Salon.com Sued by Landlord-Forfeits $400K Deposit for Decreased Rent, to Avoid Eviction (snicker)

National Journal and the Los Angeles Times ^ | July 1, 2003 | Chuck Todd

[ewing]

PRESS PASS: Salon Behind on its rent

Salon.com disclosed June 30 that it has renegiotionated its headquarters lease after getting sued for falling behind on its rent.

The company struck a deal with its landlord late last week that will reduce its monthly rent from $70,000.00 to $12,000.00 according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Salon will also forfeit a $400,000.00 deposit and rent just one floor of the offices instead of the two floors covered by the pervious lease.

[bert]

....I'm wondering when some RAT senator or house member will introduce a bill for public funding....

Perhaps there is an esier way. If all it takes is $250k, NPR could buy it and move the whole kit and kaboodle to Virginia and have public funding already is well guarded, bullet proof place.

Hows that for very sour apples?

[eeman]

The only reason to buy SALN would be to tweak the liberals, which is not really worth the time or money, so I was not being too serious, but didn't put a sarcasm tag on it.

Looking at the price chart in post #11, their share price fell below 1$ per share in mid 2001, even with their reverse split. Why did the NASDAQ delay delisting them until Feb 2003? This seems analagous to networks still carrying WNBA games, even though they would probably get better ratings by showing "Gilligan's Island" re-runs

[ken5050]

I didn't take it as a sarcastic comment...there was considerable serious discussion here on several threads....the biggest problem to a take over is that much of the stock is closely held..it's a thin float..you couldn't buy enough to get control.....

The Nasdaq has shamefully delayed delisting many companies, because then you'd be able to print their stock tables on the back of a 3 x 5 index card....

[Cyber Ninja]

What is it with LW groups not paying their bills? Al Sharpton has done the same thing.

Liberals are often lacking in business skills. They cannot figure out how to earn, so they always resort to confiscation (taxing). If Democrats can figure out how fund Salon.com via Government handouts, they would do it.

CB^)

[ewing]

Flatline! We need a de-fib [bankrpuptcy] fast!

[ewing]

ROTFLOL! With half of FR's one year budget we could buy a majority position on Salon.com and appoint Ann Coulter CEO!

[BOBTHENAILER]

Sour apples indeed.

[wideawake]

eeman, I know you were joking, but the guys who saved them last time were given a tranche of convertible preferred stock.

Any attempt to buy Salon.com on the open market would probably run up against a trigger of some kind ensconced in the terms of that offering.

In other words, we go out and spend $250K on the stock (and it would of course run up as we were buying it) and all of a sudden Salon.com issues 20 million new shares struck at 0.001 cents to the convertible holders.

BCrago66, I'm sure they thought of subletting, but probably one of the few things that is keeping their skeleton crew working for peanuts is the relatively tony address and central location.

Right now they are just an expensive hobby for their investors.

[Moosilauke]

Close but off by one order of magnitude. Make that a $2.5 million market cap.

[Tijeras_Slim]

That..in case you weren't aware, is called in medical parlance, a FLATLINE

Brain death in a liberal is the default setting.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

As soon as I saw this headline I knew someone would be posting this. LOL!

[Congressman Billybob]

What I don't get is this -- Salon has been "bleeding from all orafices" (to quote Gordon Geikko) for years now. Why do they still exist? Why isn't their editorial staff located in a packing crate over a steam grate somewhere, with a sign outside that says, "Will run a website for food"?

'Splain me dat, Lucy!

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, now up FR, "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies."

[eeman]

Ooops, those pesky decimals. I thought 250k was not much of a market capitalization, although probably still too much for SALN.

[eeman]

From your post, you must be a very knowledgeable guy, so let me ask you this question: Re the "investors" who bailed them out and got convertible preferred stock. Does that explain why there are 50 million authorized shares, but only 14,155,276 outstanding shares. Hence they could flood the market in case some evil mean conservatives tried to buy them out for their own malevolent purposes?

[wideawake]

Most companies have far more authorized shares than issued shares these days in order to protect themselves against hostile takeovers precisely like the one you were contemplating.

As I look through Salon's recent 10-K filing I see that the convertible note holders and the convertible preferred holders have a majority of voting shares and effectively control the corporation.

In other words, not only do they control the lion's share of the issued stock, they also have the right to award themselves as many new shares as they want. There is no way anyone can wrest control of this company from them.

I note that according to their most recent financial statements the company has $1.5M in debt and lost $3.8M in cash last year. Given their burn rate and current cash balance of only $162K, they had about 15 days of liquidity left as of March 31, 2003.

This means that they are certainly bankrupt from a technical point of view - the investors must be continually pouring almost a million dollars of cash into this comapny each quarter.

That's a fairly expensive proposition.

[Geronimo]

Their Annual Report came out yesterday...

Salon.com Anal Report...

Salon has a history of significant losses and expects to incur operating losses in the near future. For the year ended March 31, 2003, Salon had net losses attributable to common stockholders of $5.7 million and had an accumulated deficit of $82.3 million. If and when Salon does achieve profitability, Salon may not be able to sustain or increase profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future. If revenues grow more slowly than Salon anticipates or operating expenses exceed expectations, financial results will most likely be severely harmed and the ability of Salon to continue its operations will be seriously jeopardized.

lol...

[wideawake]

They have 14.1M outstanding shares at $0.05 per share.

14.1M divided by 20 (i.e. each share is 1/20th of a dollar) is $705K in market capitalization.

[Feiny]

Hey Jim....where are the big FR offices located? heehheee

[Dont Mention the War]

ping

[Cultural Jihad]

"Whatever you do, don't mention the war.
I did it once, but I think I got away with it."