10K Filing Suggests Grim Outlook for SCO

dacarr writes "SCO has filed their 10K with the SEC — and according to this, their own assessment of the company's outlook is pretty grim. As usual, PJ of Groklaw has a good synopsis of the filing highlights. In short, it boils down to one thing: unless there's a miracle, even SCO doesn't think they're going to come out of this. 'As a result of the Chapter 11 filings, realization of assets and liquidation of liabilities are subject to uncertainty. While operating as debtors-in-possession under the protection of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, the Debtors may sell or otherwise dispose of assets and liquidate or settle liabilities for amounts other than those reflected in the consolidated financial statements, in the ordinary course of business, or, if outside the ordinary course of business, subject to Bankruptcy Court approval. In addition, under the priority scheme established by the Bankruptcy Code, unless creditors agree otherwise, post-petition liabilities and prepetition liabilities must be satisfied in full before stockholders are entitled to receive any distribution or retain any property under a plan of reorganization.'"

R.I.P.

[scharkalvin (72228)]

Rest in Pieces

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

More like Roast In Pieces (of faeces?)

Re:

[Tuqui (96668)]

>Not yet... If M$ successfully buys Yahoo!, I predict that M$ will trade BSD in with SCO products to legitimize their support to SCO

That will mean that MS is accepting that Any Unix is better than their Win Server.

My Mutual Fund :-(

[by Anonymous Coward]

Looks like my "America's Sleaziest Companies" mutual fund is going to take another hit this year.

Re:

[Sponge Bath (413667)]

The shares of Microsoft should help sustain its value.

Ah, yes!

[AltGrendel (175092)]

The final stages of the slow motion train wreck that is SCO begin.

We hope.

Re:

[betterunixthanunix (980855)]

How many times are we going to read the same headline? "SCO is bankrupt," "SCO filed a report with the SEC declaring bankruptcy," "SCO doesn't believe they can survive this lawsuit." They're dead. This is old news.

Re:

[mpe (36238)]

How many times are we going to read the same headline? "SCO is bankrupt," "SCO filed a report with the SEC declaring bankruptcy," "SCO doesn't believe they can survive this lawsuit." They're dead. This is old news.

How about "SCO to relocate to Sunnydale" :)

Re:Ah, yes!

[morcego (260031)]

They're dead. This is old news.

Do you mind ? We are entitled to all the gloating we can get out of this.

Dear Slashdot:

[goodmanj (234846)]

Enough already. You "won".

Re:

[rubycodez (864176)]

no, there are matters which only a court of law can resolve the SCOX stories will continue. you will read the SCOX stories. you will love the SCOX stories. you will smile as you read and love the SCOX stories.

Re:

[rubycodez (864176)]

at the moment their symbol is SCOXQ.PK, would you feel better with SCOX*.*?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Leave SCO alone right now! I mean it! Anyone that has a problem with them you deal with me, because them is not well right now.

huh?

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Things are looking grim for SCO? I obviously missed something. When did this happen?

Re:huh?

[Nimey (114278)]

When all you cock-smoking teabaggers didn't pay your $699 license fee, that's when.

Re:

[eln (21727)]

It's a parody of a very well known (to those of us who browse at -1 anyway) troll. The profanity is absolutely critical to the joke.

SCO is dead

[sakdoctor (1087155)]

...and SCO confirms it.

Netcraft?

[Gr8Apes (679165)]

So we won't have to wait for Netcraft this time?

Stock Holders?

[Ngarrang (1023425)]

"...in full before stockholders are entitled to receive any distribution or retain any property under a plan of reorganization..."

All 3 of them?

In the words of that old country classic

[sizzzzlerz (714878)]

How can I miss you if you won't go away.

Debtor's Prison

[bhima (46039)]

Unless this includes all the SCO management doing a stint in some medieval debtor's prison, it's not nearly grim enough.... On the other hand I think this is a great opportunity to start a Linux distro with SCO personality to provide all the remaining SCO user base a less painful transition after the death of SCO. We could even call it Pescadero Linux, because we all know how well the last project with that name turned out.

