Broadcast International In Trouble
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
We said back in September 2009 in our post ‘Bank Of America Deployments‘ “We are not sure of the exact logic of awarding a USD 10M contract to a company that has been ‘functionally’ bankrupt since September 2008 (liabilities exceeding assets)” and it looks like Broadcast International (who for some reason were awarded the BoA contract ahead of CoolSign) may be in even more trouble now.
In a recent US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing (form 10-Q Quarterly report pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934) for the quarterly period ended March 31, 2010 we see that they have assets of USD 7.7 million versus liabilities of USD 22.9 million.
We wouldn’t expect readers to pore over the whole form 10-Q but ‘Note 3 – Going Concern‘ is well worth a read, we quote part of that section “We have incurred losses and have not demonstrated the ability to generate sufficient cash flows from operations to satisfy our liabilities and sustain operations. These factors raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern”.
Bank of America awarding a digital signage contract to a relatively unknown in the sector was always a weird and a little suspect (just who are these consultants either in the company or outside who recommend vendors with (a) no real experience, (b) no real product and (c) not financially stable).
Being a bank and all you would have thought that (c) was actually one of the first things they would have checked and insisted upon.
Undoubtedly this will be more wasted Bank of America dollars as it won’t end well.
May 26th, 2010 at 16:02 @710
ADRIAN
SURPRISED TO SEE NEGATIVE BADMOUTHING OF THIS COMPANY AND DEAL WITHOUT CONSTRUCTIVE TAKE. IT IS NOT STATESMAN LIKE- IT READS LIKE BIASED REPORTING. CONSIDERING THAT YOU KNOW HOW MANY ARE TRYING SO HARD TO MAKE THE THIS INDUSTRY PAY. MUCH TOO HARSH.
BEST
DICK
May 26th, 2010 at 19:16 @844
Your Daily DOOH is always a must-read in my Inbox. Thanks for helping to spread info and provide details for our industry.
Quick response to this post, from a network owner/operator perspective, please don’t confuse “real experience” with “spending lots of money to advertise” or having “high profile people to speak at events”. Broadcast International is one of the pioneers of this entire industry – having built the Safeway in-store audio network many years ago, and expanding greatly into video and other POS/OOH installations. They’re an installation, network management company – like USSI, Rhombus, Rollouts, GA Services, Sarcom, Convergent, et al. They aren’t supposed to have a “real product”, they’re supposed to provide services (although they do have a product in their CodecSys compression system). We used them for our initial network rollout of 300 or so locations back in 2005, and they did a very good job – as I’m sure many others would do too.
I just say this because of an old saying, “We’re warmed by fires we did not light, and drink from wells we did not dig”. Let’s remember and appreciate our elders in this industry – many have forgotten more than the rest have yet to learn. Newer flashier companies sometimes have big hats with little cattle (exempting the financial troubles you clearly point out in this situation).
May 26th, 2010 at 22:11 @966
very well said Sean :clap: that will shut Mr. big mouth for a while :), getting little tired of this negative and biased journalism