Condi Talks - Some Lemmings Listen

Last week I blogged that Condi Rice gave the thumbs up to the “reality” of cellulosic transportation fuels and to the wonderful outlook of KIOR a company where she sits on the board of directors.  Actually Condi also has a close business relation with Vinod Khosla who is a large shareholder in KIOR.   The statement in KIOR’s press release attributed to Condi must have been vetted by a team of lawyers.

The statement was as follows:

"KiOR is changing the American energy equation by innovating and commercializing an entirely new generation of hydrocarbon-based diesel and gasoline fuel. By making the promise of cellulosic fuels a reality, KiOR demonstrates that these fuels are an attractive option for lessening America's dependence on foreign sources of energy."

KIOR announced this just as the market opened on Monday morning.  Partly due to Condi’s statement the stock moved up $6.10 early in the trading day from $5.88 where it opened.  The market then digested the earning and the real statements by the CFO in the earnings call where he stated that shipments of the cellulosic fuel were essentially zero.  By Friday (yesterday) KIOR stock has dropped to $5.13. 

I am no legal expert but I do believe that folks who bought the stock early on Monday morning relying on the statement of the former secretary of state may have a case against her and the company.   Note the CFO’s statement were made later in the day and then the stock headed down. 

I found an interesting video links that relates to this blog.

This is an old ad for a stock brokerage house E F Hutton that had the ad tag line “when E F Hutton talks people listen”.    E F Hutton is now long gone and is party of Citi Group’s and Morgan Stanley’s too big to fail empires. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MXqb1a3Apg

The lemmings in the video were the investors who bought KIOR first thing on Monday.  Condi you may be a genius, you may be Khosla’s strategic adviser, but you are going to look a long time for KIOR’s missing weapons of mass combustion.  I still have a target price of $3 on KIOR.