By far the most amusing thing I’ve seen in the stock market in a while happened to Taser’s stock this week.
The week started with Taser at CES where they announced a Leopard print Taser and a Taser MPG (Music Player Holder) that features a 1 gig MP3 player keenly integrated into your Taser’s holster. Its getting a lot of press, though I’m not sure if it’ll actually equate to any incremental sales.
Wednesday brought the beginning of the true Taser Drama. Stinger Systems (a small competitor to Taser) put out a press release stating that they were requesting that some of Taser’s patents be reexamined. The press release was clearly a bit suspect as the patent lawyer (James McNulty Jr.) actually commented on the valuation of Taser’s stock in the press release, definitely not the norm. The news seemed to cause serious concern as the stock dropped nearly 3 dollars/share by mid day (from 13/share to 10/share). There was a bit of speculation as to whether or not the press release caused the full drop, but it certainly started a fire…
Link to the initial Stinger Systems press release
Thursday brought a response from Taser where eclectic Taser founder Tom Smith fired back with this quote:
These attempts by Stinger Systems, Inc. to confuse the market coming from a desperate company with minimal sales of hand-held ECD products in the marketplace demonstrates the dire straits they face as they are not having success with their existing efforts to compete with our TASER(r) devices
The Thursday press release from Taser also brought to light the fact that James McNulty Jr. (the attorney) was affiliated with a company called Tasertron that Taser purchased in 2003. It sounds like there may have been some misrepresentation regarding the state of the patents that Tasertron held that they were transferring to Taser as part of the sale. The press release implied that those patents were the main ones in question in the new request for reinvestigation.
Friday brought a response from Stinger Systems’ CEO Robert Gruder that basically amounts to a rant, for all the financial world to see, about Taser’s ‘antiquated technology’ even going so far as to ask ‘Why would you even consider buying a Taser?’.
I’m not making any of this up folks, it really doesn’t get much more entertaining than this. I’m anxiously awaiting next week to see what unfolds. I’m secretly hoping they take their fight to Judge Judy, I’d love to see two executive rivals duke it out on daytime TV.
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