back to article OCZ balances books, files results following 4-year omnishambles

SSD supplier OCZ Technology Group has finally filed its fiscal 2013 year results after having to correct the four previous years' results, showing how inadequate financial controls nearly caused the company to collapse. As it is, the consumer and enterprise SSD supplier has been facing a Nasdaq delisting and severe financing …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. tin 2

    Good! They can finally refund me for that military grade data destroyer dressed up as a hard drive called the Vertex 2

    1. MondoMan

      Mine's still fine, but I feel for you!

      My Vertex 2 is still going strong, but that was the last thing I bought from them. The stench was just too strong.

    2. Clive Galway

      Agreed.

      Vertex 4 #1: Failed in 6 months.

      Vertex 4 #2: Replacement DOA

      Vertex 4 #3: Received a couple of days ago, sphincter still not fully relaxed yet.

      For #2, when I reported it, OCZ asked me to reflash the firmware. Seriously? You just shipped me a refurb drive and you didn't think to do that yourselves? Didn't solve anything, was still dead.

      And the bastards expected me to pay for delivery and insisted it was wrapped in "2 inches of bubble wrap", when they shipped it to me with no bubble wrap whatsoever.

      Will not be buying their products again.

  2. Gordon 10

    What former execs have gone to jail for this?

    None? Theres a surprise.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Jail for what ?

      Running a private company to the ground is not a crime. It also comes with its own sanction, as the managers have nothing left to give them revenue.

      Of course, you will rightly object that the workers are out of a job too, but hey, we're talking about managers here.

  3. Slap

    Their SSDs are beyond crap

    A couple of years ago we sold a lot of OCZ SSDs, and according to the return rates over 2 years we've had a 40% failure rate. Ok the drives are under warranty and they're replaced by OCZ, but the amount of replacements that are DOA is astronomical, and the ones that do work initially tend to fail after 3-6 months.

    Compare that to samsung. We've sold a few thousand of these drives and not one return so far.

    You couldn't give me a barge pole long enough for me to even think about touching OCZ drives.

  4. Red Tie
    Alert

    Borrowed time

    Although they are making a small profit margin on sales, they are losing money because of operational costs, i.e. staff costs, R&D, etc.

    They have $10 million in cash and are losing $20 million a quarter, so they need another source of financing, or a buyout. They have a revolving credit facility with HTGC but OCZ are already in breach of the covenants for that agreement.

    With the SSD market consolidating at the moment a buyout seems likely. They do have their own IP for a decent controller. Seagate were interested but [certain members of the Company’s executive management] messed that one up, much like they did with OCZ's books.

    Link below totally unrelated [certain members of the Company’s executive management] ;)

    www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/seagate_ocz_petersen/

  5. resaci

    Award wining product, improved leadership and an exploding market segment. Sounds like a good investment at current stock pricing. I own several of their drives, they work fine.

  6. resaci

    I own 6 of their drives. I have had no problems.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    tim@cook.ms

    It's not surprising in the least. OCZ got their start scamming people on the HardOCP forums with shoddy memory, and refusal to warranty. I refused to do business with them after the f-ed me in their infancy. They also claimed to be a HUGE outfit back then, and someone drove by their supposed address and found an empty store-front. The guy was running it out of his house and lying the whole time.

    Fast-forward a decade and he's still lying to make money. Any investor who bothered to spend 10 minutes looking at Ryan Peterson's history would know the guy is a crook. Surprised he never landed in jail, disappointed really.

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. William Hinshaw

    They have done a great job so far

    The management team at OZC has done a great job so far pulling the company out of the nose dive and have so far prevented it from hitting the ground like a meteor. It will take another few years for them to really be competitive again, but that is what we need, instead of consolidation of SSD makers. The more SSD makers consolidate and the more the SSD market becomes like the HD market of Seagate vs WD and the lackluster achievements in price/performance. The new management seems to have real integrity and that is something that the old management clearly didn't understand the meaning of let alone be able to spell it.

  10. Arnold Lieberman

    Shoddy products

    Had 3 Vertex SSDs in my workstation - 2 are showing errors and my Windows installation is so borked with corrupt clusters that it now refuses to boot. Have 2 Revodrives in our main server - the 240Gb one has completely died (not showing up in BIOS). We'll see how long the 960Gb one lasts.

    Terrible, never again.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like