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I have absolutely zero specific knowledge on potential revenue for one of these machines BUT $1.5 million per machine per year seems WAY too low. It works out to $30k/week or maybe $6k/day. Makes no difference whether you make aircraft fasteners, tendon splices or dental implants...it just isn't enough money! It could be off by an order of magnitude...just my opinion.
Li didn't send 2 machines half way around the world for $3 million/year.
Lugee Li is a smart cookie capable of managing multiple objectives as long as the paths aren't incompatible. I see his first objective as the commercialization of BMGs with Eontech/LQMT being globally significant in its implementation. As a second objective, I see the movement of $63 million from China to the US as strategic to his personal well-being and part of a personal plan to be less China focused. If I remember correctly, he is something like 46 and there is plenty of time make changes.
Really squeezing the option holders. We may sell down until they all expire worthless.
Visser's Warrants----As long as I'm in the writing mood, I might as well comment on the upcoming warrant expiration. I think my numbers are correct (or at least close). Visser has warrants to purchase 18 million shares at something like $.18 each. It could work out this way--
>>Visser gets a check for $3.2 million, gives it to LQMT and they issue 18 million shares (and deliver the certificate). LQMT sees 2% dilution from the additional shares and Visser has $3.2 million tied up in a semi-liquid stock (I'm being kind). Overall not a good outcome for either party..But LQMT does get the $3.2 million. Visser's stock has an intrinsic value of a few pennies per share that measures in the hundreds of thousands (not millions) coupled with limited liquidity.
>>Alternatively LQMT could purchase the warrants from Visser for say $1.2 million, thus giving him an assured profit of $1.2 million without the hassle associated with disposal. Visser gets a guaranteed return and LQMT doesn't have to dilute the outstanding shares but it costs us the $1.2M plus the opportunity to collect $3.2 million for the sale.
>>Could be a good reason to "wish" the stock price below the $0.18 exercise price...at least until mid summer when the warrants expire worthless and LQMT doesn't have to dilute OR make a deal that costs $.
The current price drop (below .20) looks like a float problem.[ The volume this AM is only about 170k which translates to all of $30k resulting in a drop of 3%.
The stated float is something in the area of 250 million shares but in reality its much tighter than that. Overall trading volume is tiny in relation to the 850 million outstanding.
Static in a very shallow market.
A collection of my thoughts==Pure Conjecture I listened to the CC and went over the transcript on SA but I still have a question as to why Eontech is shipping two machines to the US. Not one but two all of which started be developing scenarios that fit with that statement. Bear with me on this..
>>Eontech has been manufacturing BMG products for something like 1-3 years
>>Eontech sells globally and has a fair number of US based customers...the website lists the customers (except those that objected or are covered by non-disclosure agreements.
>>Some portion of Eontech's customer base in North America or Europe are buying BMG products.
>>The partnership agreement between Eontech and Liquidmetal divides the world between the 2 partners. Eontech has exclusive rights to Asia and Liquidmetal owns North America/Europe.
>>To continue to supply the non-Asian customers, Li needs to produce the exact same products under the Liquidmetal umbrella so he ships the actual machines to LQMT so that the customers can be confident that the products will be identical. Expect a handful of engineers and operators to follow the machine and train the new operators.
What does all this mean? It means that the two machines will arrive with an inventory of pre-qualified products and built-in sales for Liquidmetal.
Li's intent is to "jumpstart" the business and stop the million dollars a month flowing down the drain.
Question...Why would Lugee Li invest $60 million of his own money into a company with no sales/no prospect of near term success? He has a detailed plan to turn 60==>600 within a few years.
Its going to be exciting!
I'm concerned that when the stock finally hits 0.30 half this board it going to run out and sell when, in fact they should be adding to their positions. There is no point, as yet, where its an automatic dump. Projecting a price in 2,5 or 8 years is impossible. It could be $1 or $10 or $25. Even $1 in 2 years is doubling twice (a 300% gain). Stay cool.
