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I completely agree. IPWR was a good investment at $8-10. Today at $5, it's incredible.
Unofficial call transcript posted on Seeking Alpha - makes for good reading:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3890366-ideal-powers-ipwr-ceo-dan-brdar-q4-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single
One thing I love about the way this company is being managed -- they never overcommit. Low key, no hype.. just results. That, and the solid IP and big-name partners.
I expect Q1 revenue will be double Q4's, and they'll almost certainly achieve cashflow positive by/during Q4 2016 as they curb their R&D and increase the top-line.
Perspective is everything, and most investors lose their from time to time. I've only been an investor in CTIX since the days after it broke above $3, and have thoroughly enjoyed the (mostly) informative posts here by some people who are clearly well informed about the science. I have been buying more shares of late, and while I'm a little nervous about the funding they'll need to get a compound on the market, I'm encouraged by the steady progress and (so far) lack of bad news (uplisting notwithstanding).
I have seen legit co's with decent IP and millions in revenue go under as they didn't manage their cash. Seems like CTIX has some solid options in this regard, but as long as we trade on the OTC, I expect the unexpected.
Maybe a detail for many here, but this kind of "we're going to do this" statement doesn't necessitate a press release (I should have said it's "news worthy" in my last post). Yes, it's good to keep shareholders updated, and I was happy to learn about the SPA. But IMO it should have been a Facebook or blog post. A PR is costly, and will be listed next to the stock ticker on every trading platform and news/finance site, leading one to believe it's "news" (an achievement or a milestone), when it isn't.
It's good news, and PR worthy.. but IMO should have been issued _after_ the PSA was submitted. I'm not a fan of PR's about what the company intends to do, and in CTIX's case, it happens too often. Get it done, then update the world afterward.
It's hard to know the breakdown, but I'm willing to bet that PV, LED lighting and other things bore the brunt of the decline in sales for that unit.
It's entirely possible that revenue from their SmartStorage offering (where IPWR's products are used) actually grew, over the same period. In fact it would be almost hard to believe it didn't given how new it was just a year ago.
We'll get some answers next Thursday, hopefully along with some reasons to remain optimistic despite the decline in share price recently.
an $8.50 trade.
That is another aspect of investing in SwissINSO that worries me. Even if they start to selling large volumes of their colored panels/glass, and quickly turn a profit... it's still an OTC stock, and this "exchange" is anything but stable. The share price won't necessarily be correlated to the company's performance -- it can be manipulated in whatever direction the MM's please.
Still, I expect some decent upside quickly, once this starts to take off. Timing an exit may be tricky though. I doubt they'll ever uplist. Maybe be bought out?
News: Ideal Power Announces Distribution Agreement with WESCO International
AUSTIN, Texas - February 1, 2016 - Ideal Power Inc., (NASDAQ: IPWR), a developer of innovative power conversion technologies, announced today that it has entered into a distribution agreement with WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE: WCC), a leading provider of electrical, industrial, and communications maintenance, repair and operating ("MRO") and original equipment manufacturers ("OEM") products, construction materials, and advanced supply chain management and logistics services. WESCO added Ideal Power's Grid Resilient 30kW and 125kW power conversion systems to its distribution portfolio in markets including California, New York and Hawaii, where the energy storage opportunity complements its core PV solar business. These grid-resilient power conversion systems enable the integration of solar photovoltaic systems and conventional generation with battery storage to deliver stable, flexible, and reliable energy whether on or off the grid. WESCO currently has inventory in stock at its warehouses in California.
"We're excited about the possibilities this agreement brings to our customers, particularly utilities and those working in remote locations," said David Bemoras, WESCO Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing. "These products have proven to be an economical choice by enabling customers to store energy created by solar and use it at a later time."
The distribution agreement gives Ideal Power access to WESCO's network of 80,000 worldwide customers and 500 branches in North America and overseas.
"This agreement with WESCO will give Ideal Power additional channels to market, increasing our access to WESCO's loyal base of customers," commented Dan Brdar, CEO of Ideal Power. "We look forward to working with WESCO as we continue expanding our business."
About Ideal Power Inc.
Ideal Power Inc. (NASDAQ: IPWR) has developed a novel, patented power conversion technology called Power Packet Switching Architecture™ (PPSA). PPSA improves the size, cost, efficiency, flexibility and reliability of electronic power converters. PPSA can scale across several large and growing markets, including commercial grid storage, combined solar and storage, microgrids, and electrified vehicle charging. Ideal Power also has a capital-efficient business model that can enable it to address these markets simultaneously. Ideal Power has won multiple grants for its PPSA technology, including a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) program, and market-leading customers are incorporating PPSA as a key component of their systems. For more information, visit www.IdealPower.com.
