The company’s already terminal share price took another 43% dive on the news. Its shares were changing hands at $0.37 when the market closed Friday afternoon.
At the end of April, SCO was given six months to bring its share price back up above $1, the cut-off under which it has languished since March 13, or get kicked off the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The market now values SCO at just $7.9m, a little over half of its cash balance at the end of its April quarter.
Ironically, one of SCO’s biggest creditors may end up being Novell, the Linux company SCO unsuccessfully sued over intellectual property relating to the operating system.
A US judge ruled last month that Novell is entitled to a slice of the $25.9m license fees Microsoft and Sun paid SCO for use of intellectual property SCO claimed to own.
Judge Dale Kimball decided that Novell, instead, is the rightful owner of the Unix System V copyrights that SCO had asserted it owned and licensed under its SCOsource program.
SCO has appealed this decision, saying the Sun and Microsoft deals related to different technology. Kimball last week denied its request to fast-track this appeal.
Payment of fees to Novell, amount to be determined at trial, would be difficult. SCO’s April 30 balance sheet shows just $18.9m in assets, just $13.2m of which was in cash or equivalents.
Kimball’s pre-trial ruling last month essentially dashed SCO’s hopes of winning against Novell, and has undermined its case against IBM — terminally, according to IBM.
Despite SCO’s problems, the company insisted Friday that its customers can count on its continued support while it undergoes Chapter 11 restructuring.
We want to assure our customers and partners that they can continue to rely on SCO products, support and services for their business critical operations, said SCO CEO Darl McBride.
