June 15, 2011

Hi shareholders, Noble Tud here, CEO of CommGlobalTeleVista, a company that’s stock price hasn’t dropped so much as a penny in the last 48 hours.     
    When I was a kid, I really wanted a three-wheeled bike, one with a basket on the back. I was really into being able to carry my stuff with me, and even imagined that I could sell fruits and vegetables out of it. But my parents wouldn’t let me outside the grounds of our 10 1/2-acre estate in Red Bank, New Jersey, so I had to settle for selling lemonade to the contractors who spent 3 years building our gazebo.
    But, boy did I want a three-wheeled bike! My Father said that only retards rode three-wheeled bikes, and that no Tud would ever ride anything other than the two-wheeled variety. My father was always a little cranky and, yes, politicaly incorrect—I think village idiot or retardo is probably a more preferable term today—but he was absolutely correct. Why use three of something when you can get away with using only two—even one, in the case of the unicycle? But I’ve only seen circus freaks and carnies ride them. So let’s stick to two wheels…or perhaps one and a half. Let me explain. 
    I recalled for this terribly sad story from my youth because I attended a meeting last week in New York City, an investor’s conference that was loaded with a lot of big brains going on and on and on about numbers, which, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like. Again, I resent having to remember so many. Although my masters degree is in finance, my brain was a lot less cluttered in those days, and the numbers didn’t seem to bother me as much. Plus, Jeannine, my lovely administrative assistant—she’s wearing another hip-hugging leather skirt—who’ve I’ve known since undergrad, told me one time that she was really into guys with masters degrees in finance.* While it ultimately helped me get where I am today, it never panned out as I’d hoped with Jeannine. But there’s always time.**
    So this one knucklehead from, I believe, Shearson Lehman—or was it the motivational speaker who works for Zig Ziglar, I can’t remember—is bragging about his years there, which seemed odd considering they filed for bankruptcy and many other big brains consider it the greatest corporate collapse of all time. Then he starts talking about the importance of investing in a corporation that has, as he put it, “three legs.” He goes on to say that if a stool has three legs, you can successfully balance on it. And his three legs of a corporation were financial, personnel, and product. He said that if you don’t have all three legs, you can’t sit on the stool. I don’t think this is true, because if you have strong thighs and have done a lot of lunges, you should be able to balance on the stool by using your muscular, rippling thighs to keep yourself upright.
    So I start thinking about CommGlobalTeleVista and what our stool looks like, and I imagine our stool sample being dark brown. So according to Big Brain Shearson, our stool sample would only have a leg and a half, which, I’m convinced, you could still sit on if you had muscular thighs and terrific balance.
     I’m nothing if not a realist, so, honestly, I’ll have to saw the financial leg off CommGlobalTeleVista’s stool sample just under the seat…at least at present. We’ll turn it around once we get our wireless network in the 2G, maybe even 2H-I range. 
    And while I’m not fully prepared to give us a full leg in the product category, I think our stool sample merits half a leg there. Apparently the other wireless providers have trumped up this 4G stuff, which I think is a lot of hooey, as my dear departed nanny, and the now incarcerated gardener, used to say; although he said it in Spanish, which actually sounds the same as it does in English.
    But our stool sample does have one full leg, and, actually, I think we should get credit for a leg and a half in this area. Our employees are our leg and a half; they come to work everyday, sit in cubes, type into computers, wonder why we jettisoned the wall clocks, and pray CommGlobalTeleVista will continue to contribute ten cents to their 401(k) for every dollar they put in it. And, until just last week, they also got to drink all the coffee their nerves could handle from 8 to 5. We’ve since limited them to 6 ounces a day, not to be mean, but, well, coffee ain’t cheap, even when you buy it in bulk, I’ve been told.
    So right now, according to the analogy made by Mr. Big Brain—I think he even had a foreign name, like Luigi, Achmad, Pierre, or Carl—CommGlobalTeleVista is a stool with one and half legs. Well, I proudly stand by our one a half legs. Actually I’ll proudly stand on them, but in a seated, stool-friendly position.      
        Keep dialing…but on our phone lines!
                    -Noble Tud, CEO, CommGlobalTeleVista

* Jeannine Note:  I told him that because I assumed he couldn’t handle the courseload, would drop out of school, and totally give up on the notion that we would end up together.

** Jeannine Note:  Not even if it would ensure world peace.