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Perfect. Could not have expressed it better.
It was decidedly lacking in new information. Efforts to fan the hype, I suppose.
Did little for me.
Good for you. Hopefully the share price will improve next week. If not, perhaps 5 weeks from now when we hit my first projected date for the arrival of Bam-1 silk.
Good luck.
I was replying to a post about a wool/linen/silk/spandex fabric blend. Nowhere did I pretend to forecast the next 100 years of KBLB’s world domination plan, or whatever else they have in mind.
If you want to think about ‘near-term’ applications of DS/Bam-1, I believe they will contain a minimum of 10% DS/Bam-1. That excludes at least .001% of all textile sales, leaving KBLB only 99.999% of the fabric market to conquer. It is a constraint on KBLB that they will have to produce enough silk to make up 10% of a fabric blend, but given the thousands of metric tons of DS/Bam-1 they have stored in unused warehouses, that’s not much of a constraint, is it?
In short: assuming companies want to incorporate DS/Bam-1 in blended textiles of >10%, KBLB will be able to sell all it can make for a good long time. Nothing wrong with that as your business model.
If you want to dream about buying a 90% wool, 7% linen, 2% DS/Bam-1, 1% spandex men’s suit, you may want to set your sights quite a bit further down the road.
My claim was limited to DS/Bam-1, not any potential fibers KBLB might develop in the future.
If you compare a stretch/strain curve for spider silk and spandex, you will see that spandex stretches a great deal with quite modest force (elongating by roughly 5 times), while dragline spider silk stretches very little (+30%) with a much much higher force.
I read a report many moons ago about the person who created a tapestry out of golden orb fiber. (They milked a million or so of Golden Orb spiders to obtain the silk.) The tapestry is under glass, of course, but the person responsible for the project had a small sample of the fabric. The reporter who visited the creator examined the sample and he could not get even a single thread dangling off the end to stretch. It’s a tough fabric.
Does this mean KBLB could never develop a fiber that stretches a great deal under low forces? Of course not. But that isn’t what I said. Right now, KBLB has DS/Bam-1 in production trials. I expect them to focus on producing that fiber in bulk for quite a while (meaning, I suppose, at least a year) before they turn to alternative fibers.
If you want to fantasize that DS/Bam-1 will replace polyester, nylon, rayon, mundane silk, and spandex worldwide within the next 12 months, you might as well imagine it will take out Kevlar and also replace Fruit Loops as a cereal. I’m trying to map out the near-term possible future of KBLB, not where the company will be 10 or 50 years from now. Cotton/DS blends with a minimum of 10% DS/Bam-1 is all we should expect within the next year for textile applications.
I’m fine with that. Why isn’t that good enough for you?
SilkRoad: “What matters more, strength, stretch, or luster?”
That depends on the application, obviously. I’m not saying there is no market for DS/Bam-1. What I am saying is:
1) KBLB has indicated their initial sales of DS/Bam-1 will be Cotton/DS blends.
2) In order to make Cotton/DS blends distinctive from other fabrics, expect the blend to have at least 10% DS/Bam-1.
3) I don’t expect to see DS/Bam-1 blends in a suit fabric made of 90% wool, 6% linen, 2% DS/Bam-1, 1% Spandex during the next 5 years. Although the amount of silk needed is small, so is the market for this specialized blend, and the impact of shifting from mundane silk to DS/Bam-1 would be hard for most to notice.
4) Don’t’ expect DS/Bam-1 to substitute for Spandex or Lycra in fabric applications. Spandex or Lycra perform a unique function that DS/Bam-1 can’t replace.
Perhaps if/when KBLB expands to hundreds or thousands of metric tons of silk per year, niche applications like this might become available.
I hope that KBLB targets women’s fashions before men’s suit materials. Visibility and markup are likely much better. There is a reason why Bolt and Spiber led with women’s fashions before Spiber expanded into broader markets. Technical textiles are also a better market to target than men’s suit fabrics from what I can determine.
This isn’t a criticism of KBLB, just considerations of how best to promote a new kind of silk in fashion applications. Again, I’m as anxious as you are to see KBLB produce products for sale.
