You have me confused:

without [consolidation] I think our hope of a decent buyout is very small

How could a consolidation or a reverse split make a buyout any different. If a major is willing to pay $200 million (or whatever) for our company, then it won't matter how many shares there are out there. The major will still have to buy out the same percentage of the shares to take control.

In fact, I think that a consolidation or RS will in fact hurt our chances of a decent buyout. That $200 million I used earlier was based on a market cap of about $50 million, and represents a 4 bagger for current stockholders on the current price (not including unrealized gains so far). That would be a pretty good ROI for many of the retail and larger investors, and might be enough to swing the deal.

However, if there is not an offer soon after the RS, then I can almost guarantee a dramatic SP slide as we go into what has been traditionally a low point in the year for ROF (and probably other) companies. Just take a look at the 10 year charts if you don't believe me. That means that we are going to be doing a RS when the stock price is falling on its own, and the market cap along with it. Now, a lot of the new retail players are going to start to bail, and it is very conceivable that we will end below $0.40 in December, and then lower still as investors start to wash the stock for tax losses.

$0.40 puts us back into the range of day traders again too. Not to mention, our market cap would be $20 million, a much lower range for take over.

Why do you think Freewest was taken out when it was? It had less to do with the 43-101 than the current market price and time of the year. Nov-Dec is generally the 52-week low for SP. The ONLY exception to this in the last 10 years was following the Eagle One announcement in 2007. Freewest short term investors at the time saw a potential for a 3-4 bagger and voted in favour of the deal. Cliff knew the traditional 52-week high period was just around the corner, and they made sure that the offer was closed before that time.

My vote will be against the RS.