Saturday, September 08, 2007

Jones Soda - Lawsuit Joke

Lawyers have launched a lawsuit against Jones Soda for an "allegation contained in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that certain officers and directors of Jones Soda disposed of 'nearly all their shares of the company stock' in what was called 'a highly unusual move" by securities experts "during a wave of positive publicity that kept the stock high.'"

So now dumb is following stupid...

I first looked at Jones Soda in December when it was trading at about $12 and with a quick look I concluded it was an extremely over priced $4 stock. I rated it as under perform in CAPS at Motley Fool.

I watched in amazement at the ascent of this stock and I sometimes use what I see in the stock market as an example of the negligent math skills of adults when I am trying to open student's eyes up as to the importance of math skills. Jones Soda is a company I have mentioned to students, indeed, I have used it as an exemplary example of bad investing with students playing a stock market game.

By April my bewilderment that the stock price had actually doubled lead to me studying the stock to see if I had missed something. So I looked closer and I wrote about my assessment of the stock in "Jones Soda, Breaking down the growth."

The only thing that is unusual about the officers and directors selling shares where they did is that they did not sell them earlier. I saw hype and speculation from investors, not the company.

This is incredibly frivolous and the US really needs to start assigning costs to garbage lawsuits like this. Investors ought to have done their homework on the stock, which would have shown absolutely no fundamental reason to buy, even at today's price.

2 comments :

Deborah said...

My last post on Jones Soda when I looked deeper at the financial reports it did leave me wondering how they planned to make their earnings from the business positive and not have the appearance of earnings due to interest and tax benefits and if their position was recoverable.

Having to defend a lawsuit when they are cash flow negative makes their situation even more perilous...

Unknown said...

Hi Deborah. What is your handle in CAPS Motley Fool?

Thanks
Ian