Spider silk (and presumably DS) require considerable force to stretch, so it would not be a good substitute for Spandex.
But the larger question might be restated: what percentage of DS would alter the appearance or performance of a fabric in a way that buyers will pay for? I’m not talking about novelty items like Bolt’s tie.
Spider and Goldwyn put out a hoodie that had a paragraph silkscreened on the front explaining the clothing was made with a blended fabric. If you have to print a paragraph on a hoodie to explain how special it is, fabric-wise, that’s still a novelty item.
Spiber/Goldwin recently sold a number of different articles of clothing worldwide. Here is a link for the US market: https://usshop.goldwin-global.com/collections/goldwin-x-spiber
One of the coats included 60% brewed protein in the outer shell, while another article only had 10% brewed protein.
My guess is that it takes at minimum of 10% DS before a textile seems different enough from something made with mundane silk to appeal to buyers. This is only a guess, but I think it will be a long time before one sees a suit with 2% DS in it.
You probably know that KBLB seems committed to cotton/DS blends for their initial product release. All of us hope the day is near when we can see Spydasilk products for sale online. But I don’t expect it soon.
We already know you are never wrong, Mojo. You’ve said that on several occasions and, since you are never wrong, you must be right about that as well.
Mojo: “you are a great contrarian indicator....i just look at whatever decision you come up with … and then i go with the opposite of that, and im never wrong!”
So, when I said on the 19th or 20th of December that KBLB’s shares had reached an inflection point and I expected them to trend upwards from that point on, you must have sold all your shares at 3 cents.
Bummer.
More recently, when I said there was reason for optimism and that investors with a stomach for risk could consider buying, you must have again sold.
Bummer.
But you are never wrong, so that must be what happened.
Still, I think you confuse what I am saying, because I am not saying that KBLB is doomed to fail. I’m saying they haven’t succeeded yet. I’ve expressed several times that Thompson is behaving more like a CEO who believes success is at hand and is doing so with the input of experts and with an understanding of his past failures.
For that reason, I am holding and am not unhappy or clutching my pearls or crying like a baby. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Thus you must be cautiously pessimistic and thinking about dumping your shares at a good opportunity. Because you always do the opposite of what I decide to do.
I’m holding. You sell.
You already know I’m wrong? Oh, I get it. You already know the future. That’s why you know the share price will be $1 by the end of June.
Mojo — the man who knows the future!
Did you read the recent PR of May 20 (YESTERDAY) that explained how KBLB tested five “input parameters” to improve production?
Seems like they are trying to find ways to produce their silk. Maybe they found it at last, but neither KBLB nor investors will know for certain until they are able to sustain production over multiple generations of growth/production.
There is a reason why KBLB has indicated metric ton levels of production by the end of the year. I hope they will reach that level sooner, but this is clearly a signal from KBLB that they are not certain about the result.
Shades of grey. It’s not all black and white…
The KBLB way.
KBLB has had an order from Kings for $40 million dollars worth of silk. Since January 2021. If they could have provided silk in 2021, Kings would have bought it.
KBLB is not waiting for an order for silk. They are trying to find a way to produce it. Signs are positive and there is reason to be hopeful.
Not for the first time.
Seems like you have difficulty distinguishing between possibility and certainty and have difficulty tolerating those who fail to see the world in black and white as you do.
Maybe an ophthalmologist could help? At least they might be able to diagnose your inability to see even shades of grey.
Good luck.
I always enjoy your succinct summary of KBLB’s status as a counterpoint to the many wild and unbridled proclamations of success.
Many vocal posters here who can’t tolerate any fact-based challenges to their fanciful claims based on suggestive language in KBLB’s PRs.
Thanks for helping to keep things honest here.
Just trying to get some to acknowledge their proclamations are presented as certainties while they are really just wild-ass guesses.
Even though Mojo has stated repeatedly he never makes mistakes…
Mojo: “There is no one here looking for GUARANTEES...SMH”
There are, however, many here who offer guarantees:
“Air Force funding is a slam dunk.”
“$1/share price by June.”
Getting nervous about those guarantees?
Understandable.
I figured out your source and have corrected their mistake. Sorry!
