco operations, invest in product development and accelerate customer adoption. Using SlideShare, individuals and organizations can easily upload presentations for free, to share their ideas, connect with others, and generate leads for their businesses. Anyone on the web can find presentations on topics that interest them. They can also tag, download, or embed presentations into their own blogs, websites, or social networks. Slideshows can be shared publicly or privately, and can be combined with audio to make “slidecasts”.
“Our use of the Internet is evolving from consuming and sharing text-based information – like email, news and blogs – to visual communication, using imagery and video,” said David Siminoff, general partner, Venrock. “With its focus on presentations, SlideShare blends the ability to communicate both verbal and visual elements through the most popular social media platforms. Putting your PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare is as easy as uploading and sharing a picture of your vacation on the Web.”
To date users have posted more than 300,000 presentations from 165 countries in more than 55 languages. Whether you’re a professor sharing your lecture with students or a speaker trying to connect with a broader audience, SlideShare is the easiest way to get your slides on the web and share them with the audience that matters.
With the latest investment, SlideShare will add David Siminoff to the board of directors who serves as a general partner at Venrock, a premier venture capital firm established by the Rockefeller family. Siminoff began his career in the media business prior to his entrepreneurial pursuits in technology. Before spending a decade at Capital Research, making early investments in Yahoo!, AOL, Amazon and eBay, Siminoff founded and later sold EastNet, a syndicate barter company, enabling television stations in Eastern Europe to trade American TV programs for advertising time from major brands. He also co-founded 4INFO and most recently, he served as chairman, president and CEO of Spark Networks. Venrock’s Dev Khare will also be actively involved with SlideShare.
“SlideShare fundamentally changes the way that people share presentations,” said Rashmi Sinha, CEO, SlideShare. “Millions of presentations are shared every day across the globe; presentations have become the primary way to illustrate your business idea. The Web and rise of social networking has added new dimensions – users now have the access and ability to share ideas on an enormous scale. This combination of trends is what led us to create SlideShare, and support from Venrock will help us take it to the next level. We want every presentation in the world to be shared on SlideShare.”
About SlideShare, Inc.
SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. SlideShare gives users such as professionals, academics and authors the ability to publish and share presentations over the Web, on their blog, website, facebook profile or on slideshare.net. Founded in 2007, the company is privately held and based in San Francisco, California and New Delhi, India. For more information visit www.slideshare.net.
About Venrock
Venrock is a premier venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Israel. Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock continues a seven-decade tradition of partnering with entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. Having invested $1.9 billion in 405 companies resulting in over 120 IPOs over the past 39 years, Venrock’s investment returns place it among the top tier venture capital firms that have achieved consistently superior performance. With a primary focus on technology, healthcare, and energy, portfolio companies have included Adnexus Therapeutics, Apple Computer, Centocor, Check Point Software, DoubleClick, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, StrataCom, and Vontu. For more information, please visit Venrock’s website at www.venrock.com.
Take-Two Interactive (Nasdaq: TTWO) announced record sales of Grand Theft Auto IV. Approximately six million units of the video game have sold globally since the Apr 29 launch. The estimated retail value of these sales is $500 million. Nearly 3.6 million units sold in the first day.
Shares of TTWO have been trading in a range as investors await the outcome of a takeover proposal by Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS). The fiscal 2008 consensus earnings estimate for TTWO had declined by two cents over the past 30 days, though it would seem the strong launch of Grand Theft Auto IV should cause brokerage analysts to revisit their forecasts.
A more broad way to take advantage of the video game space would be to buy shares of Gamestop (NYSE: GME), who profits regardless of which video game or system does well. GME likely accounted for a sizeable percentage of Grand Theft Auto IV sales and should benefit from the U.S. launch of Nintendo’s Wii Fit later this month.
Marvel Entertainment’s (NYSE: MVL) Iron Man generated box office receipts of $100.75 million in its opening weekend, the 10th best opening weekend ever. The performance is even more impressive when one considers that this was the first movie the company produced internally. (Friends are telling me that it’s really good.)
Although shares of MVL jumped after last weekend’s box office numbers were announced, what might be going unnoticed is the fact that the company also raised its full-year earnings guidance by a nickel on Monday to between $1.35 and $1.55 per share. Notably, the new forecast excludes the impressive performance by Iron Man.
Brokerage analysts had mostly been keeping their 2008 earnings estimates unchanged over the past 30 days, leaving the consensus forecast even at $1.51 per share. Interested investors should keep an eye on Marvel’s earnings estimates (http://at.zacks.com/?id=4572) to see if Iron Man causes brokerage analysts to reassess the company’s prospects.
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ernest C. Schlotter, a senior analyst with SISM Research and a StarMine four-star analyst, notes the following regarding Fox Petroleum Inc.’s (OTCBB: FXPT) corporate activities:
Initial Comments:
“Fox Petroleum is making strong progress. Fox’s Bourbon prospect is estimated to have a prospective resource P50 (mid-case) of 94.2 million barrels of oil and an estimated recovery rate of forty-two percent, according to Aimwell Energy Ltd.”
