I certainly wasn't expecting this!

Let me get this straight: Per your post, what you believe to be FUD from the company is bad, but FUD (fairly obvious to all) on a message board is good. Hmmmm. And 25 posters agreed with that..... Hmmmm.

In your description of company FUD, it seems you generalize, place emotions on others which may or may not exist, and ignore the reality of the situation.

Before I pick at it, I must say up front that to a degree I do agree with you re: company-produced FUD. There is a lot of room for improvement in their frequency and quality of communication with shareholders. Likewise in their performance (duh).

Fear: Yup, the BoD swept out a bunch of PTSC execs. For me, it didn't invoke fear - some concern maybe, but not fear. All you had to do was look at the financials reported at the time (that's what invoked some fear in me). While I personally think they were premature in taking this action, it can be justified based purely on the lack of results from the acquisitions. Acquisitions for the most part recommended by those execs. While I believe there were still possibilities for those entities to produce, most can be viewed to date as money pits. And these were not necessarily start-ups, but going concerns with products. And what action did the BoD take BEFORE the sweep? Hired folks with a supposed clue to assess the situation. While the BoD is obviously not adequately astute to assess for themselves, and while they did approve all those CEO-recommended acquisitions, they did communicate what they doing to try and mitigate the situation. What more could they say? So, while the sweep was a bold, unexpected move - FEAR, really?

Uncertainty: They company has, on multiple occasions, advised and speculated on the value of the MMP. And they have communicated on progress within reason. You suggest a monthly status report? IMO, 80% of the time the status would simply be "unchanged", or "the PTO is still looking at it" and "nothing new has happened in the litigation". And the DD done here re: PTO (and for that matter litigation) is virtually all pure speculation from what little we can gleen from what's published. You want PTSC to engage in such speculation? And when they're wrong (which would be likely on most occasions - that's the nature of speculation), would that not create a great deal more uncertainty? And don't forget the limitations on what they can say (in ignorance) per the Master Agreement with TPL.

Doubt: While I could agree with most of what you say and, again, I'm not necessarily trying to defend the BoD (I'm at least as frustrated as anyone else), some of these things simply cannot be predicted. Regarding the MMP - remember, this is not their gig, it's TPL's gig, and we just dance to the tune. Could anyone accurately predict every twist and turn in the MMP saga? And when you hire anyone to do any thing (especially along the lines of what RG was hired to do), can you accurately predict the outcome? On that front, IMO the outcome is still TBD, and many here express the same unjustified impatience demonstarted, IMO, by the BoD. We KNOW the Gov't has put off spending on this front. Unpredictable delays. Must be RG's, PTSC's, the BoD's fault.

Summing up, while I can agree the BoD/PTSC has to a degree given us FUD, since I can buy some of your arguments in that direction, and I think everyone else can too, I honestly believe that in the vast majority of instances it was not deliberate. Hindsight is 20-20, so some does appear - maybe a lot. But still, not IMO deliberate at the time whatever was said was said (again, the vast majority of the time).

Now, compare that to the basic message of your post, that SO many posters agreed with. PTSC/BoD FUD IS BAD - POSTER/FUDSTER FUD IS GOOD. Really? You complain the company does not communicate information frequently enough. So you must really like the FUDsters communicating misinformation non-stop.

Is there something wrong with this picture? Do 25 posters really believe this? Apparently.

But isn't that an interesting contrast to the 19 thumbs-ups received by gcduck on Tuesday for a post to the contrary?

Am I the only one severly disappointed in this forum - the quality of information shared in at least 50% of the posts (I'm probably being very generous)?

JMHOs,

SGE