“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” HTC reported their third quarter earnings on Oct 30^th and didn’t make a sound in the HTC-Vive forums. Around the same time, The HTC Vive team was on their road show event at the Paris Games week. By this time, the road show has completed almost its entire US city schedule except for the one in Austin that is scheduled for Nov 3. Must have been an interesting week for the folks at HTC. On one hand, they are generating the much needed VR buzz and on the other hand they are probably getting beaten up by their other primary stakeholder, the shareholders.

A quick glance at their Q3 2015 numbers generates some level of anxiety. Operating margins are at its lowest in the last five quarters. Revenues have declined by more than 50% from NT$bn 47.9 in the last quarter of 2014 to  NT$bn 21.4 bn this quarter. The stock is down close to 48%. Fierce competition from emerging upstarts such as Xiaomi has left HTC in doldrums. The company doesn’t carry as much debt on its books and has some cash to sustain itself for a while.

The million dollars question is “How much of that cash is it willing to bet on the emerging and nascent VR market?

The company has made some very interesting strategic choices in how it shaped its entry into the virtual reality market. Early on, it realized the need for solid content to power the sales of its hardware and formed a strategic alliance with Valve Corporation in March 2015. It also realized the risks associated with that unique partnership and hedged some of it by acquiring a 15% stake in another Los Angeles based VR firm WEVR that specializes in VR content platform for $10 million dollars. With WEVR, they are hitting some good wins. Notable among these are the John Wick experience that was a result of partnership with Lionsgate. Last month, WEVR also announced that it was nominated for the 2015 Proto Awards for its product theBLU. By the time HTC launches its hardware (Original launch was Q1 2016 but now its expected during Christmas with limited quantity), it will have adequate content to showcase the experience.

The big question is if all this effort in VR is too little too late for HTC or will the virtual reality experience really give its stock a nice bounce come next year. With R&D expenses projected to remain flat and emphasis on restructuring some of the costs, it will perhaps have a difficult time to scale come next year. If the VR experience proves healthy for them, they could become a potential acquisition candidate for others trying to break into the VR mobile market.

Either way, if you are HTC-Vive fan like me, get ready for some decent fireworks in the upcoming quarters both from a VR experience point of view as well as thrill ride on the financials.