You made a mistake. The inventory shown in the Q3 2022 10-Q was listed at $6,580. At the end of 2023, the inventory increased to $6,884, an increase of $304.
KBLB showed a hank of silk in the December 2023 photo. We don’t know the weight of that hank. If it was 10 kilos, that suggests KBLB priced the silk at about $30/kilo.
The implication is that KBLB produced about 219 kilos in all of 2022, 10 kilos during all of 2023, and no additional silk in Q1 2024.
Pricing it at $30/kilo does not imply that is the sales price of the silk—only the production ‘cost.’ It appears that KBLB paid GSS $100,000 to produce 219 kilos of silk.
These numbers suggest why KBLB abandoned their previous strains and are now hoping for a base hit or better with Bam-1.
Stay tuned… the KBLB way.
No one will pay $660,000 for a metric ton of Bam-1. Not even the military. I don’t know where you got your numbers, but $160,000 to $240,000 would be about all the market could bear.
Where did you get that figure?
The quarterly and annual reports make it clear that KBLB did not experience an increase in their inventory of silk in Q1 2024. If they had received silk and shipped it off somewhere, it still would have been an asset the company needed to show somewhere, likely still calling it ‘inventory.’ There were no other assets listed that could be understood as ‘silk being processed for production.’
I’m just reporting facts, even though you don’t like them. Since I didn’t talk to Ben, I don’t know exactly what he said and you will have to take the matter up with him if you want to understand what he meant.
It was either a misunderstanding or KBLB has committed fraud by misrepresenting their assets on the latest quarterly report. I’m choosing to believe the 10-Q: no silk produced in Q1, 2024.
Sorry.
Beacham: “The same is true of the PR of 28 Mar citing a research paper from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (“RPI”) outlining a new and novel method of creating spider silk protein from waste plastics. I couldn’t tell you the science behind their method if my life depended on it.”
I’ll explain it for you. RPI created a strain of bacteria that fed on plastics and expressed spider silk proteins. Many on this board have chosen to criticize the ‘goo-based’ approach, but KBLB promoted just such a solution.
Sorry.
Yes. The inventory went up from $6,580 in Q3/2023 to $6,884 in Q4/2023, but then has remained stable at $6,884 in Q1/2024.
If KBLB shipped silk to Spydasilk, the silk might not be considered to be “inventory” in the sense of it sitting in their warehouse, but it is still an asset that KBLB would need to show somehow on their financial report. My guess is they would continue to show it as ‘inventory,’ but it would have to be accounted for somehow.
Conclusion: no silk was produced in Q1, 2024. Not one single kilo.
Oops.
1 pound of DS selling for $20,000? Mundane raw silk runs around $80 per KILO in the US or $37/pound. You are suggesting there is a 54,000% markup in sales price.
Where did you get those numbers? They don’t seem to be right.
Bob, you may have seen that KBLB’s inventory of silk did not increase from December until March. People on this board asserted that KBLB continued to produce silk from the original 2-strain hybrid model while waiting for BAM-1.
Nope.
They shut down production using the version of silkworms that produced the batch we saw in December. It was so successful that … KBLB quit?
But KBLB’s latest PR provided a timeline where metric ton levels of production would be reached at the end of 2023.
That’s the plan, anyway. KBLB is good at planning. Not so good at executing, but lots of great plans.
The KBLB way.
Jetow: “I was trying to be nice before, but here goes... I don't waste my time arguing with idiots.”
That’s good to know. Otherwise you might spend hours arguing with the man you see in the mirror.
And calling someone a crybaby is your idea of nice?
You seem to be miserable reading thoughtful and reasoned posts about KBLB on iHub. Why not leave the board and save yourself the unhappiness that my posts engender in your life?
It must be especially difficult because you can’t argue that I’m wrong, just that you think I’m unhappy. To help you understand, I’m not unhappy at all that KBLB won’t be able to replace polyester and nylon in clothing apparel. That does not imply KBLB will fail in the market. KBLB would be pretty foolish to go after the Wal-Mart mens bulk t-shirt market. KBLB is better served by targeting the ‘luxury streetwear’ market, even though I don’t plan to buy a $1,000 Spydasilk blend hoodie.
