Thursday, January 04, 2007

The CorporateCounsel.net Blog - Spook "Risk Factors" for 10K

Kudos to Broc Romanek at CorporateCounsel.net Blog:

ITEM 1A: RISK FACTORS
Risks Related to our Business and Ownership of our Securities

Our business is unpredictable and unsafe. The stock market, including the market for our securities, is dangerous. Many books have been written about these dangers, and there's no way we can list them all here. Read the books.

The path to success for our business is littered with land mines. Seriously-anything could happen. Our competitors try their best every day to crush us, and they could succeed. We could get rich and complacent following our IPO and fail to innovate. Our customers could abandon us. Key members of our management team could quit to sail their yachts around the world for a decade. We could grow so fast that our business spirals out of control. Any or all of these could occur and our business would go down the toilet, along with your investment.

Real dangers are present even if none of the above occurs. New technologies may be developed that will render ours obsolete. A patent troll could come along who claims to own the intellectual property rights to our technology, costing us tens of millions of dollars in defense costs (best case) or destroying our entire business (worst case). Third parties such as malicious hackers could emerge to undercut our business. Even the government could torpedo us by passing new laws that hurt our business. The bottom line is that our business and the stock market are unsafe, period. Live with it or stay away.

Totally unforeseen things can happen. There could be a SARS epidemic. There could be a terrorist attack. There could be a natural disaster, such as a hurricane. A herd of elephants could escape from the zoo and trample our headquarters, squashing our business and your investment you like a bug. Don't think it can't happen.

Even if none of these things happen, the stock market could go down for no reason whatsoever. That is to say, you may make a wise investment, we may work our tails off, our business may thrive, and you may still lose all of your money. It happens all the time.

If you engage in particularly dangerous trading such as uncovered options or naked short selling, you may lose everything you own. This is true whether you are experienced or not, trained or not, educated or not, or intelligent or not. It's a fact, such trading is extremely dangerous. If you don't like that, don't do it. You really shouldn't be doing it anyway. We do not provide supervision or instruction. We are not responsible for the financial ruin that may result. As far as we know, any of these types of trades can and will fail and send you plunging to your financial death. You're on your own.

Financial bail-out services are not provided by our company. If you lose your shirt investing in our company after reading all this, don't come running to us (or your class action lawyers). We assume no responsibility.

By investing in our business, you are agreeing that we owe you no duty of care other than not being crooks. We promise you nothing else. This is no joke. We won't even try to warn you about any dangerous or hazardous conditions not required of us by the SEC, whether we know about it or not. If we do decide to warn you about something, that doesn't mean we will try to warn you about anything else. We and our employees or agents may do things that are unwise and dangerous. In fact, we probably will. Sorry, we're not responsible. We may make bad decisions or give out mistaken guidance. Don't listen to us. In short, INVEST IN OUR COMPANY AT YOUR OWN RISK. And have fun!

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