Pacific Vortex, a leader in the nebulous neo-edge-cloud copycat-computing market, announced heavy losses on an earnings call this morning. During the call, Chief Executive Officer, Chip Theodoropoulos said the underperformance was due an issue in their multi-factor edge computing division, a fast-growing market segment.
When analysts questioned why the losses were felt in what should be a highly profitable division, Chief Financial Officer Chad Stephens answered. “There were some challenges with the allocation of our marketing spend as it related to target audience receptivity and return on advertising dollars. Consequently, revenue was significantly out of sync with our expectations.”
When institutional investors on the call pressed for a more detailed explanation, Theodoropoulos said
“Ok, here’s the deal. We had this marketing intern, right? He’s very sharp. A little strange maybe, but sharp. Anyway, he heard we were making this big push into edge computing. He told us that he knew exactly how to ramp up sales; that he knew the segment well. We were a little skeptical because he’s only an intern, right? But hey, I’m just the CEO; who am I to question his knowledge and methods?”
“So, this kid takes the lead, says everything is going great, nothing to worry about. He’s on fire, right? He rolled out the whole enchilada, Google Ads, airport billboards, telemarketing campaign. He was thinking outside the box too. He took out full-page ads in Thrasher Magazine; he gave away a metric ton of silk-screened black hoodies and logoed eyeliner.”
“But none of this was moving the needle, so we looked into his metrics and target customer profiles a bit. As it turns out, and you have to admit this is pretty funny; he thought we were in the ‘edgy’ computing space; not the edge computing space. So, we blew $23 million on a marketing push aimed at dissatisfied youth and skateboarders. They aren’t buying a lot of enterprise IT right now.”
Stunned investors suggested this might require a leadership change, but Theodoropoulos was defensive. “Those skateboarders are going to grow up, you know. Some of them will end up as middle-managers at paper towel distributors or muffler manufacturers, and they will need to buy some sexy IT gear to impress the CEO. They will remember the ad from Thrasher, or maybe that hoodie is still in the attic. Pacific Vortex is going to be their first call. I’m certain of that.”
CFO Stephens attempted to appease analysts and investors with a positive forecast. “We expect to be fully back on track by next quarter, thanks to our new product EdgeVortex. It will seamlessly connect the core to the edge while also connecting the edge to the core. This is something no one has ever done before; edge-to-core, sure; core-to-edge, definitely. But bi-directional? It’s really going shake up the multi-sided platform provider market.”
Pacific Vortex stock closed at $8.75 per share, down from $43.54 on Monday.