Re:

[Nimey (114278)]

Pescadero == Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox, yes?

Re:

[bhima (46039)]

Natch

I hasten to add that Pescadero does not mean Phoenix or Firebird or Firefox in any language that I am aware of. I'm pretty sure Pescadero means 'fisherman' in Spanish or Portuguese. However the link, from the 0.1 build, is permanently forged in my brain and thus pops up when I think Phoenix... which is what I was thinking when I was thinking Linux Distros for a SCO UNIX replacement.

Re:

[Ed Avis (5917)]

What remaining SCO user base?

Linux used to have some thing called iBCS (Intel Binary Compatibility Standard) where you could run (some? all?) SCO Unix binaries on your Linux/i386 box, but it rotted and iBCS2 was recently pulled from the kernel.

Money spent on litigation

[gihan_ripper (785510)]

For me, one of the interesting facts in the report is the amount they've spent on litigation since Oct 31, 2004: a massive $13,167,000. At least they're honest about their chances of survival: "Our limited cash resources may not be sufficient to fund continuing losses from operations and the expenses of the SCO Litigation."

Wow

[davmoo (63521)]

I swear I can hear a fat lady singing...

Re:Wow

[Critical Facilities (850111)]

Yup. Her name is Karma, and she's a real bitch.

Selling assets?

[oahazmatt (868057)]

...Debtors may sell or otherwise dispose of assets...

Dibs on the Unix code!

...what?

Filed their 10K?

[sm62704 (957197)]

All they have left is ten thoudand bucks? Dammit Jim, I'm a nerd, not a banker!

Re:

[SamuraiMike (768946)]

All they have left is ten thoudand bucks? Dammit Jim, I'm a nerd, not a banker!

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_10-K [wikipedia.org]):

A Form 10-K is an annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that gives a comprehensive summary of a public company's performance.

Chapter 11 Statistic

[webword (82711)]

From Maximizing Chapter 11 Success: [bankofamerica.com]

"A staggering 85% of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy cases never make it to a confirmed plan of reorganization. In fact, lack of cash causes many companies to liquidate within a few weeks after filing."

Maybe it's not all bad...

Several companies has come out of it: United, Dow, Texaco, Delta, Toys R Us, Macy's and others.

What they really mean

[Jason Levine (196982)]

We have filed a post-effective amendment to a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), which has been declared effective, covering the potential resale by two of our stockholders of up to 923,019 shares of common stock, or 4.3% of our outstanding common stock. The selling stockholders are bound by certain selling limitations, which limit the number of shares of our common stock that may be sold at one time.

In other words: "Our outlook reeks to high heaven and we are afraid that people will dump their stock as quickly as possible. In order to slow this down, we're limiting shareholders in how much they can sell at once. Hopefully, this helps keep our stock from going to worthless (instead of the near-worthless that it is right now)."

The share price right now is 6 cents. It should be interesting to see how low it falls today.

Not this again...

[Otter (3800)]

As usual, PJ of Groklaw has a good synopsis...

We have this story every freaking quarter (and I post the same comment every freaking quarter): 10K's are always written that way, stuffing any imaginable disaster into the text to ward off liability.

For heaven's sake, nerds, if you don't believe me, at least believe Neal Stephenson's lengthy explanation in Cryptonomicon!

Tough shit.

[dj42 (765300)]

This company spent $12M on sales and marketing in '05, and $12M in '06. Meanwhile, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT was $8M / year in 05 and 06.

In 07 they slashed all spending by about 20-30%.

They've been losing 20% / year in UNIX revenue since 06, in spite of price increases.

Obviously, in '07, someone in charge got a realistic expectancy of the company and started cutting cost (as they should), given the fact they had no chance to sustain their business model.

This is how business works. It is fucking cut-throat, a

Apologies to Mel Brooks

[Sciryl Llort (1160727)]

# Springtime for Linux and opensource
  Hackers are smiling and glad.
  Linus can give his code away
  SCO's sinking day by day!

  Springtime for Linux and opensource
  - Winter for mister McBride!
  Springtime for Linux and opensource
  - Coming to the end of the ride... /#

Re:

[farkus888 (1103903)]

damnit, now my coworkers are going to wonder why I'm singing to myself about hitler all day.