But I know how hard it is to have ugly facts puncturing your wildest dreams and fantasies. Fortunately, no one is forcing you to read this board and you can simply spend your time reading things that make you happy. I’ll bet you could find some Barbie coloring books that would really brighten your day!
I have a couple of woven ties. Even still, the BOLT tie looked ugly to me. Can you state that its look showcased the strengths and advantages of spider silk? To me, it just looked like another mundane woven tie.
Without any particular evidence one way or the other, I believe the rapid sellout of 50 ties was due more to the novelty factor of owning a limited-edition ‘spider silk’ tie than to the actual appearance of the tie itself.
I believe one of Spiber’s products, a hoodie if I’m not mistaken, had a paragraph on the front extolling its use of Spiber’s protein-based fibers.
What I would like to see is a product that can showcase the beauty of BAM-1, something that makes people go ‘Wow! What is that?’ Not a hoodie you need to read a paragraph on the product to learn about its qualities or a tie that looks like so many others hanging around.
The post I was responding to made the argument that KBLB’s fibers could mitigate the problem of microplastics from clothing fibers. My post was to point out that particular problem would not be solved by KBLB in the foreseeable future.
Although I’m not a huge fan of the emphasis on cotton/silk blends, if Kings/MTM is still interested in buying $40 million of BAM-1 silk, I’m all for that. I’ve argued in the past that targeting upscale markets for clothing is the correct approach.
This seems to be a point where we mostly agree.
Good to know. I’ve had my eyes on an upscale house on the market. I’ll buy it today because I’ll have enough to pay cash by closing on June 30.
If KBLB was only at $1.11, I’d be in trouble, but since we are hitting $1.12, I’ll be fine.
Thanks for letting me know.
You choose to ignore bad decisions made by Thompson. I choose to interpret what is happening to our share price given that history.
People want to know why we aren’t at 50 cents or a dollar now. I’m providing an explanation. You respond with an attack.
Effective — NOT.
You don’t seem to like facts. They can be awkward at times, but facts represent truth that can be awkward.
Anyone supposing that KBLB’s silks will solve the problem of microplastics in our environment caused by clothing has to confront some basic facts. I spelled those out and showed it was simply not possible for KBLB’s silks to make a dent in the world’s fabric-produced microplastics problem.
You didn’t argue any of the facts, just accused me of crying ‘all day every day,’ and encouraged me to ‘sell out.’
What a convincing post — NOT.
Yes, the price would have slumped, but Thompson also lost additional credibility among investors, who recognized that his uplist plan was premature and badly executed.
“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” … the KBLB way.
Polyester and nylon are cheaper to produce than Pima cotton and much much cheaper than silk. Society has a way of ignoring the hidden costs associated with products, which is why we still have coal- and gas-fired electric generation and gas stoves, in spite of the carbon footprint. The list of such offenders is long.
In 2022, the global production of polyester and nylon fibers was 87,000,000 metric tons. Global production of wool and cotton was 27,000,000 metric tons. Global production of silk was 91,221 metric tons.
If DS were to make a dent in the global textile market, it would have to replace all mundane silk production worldwide and then increase global silk production by a factor of 100.
If that were to happen, it would take decades.
Assuming KBLB is successful in producing and selling their silk, hopefully they will find sufficient markets to fuel rapid growth and we all become rich beyond our wildest dreams. I’m not expecting to live long enough to see KBLB’s world domination. It would be great to see some luxury hoodies and sports apparel. I’d even settle for a silk tie right now, but hopefully not one as ugly as BOLT made.
You think Mojocash and igotthemojo are the same because the aliases were created two weeks apart. Thin ice. Very very thin. Even if they were the same individual, Mojocash has not posted on the KBLB board on IHub to my knowledge.
I believe they are two different people with similar names. Sorry.
The easiest way to resolve this is to click on the name of an individual and look at their history of posts. If you go back through Mojo’s posts, you will see that his current user name has posts that were skeptical (especially of Thompson) and are now more favorable.
IHub won’t allow two different users to have the same user name. It would be easy for someone to ‘fake’ an identity that way.
