USEG news

Last week, U.S. Energy Corp. (Nasdaq Capital Market: USEG) announced that it had priced a secondary offering of 5 million shares at $5.25, and its stock dropped on the news, as it had on the company's initial announcement of its (larger) shelf registration in October, on fears of dilution¹. The main reason USEG is raising additional capital is to fund its participation in additional Bakken wells with BEXP. After the close Monday, USEG announced the latest results from that drilling program:

U.S. Energy Corp. Announces Initial Production Rate of Approximately 3,394 BOE/D From the Williston 25-36 #1H Well

Those are the highest initial production rates so far on this drilling program.

¹When I spoke to him on the day USEG announced its shelf registration, CEO Keith Larsen said he'd been getting a number of angry calls about it. I reminded him of the old Michael Milken quote, that the best time to raise capital is when you can.

TCFKAP's Q4 and fiscal 2009

The company formerly known as PhotoChannel, PNI Digital Media (OTC BB: PNDMF.OB) announced its Q4 and year-end numbers today, PNI Digital Media Announces Fiscal 2009 Year-End and Fourth Quarter Financial Results. It earned 2 cents in the quarter. In the previous comment thread, commenter Homer315 noted that Aaron Edelheit's prediction of a sequential doubling of EBITDA came to pass and noted the company's warning about currency effects in its conference call. I missed that part of the conference call, but I assume the warning related to the challenges of having costs in Canadian dollars and revenues in U.S. dollars when the USD is weak relative to the CAD.

Do yourself a favor and don't click on this

Via Ilkka: Gimme Friction Baby.

Acting like an owner

We went to the Hackensack Maggiano's for a late dinner tonight. There was a half hour wait for a table, so we ate at the bar. The whole time the bartender was loudly complaining about how busy it was, about a particular customer who asked him if he had some cordial, etc. Normally when something like this happens, I say I'm going to write the restaurant and never get around to it, but tonight I grabbed one of the manager's business cards and fired off a quick e-mail to him at 11:51pm. Seven minutes later, I got this response from him:

Thanks for letting me know about this situation. I am still in the restaurant and will immediately follow up on your feedback which I appreciate.

I am so sorry that it was not a more pleasant experience. The bartender should be happy it was a busy night!

I would love to send you a gift certificate to make up for this. What is the best address to use?

Can't handle it better than that. Brinker must do a good job of incentivizing its restaurant managers to act like owners.

Andy Swan on why you're screwed

From Andy Swan's blog:

An endless fountain of ideas. I’ve lost count, but I’d guess an average of 2.5 killer businesses come forth from your brain on an annual basis. Unfortunately, they get mugged by reality and disappear into the vapor of lost dreams just as quickly as they were formed.

Obviously, there are several reasons for the canyon between your “entrepreneurial” vision and your accomplishments:

1. Geographic location — no one where you live can code or invest like the hippies in San Fran. Why fight that?
2. Debt obligations — Far be it from you to actually take your standard of living down a notch while trying to do something “revolutionary”…..meanwhile, men jump on grenades.
3. Muted enthusiasm — If your friends aren’t instantly enamored with the 6th complex idea that you describe without having built anything yet, how will anyone else “get” your brilliance?
4. Idea pirates — Obviously, your idea is so unique and valuable that everyone will steal it, take it to the hippies in San Fran and have it built and funded (but not as good) before you finish the sentence.
5. Family — Apparently you married someone that needs a lifestyle that ratchets up slowly and predictably in order to love and support you. And, ya….your infant children would be devastated if you put money into anything other than granite counter-tops and a paper thin computer with a glowing fruit on it.

The list goes on and on.

You’re screwed. All that genius and no chance to execute on it.

Poor you, born into the country that rewards, encourages and celebrates entrepreneurship more than any other in human history.

You are an old man in a lazy-boy, so damn comfortable you’re afraid to move.

Cruise-control into the coffin it is. Enjoy.

Playing with the house's money

In a post last Thursday ("Buying a lottery ticket to bet against gold") I mentioned buying a few puts on the gold ETF GLD. Those puts I bought were the Jan 10s with a strike price of 108, GCZMD.X. I got them at $0.74. Sold half today at $2.92 for a gain of about 390%. Letting the other half ride a little longer.

Nigel Andrews on Where the Wild Things Are

From his film review in today's Financial Times:

Maurice Sendak's fantasy picture-book was a marvel: an enchanted Träumerei set in a monster-mad forest. Sendak's creatures were and on page still are cuddly, scary, indelible. Jonze, formerly of Being John Malkovich , and his co-screenwriter Dave Eggers, a gold-chip novelist who with this and Away We Go is becoming a Hollywood liability, do everything wrong. They come at it like killjoy opera directors wanting to set The Magic Flute in Auschwitz. Little Max (Max Records) runs from a quarrelling home to a remote fantastical island, reached across rough seas in a sailboat. We are bursting to go "Oo-er!" at the awaited ogres, combined with "Coochy-coo" for the cute ones. Instead we go, "What the hell are these?" Performers in manky creature-suits, wearing oversize soft-toy heads, waddle into frame and spout banal, tetchy dialogue. The familiar voices (James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Catherine Keener) somehow add to the sense of cheat and cheesiness.

The scenery is dead-leaved trees in a dun wilderness, with ashy dunescapes for variation. Has the Bomb gone off? Something has blown the plot to pieces. I wasn't sure what the creatures were quarrelling about, but quarrel they do endlessly, sometimes with dirt-clod fights, sometimes with verbal abuse. The Jonze/Eggers message must be that Max's fantasyland duplicates his home life and that maybe mimicry and reflection will exorcise reality. But shouldn't therapy, at least in art for or about childhood, be fun? The book was entrancing. The book deserved better. Happily there is still time, before the world ends, for someone else to film it.

Andrews's mention of Away We Go calls to mind A.O. Scott's review of that movie.