5 for 1 Reverse Split and AMEX listing:
“The Company approved a 5 for 1 reverse stock split with a record date of April 16, 2008 to meet the listing standards of the American Stock Exchange. Subsequently, the stock symbol has been changed from FXPE to FXPT. Currently, the Company has 14,968,246 shares of common stock issued and outstanding. There is no assurance that the Company will meet the listing standards of AMEX, or that its securities will ever list on the AMEX exchange. In our view, the listing of Fox Petroleum’s common stock on AMEX will enhance shareholder liquidity and value as well as being the next step in the Company’s growth. Further to that, it is hoped to promote price stability, facilitate access to further capital from institutional investors and expedite the company’s growth.”
Operations Update:
“Fox Petroleum’s main focus is to achieve production and profitability in the near future. Just a few days ago, the Company announced that it had booked a drilling rig to drill its first well on the Bourbon prospect in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Bourbon Prospect is believed to be one of the lowest risk prospects remaining in the North Sea. Fox will pay 89% of the costs to drill a well to 10,300 feet to earn forty-six percent of the project. This prospect is estimated to have a total potential reserve P50 (mid-case) of 94.2 million barrels of oil and an estimated recoverable rate of forty-two percent. If successful, our heavily risked adjusted reserve potential for Fox Petroleum is valued at approx. US$182 million or approx. $12 per share.
“The Bourbon Prospect is located in a geological structure of the North Sea known as the Brent Sandstone in the southern part of block 211/17. The Brent Sandstone consists of tilted fault blocks that are favorable for trapping hydrocarbon deposits and is believed to be one of the lowest risk exploration styles in the North Sea. Royal Dutch Shell is the most active producer in close proximity to the Bourbon Prospect, as it owns and operates many producing fields in the area, including the Eider Field (211/16a & 211/21a), and the Magnus Field (211/12a), which have a potential reserve of 1.65 billion barrels. Other well established companies producing in the area include BP, Lundin Petroleum AB, Nexen Inc, and ConocoPhillips.”
Valuation:
“We have kept our Company valuation unchanged and have applied the same valuation parameters we have been used in our last report, dated March 3rd, 2008. We have calculated Fox Petroleum’s heavily risk-adjusted Appraised Net Worth to be $36.65/share, (reverse split adjusted) and our risk factors account for execution uncertainty, uncertainty about availability of capital as well as capital costs, and uncertainty as to the actual resource to be developed. We maintain our Speculative Buy/4 rating for Fox Petroleum and have arrived at a 12 to 18-month target price of $27.50, based on a twenty-five percent discount to our heavily risked Appraised Net Worth of $36.65.”
Fox Petroleum is a small, early-stage oil and gas company engaged in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas in Alaska, Texas, Kansas, and the North Sea in the UK. Complete information about this company is available at the company’s InvestorPower™ page accessible from http://www.investrend.com/company/list.asp?sPathParam=yes , and the company’s website is at http://www.foxpetro.com.
Anyone interested in receiving alerts regarding Fox Petroleum research should email contact@investrend.com or info@sism.com with “FXPT” in the subject line.
SISM Research, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is a private investment research firm offering high-quality, independent, fundamental research on public companies since 1995. SISM Research writes, publishes and distributes research coverage on micro- to small-cap public companies trading on the OTC, NASDAQ and AMEX.
SISM Research is being paid $1,750 per month by the company over a two-year period solely to ensure analyst coverage. SISM Research takes steps to ensure independence including setting fees in advance and utilizing analysts who must abide by CFA Institute Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct. Additionally, analysts may not trade in any security under coverage.
The Investrend Research Syndicate distributes reports published by sources dedicated to unbiased, reliable analytics and complete transparency. The primary measure for determining those sources is the “Standards for Independent Research Providers” (http://www.firstresearchconsortium.com/standards.html). The Investrend Research Syndicate is a proprietary entity of Investrend Communications, Inc., a financial intelligence and information firm, serving the financial community with neutral platforms and fundamentally-based material since 1996.
Please note that statements in this announcement that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Words such as “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “may,” “could,” “should,” “anticipates,” “likely,” “believes” and words of similar import also identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current facts and analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results.
BOTHELL, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Acucela Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing therapies for blinding eye diseases, announced today that it has filed an investigational new drug (IND) application to conduct a Phase 1 clinical trial for its lead compound ACU-02 with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The filing follows a successful pre-IND meeting in Washington D.C. where the company reviewed its current pre-clinical efficacy and safety data as well as development plans with FDA.
ACU-02 is an orally available small molecule modulator of the visual cycle, which is thought to play a key role in the pathophysiology of the dry form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease which afflicts over 29 million patients worldwide. In preclinical testing ACU-02 was found to be a potent modulator of the visual cycle with desirable pharmacokinetic profile, which significantly decreased the accumulation of the retinal related toxic by-product A2E that is believed to damage retinal cells, leading to the decrease or loss of vision in AMD patients. Acucela plans to initiate dosing of healthy normal volunteers in a double-masked, placebo-controlled, single ascending-dose study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of ACU-02 before the end of the second quarter of this year.
“We believe ACU-02 is a unique, first-in-class, potent, small molecule which holds significant promise for the millions of patients suffering the debilitating effects of dry AMD,” said Ryo Kubota, MD, Ph.D., Acucela’s chief executive officer. “Given the fact that this is a non-retinoid compound, we believe that it will have a better side effect profile, and additionally, this product candidate is delivered orally—an administration method which we believe would be popular with patients given that current AMD treatments are delivered by injection.”
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