Because it is a private company, Syntroleum does not have to disclose the kinds of information -- quarterly profits and losses, terms of licensing agreements, outstanding litigation, risk factors -- that any smart investor needs to figure out a value for SLH's stake.
One of the problems in such a period is that it is not easy to figure out a clear value for an asset.
"The costs for a broker is based on rent, marketing and the time you need to spend sourcing aircraft, planning and monitoring a trip, so it's quite possible to figure out a true value for the service your broker is providing," he says.
That "cellevision" wireless entertainment and data services will break out and become a meaningful business to wireless carriers in the U.S. I touted this last year, but it's a so-so business right now and does not look likely to get huge unless carriers either drop prices dramatically or figure out a different value bundle.
It is difficult to figure out a way to generate new value to a particular group of customers and do so in a way that the value created (and therefore paid by them) is distinctly higher than the costs incurred.
But because the iPhone is its sweet spot, if it can figure out a way to eke more value out of that business, it basically just gives Wall Street an opportunity to take additional value onto its market cap — even if it's just a function of the amount of money it makes and the revenue it projects for the next round.
A great business model involves making products customers want and figuring out a way to deliver that value profitably.
They say that money earned is a reasonable approximation of the value you're creating for the world, and Amazon has figured out a way to measure its own value in dozens of previously invisible areas.
They haven't figured out a way to compete with the value menus at McDonald's and Burger King, which are thriving as consumer pocketbooks become squeezed.
And that whole domain of startups figuring out values, communicating values and looking at this sort of abstract 'soft' layer — I think startups as an industry have done a really bad job of that.
All of the sudden, figuring out the value of a Florida condo or a television script has become intensely complicated, so much so that a general state of uncertainty seizes many markets.
