A no-win situation?

Being as objective as I can about the current Blinkx situation, it does seem very much as if mgmt has backed itself into a no-win situation as regards the market's anticipation of the FY figures due on May 19th.

As Blinkx-watchers will be aware, on 10th April Blinxk released a trading update/revenue warning that income for the FY would be $114m, less than the analyst's concensus of $121.5m and far below the figure of $124m that Chandratillake said he was 'comfortable' the company could achieve back on that fateful conference call last November 11th.

That figure of $114m is 'approximate' of course, according to the TU. So what are the possibilities for May 19th?

1/ The figure is less than $114m - another shitstorm hits Blinkx and its share price

2/ The figure is, near as dammit, $114m - well OK, it's what the company said it would be, but still pretty far below what the markets and shareholders were expecting 

3/ The figure is above $114m - slightly better than anticipated, might buy Chandratillake some breathing space (not as far as I'm concerned, of course: if I'd had my way he'd have been sacked several years ago - who knows where the company might be by now if he had been and a grown-up installed?)

None of these are exactly good outcomes - just various shades of bad and worse.

If (1) or (3) above come to pass, of course, it does rather beg the question: who's counting the numbers at Blinkx? Since the TU was released on April 10th - ie after financial year-end - one would expect the given figure of $114m to be pretty accurate.

While we're on the subject of that TU, one piece of mgmt psychobabble nonsense I want to nail right now: Chandratillake said in the TU "whilst it is disappointing to deliver revenues a little below expectations it is worth noting that in a challenging economic climate, blinkx outperformed the aggressive growth of the online video advertising industry by over 80%". Blinkx grew at 72% for the year - which is about the same rate (depends which figures you look at) as online video in general is growing. So Blink didn't 'outperform' the online video industry, it grew at the same rate as the online video industry.

It seems even simple maths is beyond this utterly woeful mgmt team. They don't know the difference between tracking and outperforming sector growth - but then they add 55m (the number of uniques we were told Blinxk was receiving at the interims last November) and 88m (the number of Burst uniques from the same source) to get 100m - the number of uniques 'Blinkx' (not specified whether Blinkx+Burst) is getting, according to the RNS from March...

Time for a change of management - we need a grown-up in charge.