First Global India has a nice comment on SAY this morning:

Let’s say one thing upfront: we think Ramalinga Raju is an amateur. He is not the first promoter in the world to have cooked the books. Nor will he be the last.

But the weird mea culpa letter is something that is bizarre to say the least. This is not the way professional scamsters work. We doubt if there has ever been an instance of a promoter sending in a letter like this, right upfront. Jeff Skilling didn’t do it. Bernie Ebbers didn’t do it.

So, Mr.Raju was neither a good promoter nor a good scamster. And that is the final writing on his epitaph.

What happens to Satyam now?

It’s history.
The stock could go to zero or near-zero.

After all, no US IT major will go near it to sniff at Satyam’s books. They will need to hire one of the Big Four Accounting firms for a due diligence! Think about that…

No. Satyam is way too risky a deal. Clients will walk. Key employees will walk. There is no cash worth the name, on the balance sheet. And the so-called “genuine” is .loss making. As stated in Raju’s letter, Q2 FY09 had an OPM of only 3%...which means the overall business of Satyam is loss-making, at the net level. And is also cash negative, as is clear from Raju’s letter that he was pledging stock to raise money to keep Satyam’s operations going.

So all holders out there: get out while you still can. This stock has a bottom that you don’t want to see materialize.

Notablecalls: What can I say? High five to ABN Amro for upgrading SAY to Buy from Sell yesterday!