Collexis says it won’t meet filing deadline

Collexis Holdings Inc., the Columbia technology company struggling to stay afloat financially, has notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it won’t be filing its results from the first quarter of the year in a timely fashion.

According to the SEC filing, “The Registrant is unable to file, without unreasonable effort and expense, its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31, 2009 because the Registrant has not yet completed its analysis of subsequent events impacting the Registrant’s financial statements for the quarter ending March 31, 2009.  The Registrant anticipates that the Form 10-Q will be filed on or before the fifth calendar day following the prescribed due date of the Form 10-Q.”

It’s not surprising that Collexis is having difficulty meeting its financial reporting deadlines. The company hired a consulting firm less than two years ago to review its internal controls and the results weren’t pretty. 

“Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements,” the company stated in its 2008 annual report. “Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.”
 
The following specific deficiencies were identified in the company’s annual report:

•  Entity-Level Controls. We did not maintain an effective control environment and certain entity-level controls included in the information and communications and monitoring components of internal control were not designed or operating effectively.
• Segregation of Duties. We did not provide for adequate segregation of duties in our accounting and finance functions, specifically with respect to access to and control of our cash flow without any secondary review.
• Financial Reporting and Period Closings. We did not maintain adequate policies and procedures to ensure that timely, accurate and reliable consolidated financial statements were prepared and reviewed.

Collexis appears to be on the ropes financially. The company lost more than $11 million during the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, and another $4 million-plus over the last six months of 2008.

The company’s independent accounting firm included an explanatory paragraph in Collexis’s annual report last October that expressed substantial doubt about Collexis’s ability to continue as a going concern.

Over the past few weeks, Collexis has diluted its stock by issuing nearly 40 million shares at 7 cents a share in an effort to raise money to meet operating costs.

Collexis’s stock is currently trading at around 11 cents a share.

Cotton prices starting upward

Cotton prices have been moving over the past few weeks, thanks to the weather worries and world events.

Cotton futures prices have jumped from less than 50 cents a pound into the low 60-cent range, according to Southeast Farm Press. 

December cotton futures have the upside potential to reach 65 to 68 cents per pound over the next few trading sessions, but could also fall back to the 52- to 54-cent area, Southeast Farm Press added.

“Growers in almost every region of the Cotton Belt except the Far West have had plenty to worry about besides the markets in the last few weeks,” the publication reported. “Too much rain has delayed the planting of the crop in the Delta region while most of Texas has received too little moisture.

“Planting delays, drought in Texas and the decision by the governments of China and India to not dip into their reserves of cotton have helped prices rise 15 cents per pound in the last two months,” it added.

US farmers are expected to plant 8.8 million acres of cotton in 2009, down from 9.47 million last year, the US Department of Agriculture said earlier this year.

SC Grown program nothing but a handout

 

The State newspaper has a small piece in Tuesday’s paper about the “Certified SC Grown” program, which was begun two years ago to help Palmetto State farmers sell their goods.

According to information found in a rather peculiar press release put out by the SC Department of Agriculture last week, “Our local produce is fed up with South Carolinians purchasing out-of-state fruits and vegetables, so they are hitting the streets to rally citizens and encourage then to buy and eat Certified SC Grown products and produce.”

Perhaps a more accurate statement would have been: “SC farmers and growers want to sell more stuff, and have wrangled state money through the Department of Agriculture to help them do so. Hence, the Certified SC Grown program.”

Too blunt, perhaps.

Taking nothing away from South Carolina produce or the people who grow it, is it really the purpose of government to spend scarce taxpayer dollars to promote a specific industry?

If SC growers get financial assistance to help them sell their goods, one could reasonably argue that SC steel manufacturers or SC paper makers should get the same benefit.

The bottom line is this: If the folks who grow the produce and products in South Carolina want to identify their goods as such, why not leave it up to them to do so?