Sunday, March 25, 2012

Empire Post Media (EMPM) Loses Money In 3D

The unwanted solicitations to invest in penny stocks don't just come via junk mailers.  They also arrive via junk email.  Today I got an email from Ultimate Penny Stocks, which is really owned by something called Promo Kombo Ltd in the British Virgin Islands.  Go figure.  The email touted Empire Post Media (EMPM), a penny stock that purportedly does post-production work for the movie and TV industry.

The reason for taking such a company public escapes me.  Post-production companies are typically small private companies that have little need for access to the capital markets.  There is no realistic expectation for such a company to expect to grow to a size that would justify making it a publicly-traded stock.

The company's 10-K from Mar. 14, 2012 tells us plenty.  The proceeds from the company's IPO all went to the founder and not to the company.  They netted a whopping $15,050 in capital just to get listed.  The founder later made a cash infusion for $14,192 back into the company.  Even he couldn't make any money off this one.  Like I said above, the business model for something like this doesn't justify capital market access.  Their burn rate and need for additional capital raise substantial doubt about their ability to continue as a going concern.  It is ridiculous for the company to have over 250M outstanding shares.

I have only seen penny stocks lose money with two-dimensional approaches but Empire Post Media manages to lose money in 3D.  You don't even need special glasses to watch the show.  If they want to keep developing reality-based entertainment, maybe they can start by documenting their own difficulties making money.

Full disclosure:  No position in EMPM, ever.