Gupta being acquired... good or bad?

[Dave Seay]

 Posted by:  Dave Seay 

http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/edgardoc/finSys_main.asp?dcn=0000950123-04-012096&nad=

Dave

[Jim McNamara]

 Posted by:  Jim McNamara 

There is no sign of this activity on either the Gupta or Platinum Equity
site. Platinum still lists Gupta as one of it's assets. I have been unable
to find ANY info on ISIS Capital Management, LLC. Maybe they are investment
bankers trying to put a deal together?

Warp Technologies on the other hand is a company with total assets of
4,210,083 US, has never made a profit and has cumulative losses of
43,188,167 US since they started business. With the proposed Gupta gross
acquisition price coming in at about 23,000,000 US, unless Warp finds
someone that likes throwing good money after bad, I don't think the deal
will ever happen.

Good thing or Bad? Let me just say that I hope this goes away before I
invest much time in our next generation development effort.

[Dave Seay]

 Posted by:  Dave Seay 

This is, per someone at Gupta, a deal in progress and not yet a done deal.

Dave

[Karthik]

 Posted by:  Karthik 

Those people seem to be investment bankers. Not sure what they are
looking for in gupta. This ISIS Capital Management seems to have merged
with another company called F&C Asset management.

Whats clear is that its not a technology company. I am afraid its not
good news by any stretch of the imagination. It would have been good
news if it were a technology company wanting to develop the product more.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
F&C Asset Management plc
On 11 October 2004, F&C merged with ISIS to create one of Europe’s
largest asset management companies:

The new company is called F&C Asset Management plc.
The combined business has around £120 (€170) billion of funds under
management and is a leading asset manager in both Europe and the UK.
The merger creates a uniquely well balanced and diversified European
asset management business.
F&C is a listed company on the London Stock Exchange.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regards
Karthik

[Karthik]

 Posted by:  Karthik 

Oh well, after some more searching. They seem to be a company making web
caching software. Maybe they want WebDev - which is good. Maybe they are
buying it from a technology interest - which means they want to develop
further.

[Jim McNamara]

 Posted by:  Jim McNamara 

ISIS is listed as the selling party. That's why I speculate that they are
investment bankers. This is the link to the proposed buyer:

http://www.warpsolutions.com/

With only 4,000,000 USD in assets, someone will have to pull a rabbit out of
the hat to get this deal done.

My concern is that they will use the cash flows from Gupta to fund their
focus business activities. That will put our tools and database back in the
Centura mode of 1997-2001. I don't know about you, but I don't think at
this point I'm willing to tough it out again.

[luca.pivato]

 Posted by:  Gianluca Pivato 

Hi Jim,

They are the "Purchaser". The "Seller" is Gupta. Warp has an "Assignment"
agreement with ISIS to receive all rights and liabilities from the deal.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/124/124992.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/041015/wrpt.ob8-k.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/041115/wrpt.ob10qsb.html

ISIS is not investiment banking. It's an investiment fund, a self-described
aggressive one. www.isisllc.com
One of their managing partners is the CEO of Warp (12 employees, $22,587,000
in losses, $36,000 in the bank, funded in 1999, never been profitable and
doesn't expect to be profitable in the future). In other words, a great tax
deduction. The drop date for the deal has been extended to Nov, 30.

I could describe in more details how funds like ISIS make money, but I
won't.

--Gianluca

http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/edgardoc/finSys_main.asp?dcn=0000950123-04-0
12096&nad=

[Jim McNamara]

 Posted by:  Jim McNamara 

Thanks for the clarification Gianluca. Needless to say, with 2 TD licenses
and 4 SQLBase licenses coming due, I will be watching this situation VERY
closely.

[luca.pivato]

 Posted by:  Gianluca Pivato 

Some more info on Warp Technology. It's a publicly traded company founded in
1999. The stock price was $0.05 few days ago. They executed a big reverse
split 1-100 to bring the price up of the stock to $5 exactly yesterday for
the Gupta acquisition (it's stated in the document below).

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1125052/000095012304013544/0000950123
-04-013544.txt

This one is a bit more troubling but I don't know what it means exactly:

http://www.stocklemon.com/articles/reportcard.pdf

[Jim McNamara]

 Posted by:  Jim McNamara 

Pump & dump is manipulation. Accumulate at low prices and publicly promote
(Pump) the stock to squeeze the supply and push the share price artificially
high.. > When the supply is short enough and the price is high enough -- >
Sell every thing (Dump). It only works with very small cap stocks. If you
get caught it's usually a pretty substantial jail term, heavy fines, and
barred from trading securities.

[Krister Henningsson]

 Posted by:  Krister Henningsson 

Here it is:

http://www.isisllc.com/management.htm

Kriss

[Jim McNamara]

 Posted by:  Jim McNamara 

Looks like the new date for the closing is Jan 20.

http://biz.yahoo.com/e/050107/warp.ob8-k.html