Chapter 7 here we come

[stox (131684)]

Liquidation, the final answer.

10-Q suggests grim outlook for Slashdot (LNUX)

[NineNine (235196)]

Slashdot really shouldn't be poking fun here. Sourceforge (the owners of Slashdot) is bleeding money, and makes money now only from from Google AdSense and selling crap on thinkgeek.com. (http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?dcn=0001144204-07-066697&Type=HTML)

Septic Services

[rumblin'rabbit (711865)]

I never understood why SCO didn't sell their Unix business very early on during the legal proceedings with IBM. What sane IT manager would buy their product? My suggestion for the world's toughest job is a saleman for SCO - you need a real snappy comeback when your prospective customers ask if SCO is going to sue them like SCO sued their other clients.

You may as well try to run a catering business under the "Septic Services" brand.

I can only imagine that there were legal reasons for holding on to the Unix business.

Re:

[rkhalloran (136467)]

Because (as came out last fall) SCOX didn't own the UNIX code to start with; they only inherited a resellers' agreement and royalty collection business from Santa Cruz. The copyrights (such as they are) to the legacy UNIX codebase stayed with Novell.

THAT'S what sent the stock into the pink-sheets, and prompted them to file Ch. 11 the day before the trial in Utah to determine how much of their bank balance *should* have gone to Novell as royalties. That trial restarts in April, by which time the SCOundrels

Re:I think this would be appropriate...

[somersault (912633)]

Microsoft is dead? :DDDDDDD

*dances around before reading the summary again*

Oh, wait.. it was just the witch's bitch :(

Re:Finally!

[Ngarrang (1023425)]

I feel sympathy for the employees who were unable to find other employment already. They will soon be without jobs. I mean, if they are still THERE, their prospects are certainly not any better once unemployed.

Re:

[Lumpy (12016)]

The other problem is the stigma on your resume now.

"I see you have a long.... Oh.. you work for SCO right now? I have heard enough, we will be in touch. Have a good day."

The rank and file are not responsible for the stupidity but it does affect you when you are out there looking for jobs.

Re:

[ari_j (90255)]

You're forgetting one thing. SCO is just about entirely a legal team now, so anyone who currently works there is not only a lawyer but a lawyer who is capable of joining in SCO's legal chicanery with a straight face. I don't think they'll be so bad off.

Re:

[ddrichardson (869910)]

I agree that SCO were unethical and was with you right up until you compared them to the SS. That's just silly.

Re:

[Hognoxious (631665)]

I agree, it's shameful. There's no need to go round insulting the SS like that.

Re:Finally!

[ronadams (987516)]

Holy hell, they're employees at a tech industry, not genocidal anti-Semetic soldiers for a facist dictator. Somewhere, Mike Godwin [wikipedia.org] is rolling around in his gra-- err, bed.

And if you think a receptionist, or even many engineers, are going to have a farking clue what abhorrent decisions the board of the company was involved in, you don't understand people (especially non-nerds), big companies, or reality very well. And to suggest that former or present SCO underlings are scum whose children deserve to go hungry for the sins of their fathers, in some epic divine retribution, is hateful, callous and unthinking.

Re:

[nuzak (959558)]

Mike Godwin, pick up line 1.

You couldn't even get away with this idiocy in the echo chamber that is Groklaw, let alone here.

If I was an employer, I'd see a former SCO employee (not executive mind you) as someone who was determined to stick it out when things got bad. Not something to entirely base a decision on, but not an unadmirable quality.

Re:Finally!

[armanox (826486)]

Actually SCO didn't buy UNIX from AT&T. Novell did. And that's the whole problem. SCO thinks they bought it from Novell, but they didn't.

Yep. Now novl and acacia are msft's b!tches

[walterbyrd (182728)]

Scox was dead before the scam. If not for the scam, scox would have gone belly up three years ago. All that msft money is all that kept scox alive.

No matter, plenty more b!tches where they came from. Now msft is using novl and acacia to continue fudding linux.