Open House, LQMT RSM Oct 16 2014
1. Update on Patents: As of end of 3Q, 70 patents have been issued.
2. Two sole licensees remain: Apple and Swatch
3. LQMT Manufacturing Center of Excellence is a refurbished warehouse about 50 x 100 feet. Inside was one Engel machine with a footprint of about 5 x 18. Accompanying it was a CNC machine.
4. Paul Hauck: Quite a refreshing individual who smacks of saavy, technical know-how and competence in planning and executing a marketing and sales strategy, something which heretofore has been sorely lacking for 11 years. Most important is his inherent quality of being trustworthy, carrying integrity in his articulation and demeanor. Truly a gem of guy. He is totally credible. He has set up a plan to finish appointment of the MSR's within the USA by end 2014. Subsequent to that, he will vet and appoint MSR's for Europe and Asia. One may take anything Paul Hauck says with confidence.
5. Glenton Jelbert: Although initially, a bit carried away with chess pieces, proves himself to be very competent in his role as senior R&D engineer concerning the capabilities of the material and the machine.
6. Joseph Stevick also proves to be competent and enthusiastic about the technology and its future.
7. Sean Okeeffe and his wife, Stephanie Chan are competent in their respective areas of competence, engineering/manufacturing and metallury. Though most of you know my position against nepotism, it is obvious to me that these two have their own agenda for their future independent from that of his uncle, John Kang, former COB, CEO of LQMT.
8. Adrian Lopez, chief mechanic/ machinist for LQMT is knowledgeable and competent. Again, however, I am surprised again that Steipp has a great penchant for encouraging nepotism within the company (He is the son of Steipp's executive secretary, Angela Lopez.
9. Quite pleased to meet Sean Angus, who is Paul Hauck's recent hire from Kinetics working in engineering in the designing of molds and interfacing with potential contract manufacturers.
10. David Ogawa showed up to greet me with, "Do not take any pictures with your cell phone" in his perfunctory yes man role for the CEO.
General:
a. We have two mold makers, and a third in the works.
b. 30 "interested" parties came to the event yesterday. However, Steipp indicated that only a few will turn into serious candidates for manufacturing parts.
c. Materion has a capacity to manufacture 200,000 pounds of ingots annually. At 453.592 grams per pound, this would be 90,718,400 grams per year or approximately 907,184 100-gram ingots per year.
d. Most important part of the Open House was the actual operation of the machine with a superb narration by Glenton Jelbert.
Closing:
Most interesting time speaking with Hauck and all of the technical people.
Pretty much ignored Steipp, Chung and Salas and Otis as they are very well-known quantities.
I consider today to be "GROUND ZERO". We have the sole machine built by Engel of the latest iteration. There are no other equals or more advanced iterations in the field.
We are in process of building the troops (sales agents as explained above).
Once they become competent in the specialty knowledge of switching customers to LQMT from powder metallurgy and CNC machining, (at least 6 months after appointment to become up to speed in the technology), we then have the inertia of the customers engineering departments to overcome. After all, each existing part made by another technology has to be modified to adapt to production by the E 100.
So best estimates for SERIOUS REVENUE is two and one half to three and one half years from date of appointment of MSR.
Pretty much that sums up todays visit to RSM and most of the nitty gritty has been captured in my post.
Pretty much, anything said prior to Hauck's arrival is all SMOKE.
And you can dismiss the golf club hype of Steipp and, for that matter, all of the stuff about canards.
What Paul Hauck signs off on, well, you can count on it.
I consider Paul to be the Peanuts (charles Shultz) opening the new game for LQMT . We all must pray that Lucy Steipp does not show up when Paul attempts field goals.