In short, whatever the data you have, I don’t believe that there are two posters with the same ‘Mojo’ IHub name.
Money managers have no interest in keeping the share price down. When the volume of shares traded is zero, they make no money at all. When the volume of shares is high, they can make their money.
The shifts in price are due to investors and traders who are trying to buy and sell shares in a stock. When someone offers a premium and their order is filled, the stock will jump down to the average level investors are willing to buy/sell shares.
If you want the share price to go up, buy a lot of shares at a high price. Might I suggest you put in an order to buy 10 million shares at a dollar a share? That will drive the share price up to a dollar/share … until your order is filled.
SMH
Unfortunately no.
Each moth does not produce eggs. Only those of the female persuasion. I’m pretty sure that females don’t count the number of eggs they produce and stop at 500. The number varies between 200 and 500.
But KBLB has discovered that you can’t just interbreed all of the silkworms you have grown. Some of them are better than others. Note the language from the most recent PR:
“Under the guidance of Dr. Nirmal Kumar and through a meticulous, statistically-based selective breeding protocol, the parental strains for the BAM-1 hybrid were further optimized during the production cycle.”
‘Selective breeding’ means not all of the silkworms were bred. We should all understand by now that maintaining and growing a breeding pool is far more complex than simply allowing all silkworms to make and keeping all of their progeny.
It’s hard to have patience when we have waited so long for success. Assuming the viability of the BAM-1 production model, KBLB can ramp up production over time. But they are not going from 0 metric tons to 1000 metric tons per month overnight, at least not if they want to maintain the quality of their silk.
I’d rather have KBLB go through a controlled growth that maintains quality than an uncontrolled growth that sacrifices quality. Wouldn’t you?
Trainer2: “Seems like there will be a time in the future where the rocket engine will be ignited.”
Emphasis on the word ‘future.’ Thompson has a long history of going off in too many different directions: immunity silkworms, nearly-pure spider silk, other variants on DS, all while neglecting the core problem: creating a robust silkworm platform to produce DS.
The last thing I want him to do is to attempt twelve more new directions at this time. KBLB may or may not continue to work on their 4-parent-line hybrid production model. If BAM-1 turns out to be good enough to abandon that model, I’d prefer he take up variants on spider silk silkworms instead of spending effort to develop a mundane silkworm production model that has a far lower profit margin.
Focus on your strengths, not on everything you might be able to do.
Until you have made your first substantial production cycle, you are still learning how to crawl.
Even if KBLB was capable of providing eggs for a thousand metric tons per year, don’t you think they would prefer a thousand tons of BAM-1/DS than eight hundred tons of mundane silk and 200 tons of BAM-1/DS.
Production costs will be about the same. Sales price for BAM-1/DS should be higher. Bigger markup = bigger profit.
KBLB may have done some useful work in developing disease resistant silkworms. But that can be done by other competitors. If it is a lucrative market, KBLB will have a lot of competition.
But let me ask you: What would you prefer? KBLB developing new and improved versions of DS, or developing mundane silkworms by crossing existing strains and breeding for disease resistance?
KBLB does not appear to currently have a line of mundane silkworms comparable to BAM-1. I suspect this project is on the back burner if it is still being considered at all.
KBLB would rather raise and sell a higher-premium silk like the DS based BAM-1 than to generate and sell mundane eggs. The markup is higher.
Ramping up to metric ton production levels will be KBLB’s next goal. Notice that I said ‘ramping up.’ KBLB does not appear to have the breeding pool necessary to support even a single metric ton of silk per breeding cycle. Reaching that level and sustaining it represents a new challenge for KBLB.
Before you climb into a rocket and fire the engine, learn how to fly.
Before you learn how to fly, learn how to run.
Before you learn how to run, learn how to walk.
KBLB needs to learn how to walk. If it succeeds, it will learn how to run.
Instead of an explosion, (which tend to be messy and not sustainable), let’s hope that KBLB takes a more methodical approach and demonstrates they can do what everyone hopes they can. Selling mundane silkworms ought to be pretty low on KBLB’s radar right now.
Thompson has tripped over his own ambitions too many times already.