Today OCZ shares saw a 30% increase in value slightly after the company announced the Vector 150 SSD and the embargo on reviews was lifted. As the company recently was mainly in the news because of their bad financial situation, and the recent plunge of their shares, the announcement of the Vector 150 has to be surely a boost for OCZ and its employees.
The reviews all indicate that the latest Vector series SSDs are winners which might benefit OCZ in retail. Unfortunately former financial disclosures have learned us that exactly their consumer division is the troublesome part of the company.
The troubles started as the company had difficulties to publish their results over previous quarters which was required to remain listed on the NASDAQ. Due bad financial management caused by the former CEO, the company had trouble to meet the these requirements.
Last month the company was finally able to post the results and they weren't encouraging. However, the last quarter showed the company is working hard to get their results up again. The new CEO of the company, Ralph Schmitt, is trying to clean up the mess that was left.Unfortunately it wasn't the only issue the company was facing. Growth capital provider Hercules would also supply a $20 million cash injection if OCZ would meet certain conditions. Unfortunately the company was unable to meet these conditions and had to amend a loan and security agreement with Hercules which also cancelled 3.9 million in warrants.
OCZ also has to payback the loan to Hercules by June 2014, together with a $6.5 million loan fee. OCZ seems to be doing well on the enterprise side, but has difficulties on the consumer markets, mainly due issues with NAND supplies. Clearing the inventories impacted margins but the company hopes that it will benefit from that on the long term.
The Vector 150 series SSDs use NAND from Toshiba, which is rumored to be a possible candidate to purchase OCZ's consumer division.