OK Take a deep breath...the headlines say Cameco has lost a $1.3 billion contract so lets put that in perspective...
The $1.3 billion is projected sales over the next 11-12 years and amounts to $128 million/year for 2017, 2018 and 2019. This compares to what the annual sales are expected at $2.1 billion/year. So 128 divide by 2100 is 6.1% loss of anticipated sales. Its significant but not outrageous.
The PPS is down something like 12% this morning. Suck it up, sharpen your pencils, revisit the Australian deal and go to "Plan B". (Plan B is not to sue your customer but perhaps negotiate a "break up package" after all they may want some uranium sometime in the future)
Nothing for stocksgreen but just a general comment on the discussion... Why in the world are we trying to design the plant?...its plenty big for at least a few years. By the way perhaps the next capacity needs to be in...Kentucky or North Carolina. The lead time on buying a building is much less than getting machines.
Seems like we are polishing doorknobs.
I like the way this is going...Building closes on February 17th, the new die casting machine arrives in mid-March and Li said in December that they will be hiring to expand the workforce. Sounds like a plan coming together!!
No volume....half the trades this AM are less than $1000. Total volume 200k shares ...gone dead
Gorgol...18 Billion is a lot of money but I would have guessed that Apple would have been a larger percent of the supposed TRILLION that resides overseas. Somehow I figured that most of their cash hoard would be overseas.
Different point....Has anyone tried to estimate the effect on the rest of the world's economies when US Companies pull a trillion out of Europe and Asia? It has to badly impact their financial systems.
Bloomberg Asia.....I'm sitting watching Bloomberg Asia and they just ran a story about China's efforts to stem the currency outflows from the country and the fact that they have placed a limit on how much can be sent away. Seems to me that our Professor Li has devised a way to transfer a huge portion of his assets from China to the good ole USA. This is obviously a smart move and I wonder if part of his decision to invest in LQMT was driven by this???
Visser's choices...He exercises the warrants to buy LQMT stock at 18 cents or so and at that point he can sell the stock @ market or hang on if he thinks there is more money to be made by selling later. If the stock is trending upward, he might as well ride along. His choice.
Missile canards.. sure that was 2014 but the program is still pending...sometimes these things have a very long timeframe. Really can't tell--these things go through concept, proposal, prototyping, proposal again, funding, final process engineering and THEN something happens that we can see.
Visser warrants are a very minor issue at this point. If I remember correctly, they represent 18 million shares out of a total 885 million...its 2 percent so if he sells before the Summer deadline, it will create a blip in volume and depress the price for a few days. When he exercises, he has to invest $3-$4 million to buy something worth less than 5 million...If I were him, I'd hang onto the stock in which case the only effect would be to increase outstanding shares by 18 million.
If your question relates to whether LQMT should have granted him the warrants...it was a non-cash way to make him go away which was probably a good idea at the time.
GTAT is a different situation...Apple put them in a box with no escape...between Purchasing and Legal GTAT took the fall when Apple assumed that you could just slap a slab of sapphire onto an existing frame and everything would be OK..it needs to be engineered as a system!
Lots of first hand experience..BOT GTAT @12 and @7 and $4 for an average of 5.5. Stock ultimately went to 18..petered out sold @ $12 2 weeks before TSHTF. Not that much fun! Too much risk for only a 2-bagger.
GTAT's success was defined as a single application/single customer. LQMT is a technology bet on BMG. Some of the hurdles are similar..product is more expensive, has a significant learning curve, capital intensive and these all serve to slow adoption. It's easy to say "no" or "maybe later".
LQMT has many avenues to success..next week we could hear about canards from Lockeed or maybe fasteners from Northrup or maybe tendon repairs from ? or something we know nothing about from Europe. The manufacturing technique has many advantages but existing products have a defined manufacturing process and adoption of BMG molding will require a redefining of the process (which means change)...It fits better into a new application since it can be incorporated into the process from the start.