About WESCO
WESCO International, Inc. (NYSE: WCC), a publicly traded Fortune 500 holding company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a leading provider of electrical, industrial, and communications maintenance, repair and operating ("MRO") and original equipment manufacturers ("OEM") product, construction materials, and advanced supply chain management and logistic services. 2015 annual sales were approximately $7.5 billion. The Company employs approximately 9,300 people, maintains relationships with over 25,000 suppliers, and serves over 80,000 active customers worldwide. Customers include commercial and industrial businesses, contractors, government agencies, institutions, telecommunications providers and utilities. WESCO operates nine fully automated distribution centers and approximately 500 full-service branches in North America and international markets, providing a local presence for customers and a global network to serve multi-location businesses and multi-national corporations.
I love how this stock trades so under-the-radar. And despite the recent drop, I feel just as good about it today as I ever have. There is still enormous growth left in solar, microgrid, and BESS!
Until or unless there is a significant setback in commercialization, I remain optimistic about the share price looking out 1-3 years.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I read an article this weekend for the first time that proposes a large-scale implementation of HVDC across the US. Similar plans have come out of other initiatives (e.g. DESERTEC in EMENA), but little has become of it yet. In a world where the majority of our energy comes from renewables sources (DC), it makes lot of sense in term of efficiency/cost. But I'm hardly worried about it reducing the addressable market for IPWR anytime soon.
Zacks cuts IPWR to "sell".
The fools
http://www.iramarketreport.com/ideal-power-inc-ipwr-cut-to-sell-at-zacks-investment-research/28195/
10-Q filed for Q1 2015. Nothing of interest, but nice to see they're catching up on the filings. I expect the next 2 will follow quickly, but I guess it's likely that only Q4 will show revenue.
I just noticed the sub-title of the article says "Increasing demand in Europe and the United States", but there is no more mention of it. Indeed I'm frustrated that the growth and projects (other than small sites in Switz and Austria) seem to be very GCC centric.
It would be nice to see a large PV manufacturer in the US, Germany or even China (especially China!) certify and bundle Kromatix glass in their offering.
Very interesting article, thanks for finding it.
So, the JV earned $3m in 2015 and projects $7m in revenue for 2016. I suppose the lion's share of that included sales of PV modules (not just colored glass), and given that the PV modules themselves were 3rd party ones, the margin was likely very thin. Nevertheless, Hanbali said Insolaire was "profitable" in 2015.
Whether the PV panels are fabricated in Dubai or not, makes little or no difference to the revenue for SwissINSO. Mr. Hanbali said that revenue to SwissINSO will "come from both the royalties and the sales by Insolaire".
The article cites capacity numbers far inferior to what we'd seen before I believe (1 million sqm comes to mind, by EOY 2016??). In square meters, it suggests 45k in 2015, up to 105k for 2016, 220k in 2017, and 500k in 2018.
While a doubling every year is outstanding, I'd kinda hoped for more
We're still left guessing, for now, what any of this translates to in terms of revenue for the company in which we hold shares. But when the 10K finally comes out, we can do the math.
Poor Bill. Seems his planned gradual sale of shares is simply too early. His sales alone account for a significant % of the volume on the dates in question, which when coupled with a super-thin bid volume due to the fact that the company is still largely unknown, has a direct impact on the share price.
That said, finding a stock before the masses do, can be a very lucrative thing.
Agreed, I've seen this pattern before too on several occasions.
QTMM doesn't need "local Chinese" production facilities. Squires invested in capacity in the US lab and knew very well all display and solar PV manufacturers were based in China.
The JV is with a privately held company, that doesn't need to report on anything and thus will likely never invest a penny in any QD facilities.
The JV partner company has no trace of business before 5 months ago, and there is no other news about the except this JV.
I had high hopes for this promising technology, but my spider sense now tells me we're being jerked around.
If anyone has any proof otherwise I'm happy to hear it. I am still holding shares, and not trying to bash.
I can't seem to reconcile this:
"We have established our reputation as a key financial partner with the governments and industries by raising multiple billions of dollars in funding for projects driven by our customers over past decade," stated Mr. Liu Xiao, CEO of Guanghui Technology Group"
(ref: http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/quantum-materials-corp-to-launch-quantum-dot-production-in-china-joint-venture-partner-gtg-commits-20160127-00651#ixzz3yTVpSIyO )
with this:
"GUANGHUI TECHNOLOGY GROUP CO., LIMITED was incorporated on 2015-08-06"
(ref: http://www.hongkongcompanylist.com/guanghui-technology-group-co-limited-cccpfbi/#.VqkaRog4EuU )
Sounds fishy, IMO.
According to the 10Q, Mantra was counting on the grant money to fund Phase 4 and 5, with Phase 4 only costing $35k. Seems they didn't get the grant. Also seems that Alstom/GE doesn't see fit to put a measly $35k on the table to move things forward.
