Decision Diagnostics Corp (OTCMKTS:DECN) Spikes Once Again
Decision Diagnostics Corp (OTCMKTS:DECN) gained 24% during yesterday’s session and it emerged above the $0.30 per share mark for the first time since October. Plenty of people seem pretty happy about the jump, and they are also quite excited about the press release that caused it.
About ten minutes before the opening bell, DECN announced that they are preparing an endgame strategy that will help them finally clear out all the legal problems with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ).
Members of the management team appear to be confident that they can get the matter settled, and they better be right. As we noted in our previous article on DECN, the uncertainty around the litigation was severely impacting the revenues about a year ago.
While we’re on the subject of our previous article, however, we should probably mention the fact that back in November 2013 DECN was hovering around the $1 per share mark. As you can see, right now, it’s struggling with the $0.30 barrier. We can’t help but ask: “Why is that?”.
Unfortunately, the legal battle with JNJ hasn’t been the only problem DECN have had to deal with. First, in May, the company decided to dismiss its public certifying accountant and to appoint a new one. This led to the delay of the 10-K for last year and of the Q1 report. Then, less than four months later, the new accountant decided to resign and a third entity was put in charge of keeping DECN‘s books. Apparently, putting together all the missing reports and publishing them is taking a while since DECN failed to file their Q3 statement on time as well and said that they hope to become current with their reporting obligations “as quickly as possible”.
As a result of all this, the latest 10-Q covers the third quarter of last year and we should probably note that the figures in it are not exactly perfect. Here they are:
- cash: $41 thousand
- current assets: $4.6 million
- current liabilities: $4.2 million
- revenues: $304 thousand
- net loss: $771 thousand
So, the company wasn’t doing particularly well back on September 30, 2013. The management team, led by Mr. Keith Berman, is trying to convince you that things will soon be very different. Because of the lack of any up-to-date filings, however, you really need to trust Mr. Berman if you are willing to put your money on the line. And that may not be an easy task.
A person by the same name was once at the helm of a company called Access HealthNet Inc. Access was traded on NASDAQ and during the first half of the 1990’s, it was reporting some decent figures in its financial statements. Then, however, the revenues suddenly dropped and, as Los Angeles Times reported, the company went out of business. A year later, Access’ management team were named as defendants in a class action lawsuit because of allegedly misleading information in the company’s financial statements.
Of course, we can’t say with absolute certainty whether the Keith Berman who ran Access HealthNet and the Keith Berman who is now at the helm of DECN are one and the same person. We do know, however, that the principal offices of the two companies are located in Westlake Village, California.