If you exercise 18 millions in warrants, you would have to sell 5-6 million to cover the taxes.
Maybe the news tomorrow is a 1:10 reverse split along with other things to try get a balance overall. That 5 million shares this AM could be someone bailing before the announcement.
Selling 400 million shares in the open market destroys the market but a private sale to an individual or a company could happen without all that fuss. It would be peanuts to Apple and they wouldn't have to deal with inevitable price run-up.
One last time...The last extension announcement was in June 2015 and the prior extension was in February 2014 and guess what? These are all 12 month extensions so what is the real anniversary date?? My whole point is that the "agreement" has an automatic extension clause that triggers unless one party opts out. The extension itself is automatic and may not be considered a "significant event" and not worthy of disclosure. Dissolving the agreement by either party would be a "significant event" for both and needs to be disclosed immediately.
See you in 6 months!
The "Apple Contract" I was referring to is the original agreement between Apple and Liquidmetal creating the technical partnership in exchange for $20 million. All other transactions are trivial. This agreement defined "Crucible" and who had what rights to what intellectual property in what particular markets.
APPLE CONTRACT...Please refresh me since I only post once every 6 months. Its my understanding that the Apple Contract automatically renews unless one of the parties gives notice in writing prior to the renewal date. I'm sure I cannot find the reference but its not something that I would have come up with "out of thin air". Has something changed?
Float is the question...more than a half billion issued and most of it is tied up. Does anyone have an idea as to what the actual float is? That could be the key to some of the strange behavior. I wouldn't be surprised if it is as low as 50 million.
NYSE Listing Requirements..............Long way to go! Market price above $4/share implies a reverse split of 1 for 25 or 30. Market cap is close now but the earnings requirement is several millions per year for 3 years which I don't see being achieved unless they develop a huge royalty stream. Being listed is a nice thought but the path will be long. Sounds like a pipe dream.
$55 Million
Haven't seen anybody reduce the $55 million to a per share basis as yet. It works out to 5 cents per share based on 1.1 million authorized or maybe 6 on actual "to be issued". That is approaching 50% of market cap on today's depressed price. It should be popping up on somebody's screen as a potential choice.
I hope all the traders and speculators are gone...it really isn't good to have a stock dominated by folks who are in for a few pennies and then out. This stock will putz around 0.13 until the Li thing is approved and then move up to 0.23 in late summer(always a couple of cents below what Li's deal is for). After that it will be "news driven" and hopefully some will materialize.
I would also welcome a reverse split in the 5-10 to one range to raise the price into a more respectable range and reduce the outstanding shares to 100 million or so. This would also make it less appealing to the penny speculators.
Bigger question...What are they going to do with the $63 million? IMO they should use part of it to integrate Enotech's large part/lower cost alloy technology into their offering and perhaps add a demo machine to make larger parts. A big roadblock has been the size issue and yes "bigger is better". I would like to see a 3 year plan for the path forward.
This should be enough to "push everyone's buttons" at least once and yes I own the stock.
Canard a smokescreen??? If you go back 3 or 4 years there is plenty of literature detailing the advantages of using BMGs as a kinetic penetrator. They go into how the projectile behaves as it goes through the armor of a tank. Is it possible that the canard story is a red herring that is designed to lead us away from the real purpose?
Just poking the bear!!
The market is emotional and forward looking and trying to predict the revenues necessary to achieve a certain price is almost impossible. It just isn't that black or white. If revenues ever reached $100 million, the price could be $1 or $30 based on future expectations.
Two reasons why employees don't jump on their own stock,,
>>Diversification...they already have their salary and maybe retirement tied to the company's fortunes. It makes sense to NOT put all the eggs in a single basket.
>>They see the "warts" even better than we do. Personal experience says I rarely bought stock in the company employing me because I could see the inefficiencies and problems from close-up. Truth is that all companies have warts and I missed several great opportunities
LQMT Observations....just my opinions.
