SunWorks Inc (SUNWQ)

[SandridgeEnergy]

All of those quotes are "status quo maintained" statements.

The communications from the company during the time you are referencing time was that nothing has changed. They never actually retracted any of their older statements about their progress or about the viability of the cell. Nothing stated by the company in the meantime would cause someone who analyzed - and believed - their statements about their cell to believe it was no longer worth pursuing.

The first time the company walked back old statements was in a private conversation with an investor who shared his comments here a few weeks ago - assuming that he was accurate in relaying his account of the conversation he had with Nelson.

Details like this matter. If you took every statement the company made at it's word the timeline is more like this:

2011-2014: Cell in development, it's great, our "tests" show it is very efficient and cheap to manufacture. Could upend the entire economics of energy.

Early 2015: Major Capital Raise, which includes the cell on the prospectus.

2015-2016: We aren't focusing on developing it anymore, just need to find someone to make it. <---- This is what you are pointing out.

2017: It's dead.

At no point did they give any indication that whatever delays they had gaining a manufacturing partner had anything to do with previous reported information being untrue (especially about manufacturing costs). In fact the company touted the low manufacturing costs of the cell time and time again.

What nobody can answer is why did they not take an intermediate step and get crucial data from producing a prototype panel? Probably because they knew it was dead years ago, nothing else makes sense. If you think you have some incredible breakthrough worth billions you don't just abandon it without spending some petty cash to find out if it actually works or not.

They spent more on stock promotion than it would have cost to make a test panel, which tells you all you need to know about what this cell was ever about.

This is from an interview with Nelson from 2011:

Nelson said the goal is a process to make the solar cell that requires minimal additional equipment and costs. "Our technology guys feel they can engineer something that can be a dropped into existing facilities with minimum capital investments," he said. Solar3D just announced a mass-scale manufacturing design for 3D solar cells.

There is no clear indication whether the company can even come close to delivering on its promise, though its 3D solar cell idea is intriguing. The 3D solar cell concept isn't new. In a 2007 research paper, Georgia Tech's scientists described "tower structures" on the silicon substrate, as well as other features that 3DSolar mentions on its website, that were designed to trap more light. SUSS Microtec and Rolith are collaborating on a process to create 3D solar cells with nanolithography.

Solar3D is starting out at a time when venture capitalists are shying away from startups, which are likely to require hundreds of millions of dollars to bring their technologies into commercialization. Investors also are weary of simplistic pitches about how a novel technology can dramatically boost solar cell performance without incurring much more additional manufacturing costs than what current processes require.

This shows why touting low manufacturing costs was key to the investment thesis.

Of course none of this really matters since it's been a scam since the start, as the childish patent application proves.

But I guess investors should be happy they were finally told the truth AFTER losing most of their money in this. In fact since the masochistic tendencies of remaining SUNW longs seems to be off the charts... this may be true.