It's an indication of how the market views Baltimore Technologies that when the cash on its balance sheet is stripped out, its underlying encryption software business is now being valued at less than £100 million sterling (€164.3 million).

And despite the job cuts announced last month, there are many who believe that Baltimore, given the speed at which it spends money, will still run out of money before it starts generating profits unless even more radical rationalisation is carried out.

This week's revelation that Baltimore is in danger of being kicked out of Nasdaq unless the share price improves will do little to improve sentiment, as will the fact that a share price of 30p has still not generated any take-over interest in the company.

It's not very helpful for Baltimore shareholders, but there is no indication that their fortunes will improve unless somebody comes in with a bid.

And even then, any bid is still going to leave an awful lot of institutions and private investors heavily out of pocket.

Entrust, Baltimore's main competitor, has its own problems and is hardly likely to ride to the rescue. And is there any reason why Microsoft should not simply wait for Baltimore to go under and then buy up its software products rather than get involved in the bother of making a bid for the company?

Definitely not a pretty picture.