NEW YORK-Depending on who wins the battle of wills at the May 1 annual shareholders meeting of Metricom Inc., the public company might be sold.
Metricom, headquartered in Los Gatos, Calif., has provided wireless data applications to utilities for more than a decade. Last year, it also began offering its new Ricochet service-high-speed, wireless Internet access over unlicensed public radio spectrum-in several metropolitan areas including San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Metricom also anticipates a commercial launch of its Ricochet service this year in Los Angeles.
Lindner Investments, a mutual fund manager holding more than 25 percent of Metricom’s stock, announced late last year plans to seek a shareholder vote to recommend the company be sold in order to get better value for stockholders. Metricom stock, which is listed on Nasdaq, was trading in the range of $14.50 per share in mid-January. It reached a 52-week high of $19.75 per share and a 52-week low of $9.25 per share. In prior years, the company’s stock has gone as high as $32 per share.
In response to Lindner’s proposal, Robert P. Dilworth, president and chief executive officer of Metricom Inc., this month issued this rebuttal, “Our company continues to aggressively accelerate the deployment of our leading wireless data communications technology through numerous options and strategic alliances, none of which involve the sale of the company.”
Dilworth said Metricom closed out calendar year 1996 with 9,000 Ricochet subscribers in the three metropolitan areas where the network has been deployed so far. Ricochet also is in operation at 10 colleges and universities and at five corporations, he said.
“At year end, we are financially healthy, with approximately $65 million in cash, and we are optimistic about our plans to deploy our proprietary network in additional cities and on additional corporate and college campuses in 1997 and beyond,” Dilworth said. “We believe we can best serve the long-term interests of our shareholders, employees and subscribers by staying with our plan of continuously improving our technology and of deploying our networks throughout the country as rapidly as we responsibly can.”
Metricom “has had a troubled past,” said a securities analyst for a New York brokerage firm who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Bob Dilworth did a good job with wireless Internet access, with two-to-three miles and even longer … But it has taken a very long time to get Ricochet out into the market.”
