On the Los Angeles meeting last evening:
I attended the Los Angeles meeting of HRCT CEO Dr. Wallace Ching with shareholders at 7:00 pm April 23, 2002. The presentation by Dr. Ching was pretty brief and to the point on each of the subjects covered, with powerpoint slides as visual aids. Manu Ohri, CFO, introduced Dr. Ching.
Education of Wallace Ching: attended Oxford University on scholarship, earned degree in engineering science; Ph.D. earned at University of Pennsylvania (robotics path planning). Previous positions with Goldman Sachs; was head of technology investment for Prudential Asia; also appointed to assist the Hong Kong Commission on Innovation and Technology, which provided funds to startup companies. Was recruited by Alan Phan to take over
as CEO of HRCT.
His current managerial objective is to consolidate operations, preserve assets and move ahead with improving share value. This is in the context of HRCT as a company having survived the very difficult financial market conditions and the tough technology business climate of the last two years. He then commented briefly on the five major branches of HRCT operations.
(1) Hartcourt Capital. He said this is expected to be the main driver of revenues for HRCT in the foreseeable future. The core team of two primary executives has been recruited and hired. Two clients signed already, both of which have been announced to the public. HC will advise the clients regarding obtaining access to the U. S. capital markets.
(2) ELTK. Listing on the OTC has been achieved. An MOU has been signed for acquisition of a mid-size Hong Kong telecom.
(3) SinoBull. Audited financial statements have just been completed, and will be furnished to the SEC pursuant to request. The OTC reverse merger listing is expected to proceed on schedule, although a date was not mentioned.
(4) AI-Asia. The V-2 acquisition was postponed due to the financial loss experienced by V-2 last year. The OTC trading approval is expected to occur.
(5) Hartcourt Education. Commencement of classes on hold.
During later discussions, Dr. Ching said HRCT will be seeking a new Chinese partner in order to proceed with this business. All was ready to proceed with U. S. partners, China campus, and students, but the existing Chinese partner imposed new conditions on the relationship which would have affected
HRCT importantly.
In sum, HRCT has 12 operating companies in five groups. HRCT will continue to seek attractive acquisitions to add to these business assets, provided the acquired companies have business revenues and will assist the effort to make HRCT operations profitable as a whole. HRCT will seek trading of its companies' stocks on Asia exchanges when that is viewed as advantageous.
Also, in answer to a question, Dr. Ching said he is aware that the company needs to provide more transparency to the financial markets of future prospects for earnings of the operating companies, including the effects of acquisitions on operating results and earnings per share. He said he has been speaking with fund managers and knows that is desireable and a
necessity in today's markets.
In this regard, I think he is setting a personal goal (without commitments or announcements) to achieve net profits in HRCT's companies at the earliest possible date, specifically this fiscal year. Of course, that is still a year away to see whether we make it. But certainly a worthy goal IMO.
In discussions with Manu Ohri, he appears enthusiastic about the prospects for cooperation/synergy among the various HRCT companies as ways to increase revenues. For example, SinoBull has a very popular website that gets many hits; so ELTK ads ought to appear on SB's site to get ELTK's name before the
public more. Also, he is quite enthused about how the Metastock (a company formed by a subsidiary of Reuters) relationship can help HRCT future business prospects. I would like to have learned more about this subject, but time did not allow. He said he is available at his Cerritos, CA, office and is glad to have calls there.
This is all I can recall at present, and is simply my effort to recall the discussions as best I can. Obviously, I may have misunderstood what was said, or missed other remarks. So this is just my opinion submitted for what it is worth. Regards to all.
