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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.
Visser is selling 300,000 shares per day for more than 3 weeks and that creates a lot of pressure on the price of a stock that trades a million or so a day. I'm surprised it hasn't had a larger impact. If his plans are to divest all his shares, there are another 100 days to go!...5 months of doldrums.
I'm skeptical on the cold quenching to increase randomness. China has good scientists but the results raise questions. Degree of randomness is the opposite of degree of crystallinity and that can be measured by X-ray diffraction. Without the numbers we could be seeing an increase in crystallinity and the an aging improvement associated with that. It would be better if they had proposed a theory to explain what they saw.
So I'm sitting in front of the TV watching a baseball game with my laptop and I search 7000 series aluminum alloys. Lots of things pop up but one catches my eye. An Alcoa patent application entitled "Improved 7xxx aluminum alloys and methods of for producing the same". Its a copy of an application dated 7/17/13 Publication #EP2614170 A2 and Application #20110824141. Its 24 pages but scanning the claims, I see claim 35 says "the aluminum body alloy of claim 27, wherein the aluminum alloy body is predominately unrecrystallized". Claim 36 describes variation of 75% unrecystallized.
Most of the patent deals with novel tempering methods to improve properties beyond what can be achieved with the T6 protocol.
These guys are describing non-crystalline aluminum alloys..do they qualify as BMG's? Could be splitting hairs.
No mention of further downstream processing like moulding.
Might have to read the whole thing...ugh
Good point....they can make various percent crystallinity with a range of property outcomes...another area to explore.
That offer would value the company at about $110 million since it represents exactly a million Apple shares. What is the future value of the IP portfolio? Nobody in the public domain has a handle on that. The marketplace sees it as $45-50 million
So..if Apple decides that it doesn't like the 50/50 Crucible deal because any success by LQMT spreads the BMG technology, it could hypothetically offer something like one share of Apple for every 425 shares a stockholder owns so they could acquire 100%. This works out to about 28 cents/share...more than a 100% premium to the current price. Would you sell?
No link but a long background in R&D gives me some insight into the situation. Add all the names on the patents and assume each team of researchers is one PhD Scientist and 2 Research Technicians with all listed on the patent. Labor + benefits for the 3 is $300k/year but figure a million once they start spending money on all the things they need to accomplish their work. The Research Team enlists the engineers to reduce concept to reality and that is where they start spending the big money on equipment and developing the idea to establish feasibility. Long process with many dead ends. Now go look at the patents and look at the diversity of the research and the breadth cited in the claims. The breadth is huge and the effort is in "man-years"....could be 6 people for 6 months but that is still 3 man-years. Don't forget the technical writers (scientists don't waste time writing patents) and , of course the attorneys to do the filing. So you have the material science guys for metallurgical, the engineers to make it work and optimize the process (remember all the work on "cooling rates" and getting to thicker cross sections?) and then reducing to a form the protects the technology but doesn't give away the farm (the patents). How many Engel machines do you think Apple has? (or maybe not Engel). Already way too long!
The real value for LQMT doesn't reside in RSM...its in the patent collection at Crucible. Apple is pouring 10s of millions per year into expanding the technology and LQMT has exclusive rights to HALF the world...forget the CE...the rest is huge.
Forget Steipp, forget the knife...its all a distraction
Plastics World says that Engel has obtained an exclusive arrangement with LQMT as of today. I thought it was exclusive before but apparently not. Sounds like customer feedback at the show motivated Engel to nail it down.
When preparing for a trade show, the exhibitor picks the product for the demo and as such will avoid something that isn't in the "wheelhouse" for the materials and process. Multiple trial runs debug the process because nobody wants to fail in front of an audience. Building a part that tapers to nothing (a knife edge) is not an ideal situation when you are depending on the flow of viscous materials to reach each and every nook and cranny of the mould. We know nothing about the nature of the MA problem other that the "fix" is pretty fast. I'm confident that more details will emerge.
As someone who has been in similar situations occasionally...over a period of 35 years..I can relate. Typically these situations are communications issues where the buyer assumes the seller understands all subtle requirements (often unsaid and unspecified). The product arrives and the buyer says something like-- That not what I meant!! The miscommunications results in rework if you are lucky (scraping if not). The party who screams loudest first is the "victim" and the counterparty takes the heat. Nobody makes money on initial orders.
Ideal products are cigarettes, bullets, food and toilet paper. You buy 'em, you use them and you go buy more. Refrigerators, cars and houses are long cycle and easily deferred.
If I understand the Conference Call correctly, there will be about 85,000 tonnes of canola to be delivered within the next 12 months. This compares to approximately 24,000 tonnes delivered in the last 12 months.
What's not to like.
Bulk Metallic Glasses are a unique technology that comes in 2 parts. The first part is the combination of 3,4 or 5 components of varying atomic sizes to physically prevent similar atoms from being close enough to crystalize. The second part is the process control during the cooling phase to cool it at a rate to further limit mobility.
When we start to consider unique aluminum alloys or perhaps gold alloys for the watch, it is possible (probable?) that the alloys fit the definition of BMG but the process is not something that uses an Engel machine. AAPL may be using a process that makes chunks of BMG in relatively thick sections that are subsequently machined but preserve the material characteristics of BMG. This premise puts AAPL very close to Materion which would probably be difficult to keep confidential. Is the Materion agreement exclusive to LQMT or is AAPL included/excluded? Could AAPL be working with a third party?
Longshot speculating but it explains the high strength aluminum and the scratch resistant gold in the watches. It also avoids the 100 gram Engel limitation which fits the definition of a bottleneck.
OK, we are starting to get to middle ground here but I have a few "adders". Starting with the $160K figure, I want to make the shot size larger by some reasonable amount say 2-3X. The 160K is a small no frills injection moulding machine but this machine does everything in a vacuum so we need to enclose it with a chamber...but wait we also have induction heating and its associated coils and power supply...Did I say we need the capability to handle inserts like perhaps a sapphire watch cover. Cooling also needs to addressed and the area surrounding the die is already pretty full of other stuff.
So far everything is sitting on the floor in Austria so we need to ship and install (think 30-40% of selling price). Then there is the onsite tech support at $1000/day plus expenses per person.
I can get to seven figures quickly..maybe not $2.5 million but a substantial number in the $1-1.5M range
Total Engel worldwide sales for 2012-2013 were $1.24 billion and that was a record recovery from their plunge to $500 million several years earlier. Forcasted increase for each of the following 3 years is 5%. Its really hard to imagine a single machine as part of a "research program" that has a pricetag of $160 million. You took the word of a salesman as gospel...I'd love to see you negotiate for a car!
First time poster on this MB..some points:
>>The agreement outlines an exit strategy for Visser..how and when he can dispose of the 29 million shares. An orderly exit is important to keep from destroying the market.
>>Visser's gross receipts at an average price of 0.50 is $15 million less the warrant purchase price...he will be lucky to net $5-10 million Converting that into Engel machines equals 3-4 which is not enough to dominate the world (or even have much of an impact).
>>Visser being cut off from future developments is a big deal unless Visser has no intention to be a player beyond 3-4 years. At that point his accessible IP has lost most of its value.
>>Having access to a great number of patents is a two edged sword.
A patent matrix is constructed to protect (and confuse) the competitors. Lots of dead ends coupled with technically feasible approaches that aren't economically attractive. Lots of red herrings and most of the really critical finding are kept as trade secrets and don't even get disclosed. The patents are not as important as has been represented.
I'm long (and patient) ...it paid off with GTAT