That tells it all, IMO.
Something good, or bad?
I reached out to the company recently.. they are on the verge (still) of submitting overdue SEC filings (US auditor is dragging their feet), and as soon as that's done the CEO will issue another shareholder update letter discussing commercial progress and deals done thus far.
I read an article that the UAE alone is investing $35bn in renewables. Let's hope all those 1000m+ towers they're building over there are clad is lovely Kromatix colored panels.
The silence is deafening
Seems that Mr. Alexander's disclosed plan to sell a small fraction of his shares may have been at least partly responsible (along with general market carnage of course) for the the drop share price, so thin is the volume on this stock!
I wonder what ever became of EOS's 8GWh of preliminary orders? It represented some ~$500m in revenue for Ideal, albeit over several years.
We can expect Q results within 3 weeks I guess, but I was hoping (expecting) a more proactive update from the company about backlog, their 125kW unit up-take, VFD application, and B-TRAN progress.
I have a pretty decent tolerance for price swings and realistic expectations on timeframes, but when both are bearing down on my investment.. it's more difficult to be optimistic.
News: Ideal Power Partners With Austin Energy on US DOE-Funded Projects to Integrate Solar PV and Storage for Commercial Sites
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/1240055.htm
Nothing particularly notable about this news, however...
I'd like to think it's fund unwinding its position given recent market turmoil, but the combined volume since the start of the year is peanuts.
The company has been pretty silent though.. and silence together with a slipping PPS, often doesn't bode well.
Times like this make it tough to be long on a stock. I'd established a very decent position in IPWR over the months, but not at these prices.
I'm comforted by the fact that Ideal Power's market cap is only $53m at the current PPS, and that that is far far to low. I'm also comforted by the fact that the volume is still quite modest during this sell off, and that it's surely tied to the larger market slump we're seeing.
Still, a little good news out of the company wouldn't hurt -- if only to help dissipate the fear that somebody may be selling because they know something.
Am I mistaken, or is Rizaport now already approved for sale in Germany, with other EU states expected to follow? Or is the "marketing approval" not the last step in bringing a drug to market (I'm not too familiar with the steps required in the EU)?
Otherwise, yes.. many irons in the fire with this small company and I believe some expected triggers (don't recall what off the top of my head) in Q1 or Q2.
A new article about Insolaire at WFES: http://www.albawaba.com/business/pr/dubai-investments-showcases-pioneering-solar-panel-technology-wfes-eyes-strong-growth-79
More of the same in that article, I'm afraid.
And this :
"Going by initial analysis, Emirates Insolaire is expecting sales of 50,000 square metres of solar panels and 10,000 pieces of coloured photovoltaic modules during 2016" (it's not a quote, but an excerpt from the article).
which is very discouraging as that's roughly the production that Hanbali had expected for 2015.
I sure as hell expected more than 50k sqm of glass in 2016. I believe the going assumption was that Insolaire would have an annual production capacity of 1 million sqm by mid-2016, and that they expected be producing at near capacity at some point during 2016 too. That's ~10 fold more volume that 50k sqm.
Ideal has been consistently saying they're not getting into the residential market because the numbers weren't there. And while I believe they meant that the business case for an installer or a home-owner wasn't strong to fund a solar+storage setup, it still seemed like a reasonable small (?) effort for them to release a sub-30kW inverter anyway, as they shouldn't much care about the ROI or financial viability of residential installations as long as they have acceptable margins on their products.
Here's an article that studied the financials of 4 and 6kW residential Tesla Powerwall installations in Australia. It's interesting to get the insight.
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/01/tesla-powerwall-2016-pricing-number-crunch-and-payback-times/
The conclusion was for Solar+storage using Powerwall and net-metering, the payback was 21-23 years. Payback for off-grid entirely, was 17 years. All calculated with Australian electricity costs, of course, which are higher that in the US (but similar to some European countries).
It's been a while since we've had news. I hope there is something good very soon.
Agreed, mostly. Rafic Hanbali IS the management CEO. Before him was Yves Ducommun, who orchestrated the R/M with defunct PashminaDepot to get the company listed. He then raised millions in PP's and spread the company resources too thin between Kromatix and Krystal.
I still have hope, but as always.. even with a great technology it can takes years for commercial traction.
The good news is that the cash burn of SwissINSO is very low (well, based on their last SEC filing LOL), so they might very well stay afloat until revenue comes in from sales. The JV is funded by their partner, Glass LLC whom, I imagine, isn't going out of business anytime soon.
A slew of updated SEC filings would be a breath of fresh air. I believe I was mislead a few months ago when the CEO replied to me saying the delays were from the US-based auditor. Surely that cannot still be the case. He'd answered me that they want to focus all resources on building the business, and that unless that got traction, any up-to-date SEC filings were meaningless.
