I have just voted on the questions for friedcat. Now I'm offering my opinion out loud - while we all love the high dividends, and have no doubt that the management team have excelled themselves so far, I think it's time that AM increased its transparency. Things like a quarterly earnings report, annual balance sheets and so forth.
Berkshire Hathaway is a good example of a successful company with a no-frills website that contains all the information an investor needs:
http://www.berkshirehathaway.comI think offering the same level of information to shareholders is a worthwhile and realistic goal for AM.
Berkshire Hathaway has been around for decades and is worth nearly $192 billion dollars - it isn't a one-man show. They could've hired a web dev and they didn't. Why should Friedcat?
When making a website is the highest priority, he'll get around to it.
Have you
looked at the Berkshire website? You could pay a college student $10/hour to hand-code HTML to come up with that. This isn't about anything fancy, it's about disseminating relevant financial information.
You're missing the point... That website doesn't have
any content that could be generated by someone else. All of it is purpose-written letters from Buffett and the senior leadership.
In other words: Friedcat is the only one that can produce useful information to
put on a website, and he's busy. A college student knows jack shit about ASICMiner and how it runs. All he can do is make a pretty website, which BH clearly proves is not at all necessary for success.
No, you're missing the point, friend. This is nothing to do with websites, I only linked to BH's to make a point. The relevant information is only in one person's head, true, which is
all the more reason it needs to start making it's way into the public sphere - a little at a time, sure, and only enough to explain the company's performance and philosophy to investors who may not be board members but now have 5 and 6-digit investments in AM.
To be clear, I am not advocating friedcat drops everything and starts writing financial reports; I am advocating that he has a plan for his time that includes developing information for publication similar to what is in BH's website. A little at a time, and as needed.
I'll try to be more clear also: I don't think a website is a bad idea at all, and I think that eventually Friedcat should get around to making one.
I just think that Friedcat's time is currently unusually valuable. He's not actively searching for investment, so beyond
your desire to drive up the stock price a bit more, what is the benefit to ASICMiner
as a company of having a website
right now at the expense of hashrate deployment?
The potential profit per minute of Friedcat's time will eventually come down, and then the information release will follow. As it stands, it seems to me ASICMiner is having no trouble attracting those 5 or 6 digit investments.
I think the weekly questions format is the best compromise for Friedcat's time.