The whole investment world sees Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc., and starts to wonder what the next hype is going to be as everybody gets financially envious at those who are bailing out en-masse with shares they have at a cost basis of pennies.
In Canada, the number of choices are quite limited. Most of the social media companies (at least in the English language) originate in the USA.
However, there is one Canadian firm, out of Toronto, that I know of which seems to have potential for hyped up valuations. That would be Keek, Inc. The company is attempting to be the Twitter of video. I have no idea whether this concept will take off or not, but I am reasonably sure it is something that teenagers with too much data on their mobile data plans would find creative ways to use.
In a rush to get public, they performed a reverse merger with Primary Petroleum Corporation (TSX: PIE, now TSX: KEK). This also temporarily solved another problem that they had, mainly a lack of cash.
Post reverse-merger, once all the dilution is taken into account, the entity will have about 400 million shares outstanding. This gives them a market capitalization for a company that has zero revenues and a burn rate of roughly $20 million a year given their financial statements for the six months ended August 2013.
The reverse merger will give them about a year’s worth of cash (from August 2013!) providing they can obtain some modest returns on the sale of the oil and gas assets that Primary Petroleum had. Between then and now, presumably they are going to count on their common share prices going to the roof in some sort of social media hype, where they can do a secondary offering for a bunch of cash.
Not that fundamentals matter with social networking companies, but it looks like they already their moment in the sun – the following two snapshots are from the management information circular:
Investors in Friendster probably know how this chart feels like.
I give Keek management full credit, however, for developing metrics that make utterly no sense in real life, like the following:
Wow! The chart is going straight up! I must invest!
Also, when digging into the documentation even further, I come up with gems such as the following paragraph:
In August 2013, Keek entered into an arm’s length lease agreement to lease approx. 17,947 sq. ft. at 1 Eglington Avenue, East (suite 300), Toronto, ON. The Lease Term was for 10 years and 3 months, commencing on July 1, 2013. Base rent for month 1 thru month 60 would be $15/sq. ft. with base rent for month 61 thru month 123 of $17/sq. ft. Keek was granted three months free rent for both base and additional rent for the first three months. Keek has recently decided that its office space requirements over the next five years are not expected to require 18,000 square feet and therefore has engaged a realtor to sublet the space while Keek look for alternative office space of approximately 5,000 square feet. There is no guarantee Keek will be able to sublet its existing space at values that approximate its current lease arrangements.
Oops! Nothing like signing a long-term contract for a huge amount of space you suddenly discover you really didn’t need less than half a year later!
Sadly, I will not be investing in this story, but I could easily see others doing so and taking this up to a ridiculous level that is not rationally explainable by any business metrics relating to cash flow or revenues. However, if you had to spend a hundred dollars on the Lotto 6/49 with an average jackpot versus throwing it into Keek, you might actually get a better expected value on Keek, as long as you were allowed to liquidate your shares in the near-term future.
Tragically, I am indirectly invested through this via my Pinetree Capital debentures (TSX: PNP.DB), which I gave a rather cynical analysis on back in November 2013. Pinetree owns about 52.8 million shares of Keek and if Keek goes to a hype valuation, I would hope Pinetree management would actually liquidate some shares so they can pay off their pesky debenture holders like myself.
