Unless the credits amounted to actually getting paid by the host government, there is no way they could keep living on a negative cash flow. Maybe the product was simply a loss leader and that’s not all they made?
Sorry, been busy getting ready to move from 2 acres back to civilization (UGH).
Here’s the deal:
You had to be there to witness the juvenile backslapping, happy faces and mutual circle jerking that occurred as a result of that particular agreement, which guaranteed about three years of “free bottom line entries” from the Malay government.
You see, it was all part of “The Grand Plan” to make a select few principals VERY wealthy at the expense of the bulk of the employees. It saddens me to admit being part/victim of a classic rape, rob and pillage process that seems to be so prevalent in Worldwide Biz these days. Sadly, the participants in these schemes are their own worst enemies and provide the free fodder for the Occupy Movement and all the other anti-Capitalism forces.
Capitalism has become the ultimate three card Monty Game.
It’s no longer about finding a market, designing the best product you can to fill the need, making it to high standards of quality, selling it honestly and providing empathetic after sale support.
These days, it’s all about shuffling the money around so as to maximize the income to those top 0.001% buggers for conning the rest of us. I’m not talking about the operations staff, but the Top Level Management and Boards of today’s companies.
In my case, we in the trenches thought we were designing, making, selling and supporting a fairly unique product for computer industry OEMs, and that that was the goal of Top Management as well.
Turns out the REAL product was “maximizing company valuation to a potential market for IPO stock”.
The BoD couldn’t have cared less about the long term effects of their decisions - EVERY SINGLE act was focused on getting to the IPO day, after which they would be in the tall cotton, after spinning off the real estate assets (non-trivial) for further long term wealth creation.
The stock today rides around 1/3 of the IPO price as a new cast of characters manipulates the company’s day to day existence while they try to shuffle the assets around to best benefit themselves, the original cast having long departed, in fine financial fettle for parts unknown, while hundreds of dedicated but misinformed, misguided and maltreated regular Joes and Janes were left high and dry, wondering just exactly what had taken place.