>>Nothing will happen with price until Visser is done disposing of his 9 million shares...every time it goes to 0.09 he dumps another half million and snuffs out the momentum.
>>Next hurdle is Visser's 18 million warrants that have a strike price of something like 17 cents. They expire in the Summer of 2017 and will provide overhead pressure and sort of a price ceiling. When they expire it removes a potential 4% dilution.
>>Small trial orders...you have to make some number 10-20-30-? of development trials on your way to something really significant. Think in terms of "panning for gold" ...its mostly tiny flakes with an occasional nugget. If you don't have the flakes the prospect of a nugget is much smaller.
>>By the way..the numbers are not large in dollars---9 million shares at even 10 cents is only $900K and 17 million shares at 10-20 cents is still not huge.
OK I looked at the YouTube video and she said it gave 40 more dB's. THAT IS HUGE! If 30 dB's is a whisper and 130 will permanently injure your eardrum, it will not be good for the amp suppliers.
Martin also sells metal guitar strings??? Can we extrude BMG?
Estimating the value of CIP....another way of looking at it is to estimate the net present value of non-consumer electronic applications over the next 10 years or so...lots can happen in 10 years and even with a hefty discount rate (10%), the numbers can get very large. Just imagine assembling an auto body by snapping the pieces together with built in tamperproof edges or building an airplane wing or fabricating a Mars spacecraft in orbit. It probably won't come in under an RFQ. Think LEGOS...
LQMT Float....Seems like the stock makes serious moves on relatively small volumes which raises questions about the size of the "real" float. From the volatility, it appears that the real float could be as low as 5 million shares which is only about 1% of total outstanding. Does anyone have a way to calculate what it takes to move the stock a penny? To me, it seems that 2-3 million should do it and that only amounts to $100-200K.
Any insight would be interesting.
Year end tax selling....by the way 3 million shares is really only $180K.
LQMT is still in the R & D mode...they haven't hired to support manufacturing and they are using R & D staff to make the prototypes. Hiring Hauck was in response to shareholder pressure and his impact has been much more muted than I expected...I'm disappointed.
I only open my mouth every month or so but I have to comment on their overall corporate strategy. If LQMT perceives their mission is developing the technology and their output is intellectual property, its impossible for us to assess their effectiveness. I don't think they see the development of a major application as their primary mission. If we, as stockholders, are measuring them by the number of RFQ's that turn into sales dollars, we are going to be disappointed. I've said this before, LQMT is an R & D company and their product is intellectual property....the value is in Crucible and we don't have the info to determine that value.
Second point--Up until about 18 months ago, all alloy compositions contained beryllium which scares the hell out of anyone developing a commercial product (especially medical) so the 10 year reference is a bit harsh.
In the manufacturing world, the Holy Grail is achieving an economic order quantity of one...in other words, there is no cost penalty associated with a production order of 1 verses a production order of 10,000. That said, current processing of BMG parts requires extensive tooling with associated costs and lead times. This brings me to the next point..
3D printing of parts avoids the tooling issue and reduces everything to software. Change the program and change the part. This opens up opportunities for "one of a kind manufacturing" in applications like dental or joint replacement or whatever. Scan the need, translate it to the software and print the part that exactly fits the need.
I know there are patents in CIP that detail 3D printing of parts from BMG but I haven't read them yet. Is there a fusion step after 3d printing to strengthen the part? Tricky part to fuse without creating crystalline areas in the finished part.
This seems like a tremendous opportunity.
Visser's warrants are a non-issue---
>>The exercise price is $0.176/share which is double what he could pay if he was buying today instead of selling. If he were to exercise at the grant price, he still hasn't made any money. Only way to make out is if LQMT price is $0.30-0.40 before expiration and he can capture a dime or more. I would be very happy to let him make a million or two to see 0.40.
>>The warrants expire in June 2017 which is only 20 months away. Just not enough time to work out.