True, in a way. But the filings provide shareholders with insight into the progress that we simply don't have otherwise.
A new 2016 letter from the Chairman would be most welcome IMO.
It seems Antec announced their Kromatix-based panels almost two year ago. My bad.
One new photo on the CEO's Instagram account seems to point to a new re-seller / partner in Germany.
http://www.antec-solar.de/bipv-en-us/manufaktur-and-bipv-en-US/printed-and-in-colours/
But SEC filings are now WAY behind, and there has been no news from the company for quite a while. Makes me wonder if things are not going so well after all. The coverage by Kathy Ireland's business show seemed to be a complete non-event.
Orphan designation granted for Dipraglurant! Next up, phase 3 pivotal study. Will Addex finally breakout in 2018?
Not sure why so much expectation of "news" from today's AGM. It's simply their first, and holding one is a requirement of a more senior exchange (to which they aspire, no pun intended). There is almost never any 'news' at a shareholder meeting.
It's a good thing that this meeting was held, and shows the steps being taken by management, along with the appointment of a BoD, are moving in the right direction. Together with convincing science, reputable trial partners, and FDA fast-tracking and orphan designation, many things are going well for the company IMO. A BS law suit, a potentially missed uplist opportunity, and a dismal share price (as measured over the past 12 months anyway) are the only bad things. But these will self-correct in due time.
Well I own them, so I will ride the wave if that happens. I just think your enthusiasm is blinding you. This company is still very immature, and has a long way to go in commercializing its technology (or generating revenue from licensing it) IMO.
Yes I really don't understand why Ideal isn't going after the residential space - since whether or not it makes economical sense doesn't affect them directly. As long as their pricing still provides them with normal margins....
Part of me wonder is Tesla is undercutting the market simply to get a foothold. In 10 years (or whenever the batteries need replacing), any customer with a Power Wall will surely need/want to buy replacement cells from Tesla. It's the inkjet printer revenue model.
"MVTG is up 78% already today"
haha .. on a single (likely fat-fingered) trade worth a whole hundred bucks.
A new Korean entity seems to have been created as a supplier of Kromatix panels to the Korean market.
http://www.krsolar.kr/
From what I understand about the nature of the partnership between Ideal and GreenCharge, yes.. Ideal's inverters would be part of the package delivered to Duke.
I just stumbled across this company: http://www.onyxsolar.com/colored-photovoltaic-glass.html
There's no specs that I can find about efficiency loss as a result of the colors, however, so it's hard to compare.
Onyx is the third company I've heard about that offers colored glass PV, the other being another R&D effort from another Swiss university (the name escapes me) that isn't yet commercialized (and according to Hanbali doesn't stand a chance given their methods).
If SwissINSO predicted 50k sqm of sales in 2015, then we ought to hear verrrry soon about other sales in the GCC and ME. I'm putting a $1 SWHN share price on my list to Santa this year.
Oops, but they just set the A/S from 100m to 275m. I guess they realize that at these prices, heavy dilution is inevitable. They need to keep selling shared to stay in business, at least for now. Likely for the next few years too.
So, no specifics in there other than that Hanbali expects to increase PV production capacity from 100MW to 200MW to meet demand next year. If we take the mid-point of that, 150MW, that's just under a million m2 of PV glass. I guess we've seen those numbers before (and 2015 projections haven't budged from 50k sqm either), so nothing "new" here really, except a new line in the sand regarding timing and a little more detail on the types of projects in the pipeline.
Still hoping for a much broader uptake of this unique offering in the PV/BIPV space, in the form of a supplier agreement to a few large solar OEMs or installers. Maybe next year? Stock seems stuck on zero volume and is likely to stay there until there is a sign of imminent revenue and certain growth.
Thanks for your insight, vidar.
I guess I'm puzzled that Ideal hasn't yet bagged any big name manufacturers with an IP licensing deal (like ABB, Schneider, GE, etc).
The PPSA concept seems like it should be relatively easy to integrate into existing product lines.
There may be testing and IP talks underway, but I'd have expected results & announcements by now, beyond what's already been made public. Perhaps we'll learn of something soon...
An article about GE's plans for a 30MW inverter.
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/ge-eyes-20-30mw-solar-inverters-as-it-outlines-next-gen-technology-plans
I've no idea of the relevance of this to Ideal's products and strategy. Is their PPSA IP applicable here, and could it still be licensed by GE for use in such behemoth inverters? Clearly at that scale, the unit size, weight (and noise?) are far less a concern, but does PPSA still provide an efficiency, cost, and safety advantage?
I know there are many reasons insiders sell shares, but to see Mr. Baum liquidate half his holdings was rather a bummer, given where I'd expect he knows this stock is headed in the next 24 months.
Then again, other directors with far far more shares are not selling.