Unless its a public company, nobody, outside of maybe their bankers and accountants, "knows" the financial condition of any small business and very few audio companies are big businesses. The only way you would "know" is to see audited financials and unless a bank requires it, most small businesses don't have audited financials, they have compilations and those are not the same.
So, all this is just guess work and I don't think any of us know ARC financials-I certainly don't. I also don't know the financial condition of any of ARC's competitors-unless its a public company, a business doesn't generally advertise distress. It does seem clear that there were deep disagreements between the majority owner and Acori - presumably a minority owner- and his wife's role seemed to be a big part of that-so its very personal. The 80% owner usually wins those fights. We can speculate that if they were all getting filthy rich selling tube amps maybe they would swallow hard and tolerate each other, but we don't know. ARC seems to have made a big bet on the new, less expensive products it brought to market-I don't know if those are moving or where one would find that information. I think most would agree that Hwang's unconditional agreement to keep ARC as an American made product is positive.
At any rate, ARC is an important historical figure in this business-I've never owned ARC products, but I hope it does well.
