MMP Licensing Over the Years from a TPL perspective
posted on
Apr 21, 2009 04:04PM
Here's the summary of PDS Revenues and Expenses over the last 4 years. This does NOT include the AMD & Intel Licensing which amounts to $23.05M additional revenues and unknown expense.
What this reflects is that PTSC and TPL each have collected half of the $209.15M net income. So each has received $104.57M in PDS PROFIT, not to mention part of the Intel and AMD deals (I think that was split 50/50 as well, but I can't remember if we ever found that out and am unwilling to investigate at this point).
In addition to the $104.57M that TPL recieved, they were also paid the following:
2009 - $2,369,000 plus $571,590 for patent legislation lobbying
2008 - $2,952,362
2007 - $3,871,602
2006 - $2,500,000
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Total - $12,264,554
These were fees paid directly to TPL for TPL's licensing efforts on behalf of the MMP.
Additoinally, PDS "reimbursed" TPL for the following amounts:
2009 - ??
2008 - $12,894,053
2007 - $5,914,000
2006 - $1,021,357
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Total - $19,829,410
This last bit of money was paid to cover the third party lawyers, experts and other fees that in theory, would provide TPL no additional income as they should pass right through to those third party entities, though without an audit, I suppose it's hard to know for sure.
So in essence, ignoring the first 2 licenses that were done pre-merging of interests in the MMP and any fees paid to third parties even if the money did go through TPL, TPL has collected $116.83M since January of 2006. In order to collect said funds, they had to "invest" $2M originally to fund their portion of PDS, so TPL has netted $114.83M before expenses from the MMP efforts in a little less than 3 years and 4 months.
I've heard people say that TPL now has a staff of 125 people. Assuming that's currently accurate, I'll assume that they've averaged 100 people over the 3 year 4 month span in question. If you pay 75 of those people an average of $100K per year and the other 25 an average of $300K per year including benefits/burden, and do so for 3 years and 4 months, that would equate to an expense of $50M. Add to that Bonuses and Profits for the Owners/Partners/Senior Executives of say $5M per year to split up, and that's another $17M. Take another $2M per year in rent and other office/facility expenses for a subtotal of $6.7M. Total those up and you have $73.7M. Add to that the $11M TPL allegedly paid Moore so far, and you get $84.7M. Assume they spent another $20M in equipment, materials, etc. to try an develop things like the S40 chip and you're up to $105M if we round up. $105M from approximately $115M gross income leaves $10M of "taxable" income. Assuming 35% tax on that $10M and you have essentially $6.5M left. And all of this ignores the other revenue sources that TPL has through their other IP licensing.
At the end of the day, the bottom line is that's a lot of money for TPL to have gone through. Perhaps they have, but it seems more than likely that they have some left. I wonder if there has ever been an audit by PDS of the expenses it has been charged by TPL. WIth a PDS management committee stacked 2 to 1 in their favor, and with the exhibit of Leckrone running roughshod over our BoD at the shareholders meeting, I'm guessing there hasn't been one. Seems like there ought to be. If Moore is indeed owed $20M, then you can see why he may have felt it necessary to raise the volume on the negotiations, as TPL probably doesn't have that much on hand. That being said, along the way, I'm sure the Leckrones and the rest of senior management at TPL have done quite well for themselves over the last 3 plus years and I doubt if they are hurting in their personal financial lives (unless they've foolishly squandered it) even if their professional lives may not be perfectly secure financially.