News and Emails Keep Flying Around Terra Tech Corp (OTC:TRTC)

Do you remember Terra Tech Corp (OTC:TRTC)? Yes, that’s the company that was dealing with VoIP software until about a year ago when they decided that they would like to get their hands dirty and manufacture products that will help you grow marijuana as well as other agricultural products in the comfort of your own home. While this might not be such a bad idea and while repeating the word “marijuana” in your press releases seems to be something of a trend nowadays, you can see from the chart on the right that TRTC are not exactly flying. There are a couple of good reasons for this.

First of all, they are in a dreadful financial state. When we say “dreadful”, we mean it. The last time we wrote about them, we had to rely on a report covering the third quarter of 2012. As you can read from our articles, we weren’t impressed with the financials that we found in it and we were secretly hoping to see something different from the new one. Unfortunately, the 10-K that TRTC have published since our last encounter with them, looks more depressing than ever. Here are the most important figures:

• cash: $16 thousand
• current assets: $352 thousand
• current liabilities: $846 thousand
• yearly revenue: $552 thousand
• yearly net loss: $5.8 million (!!!)

No wonder, then, that they are struggling, you would say. That’s correct but still, there are those inexperienced investors that base their decisions solely on things that they read in press releases and message boards. And if you are one of those people, you might be easily fooled into thinking that TRTC are actually doing a great job.

Their latest announcements talk at length about new sources of financing, finalizing of acquisitions, future revenues etc while the TRTC message boards are full of people, who have been paid to post optimistic opinions on the potential of the company. As you can see, the optimism is hugely unfounded and, unfortunately, the pumping campaign is not restricted to the forums only. Yes, the newsletters are in it too and we were rather perplexed when we saw TRTC cropping up once again in the promotional emails. The reason for our confusion lies in the colossal losses that some investors registered after the previous pumps and we thought that the promoters will be somewhat reluctant to tout TRTC once again. Probably the tasty compensations wiped out all the embarrassment rather quickly.

Whether the people standing behind the newsletters feel ashamed or not, however, is not important. You’re probably more interested in the results of the previous pumps. If we have to use one word for them, it would be “disaster”. If we have to go into a bit more details, we would say that a lot of innocent investors got seriously burned. But all the words and figures pale into insignificance when you look at TRTC‘s chart from the last six months. We have handily outlined the last two pumps – the one in February 2013 and the one before it, in October 2012.

If we have to be honest, we’re not that surprised by the outcome of the awareness campaigns. Artificial hype is not the way to ensure long-term performance of the stock, and when the featured company is in a horrific financial state, the consequences hit even harder. While we’re used to seeing similar companies being crushed by paid pumps, some inexperienced investors still fail to spot the danger and end up seriously out of pocket. The people who believed the emails about Vista International Technologies, Inc. (PINK:VVIT) and Buyer Group Intl Inc (PINK:BYRG) can confirm that and so can you by having a quick look at the charts on the right.