Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Well, as nice as it is to see a 500% jump today, the last buys were pretty small (couple hundred dollars). So I won't get too excited.
Let's just hope it's the start of a steady climb back to $2
Hello there, SwissINSO... nice to see you trading finally....
Any news from the copmany on the 2015 Shareholders Meeting that the CEO mentioned in his letter to shareholders back in May?
SolarEdge has ~ $20 million in earnings, and a P/E of 40, giving them a market cap of close to $1 billion.
I imagine IPWR's earnings should be similar within 2-3 years. If the market also gives them a P/E of 40, that would put IPWR's share price at 10x today's price.
But longer-term, I believe Ideal Power can have multiples of that revenue.
I read a bit more about Enphases "microinverters" and their case study for using many of them over a single string inverter. Their comparison is based on traditional inverters, and uses arguments about the cost of installation, and single-point-of-falure nature of them. Ideal's inverters are significantly less costly to install as a result of their huge decrease in size and weight, and they are also more reliable. To boot, they're likely less expensive than a bunch of microinverters, and will increase efficiency by ~ 1-2% . I wonder how their case study would hold-up against IPWR's inverters?
But I'm no specialist, so this is just my layman's interpretation of it. Anyone care to contribute comments?
Bummer. This may be a result of IPWR having chosen to focus mostly on C&I applications, and not residential (the partnership with Sonnebatterie notwithstanding).
Nevertheless, it's my understanding (and hope) that Enphase and other inverter manufacturers could eventually become licensees of IPWR's PPSA.
The more I read about the accelerating pace of renewable technology advancement and deployment, the more scattered the market seems to be.
Ref: cleantechnica.com/2015/08/25/concentrated-solar-pv-not-unicorn-sez-energy-dept/
One thing is clear, between wind turbines (vertical, radial, or oscillating), PV (regular or concentrated), CSP, solar towers (up draft or down draft, lest neither of them ever get built), they all have one thing in common: DC-AC conversion is needed. And Ideal Power has rhe best products on the market today.
email update from IPWR's IR team:
(I believe it is safe to say that "large order" from Gexpro that they refer to in this email was not in the backlog of $2.2 million that they exited Q2 with...)
---
Ideal Power (IPWR) on Gexpro Commercial
Earlier in the year, Gexpro began carrying Ideal Power's (NASDAQ: IPWR) award-winning power converter family of products in its portfolio. In May 2015, Ideal Power was selected by Gexpro to supply equipment to Gexpro's new Battery Energy Storage Solution (BESS). Gexpro formerly launched and showcased this product during the July InterSolar Conference and placed a large volume purchase order.
The agreement expanded Ideal Power's reach into the market to Gexpro's broad customer base in the electrical contractor and installer space. Gexpro, a subsidiary of Rexel Holdings USA Corp., a leader in the distribution of electrical supplies and services, has expansive global reach with 2,300 branches in 38 countries.
Gexpro's Power IQ commercial launch includes the following video appearing in business and first class on United and American Airlines, amongst other marketing efforts.
I think it's very encouraging that Ideal Power would not only be included in the list of key players in this report, but have a dedicated "figure" for their products. My guess is that's because this is a big jump in the evolution of power electronics, and that it applies to a broad array of applications in this space.
Sorry I must have misunderstood on the call. In today's PR they mention 28 months...
http://www.solarwindow.com/2015/08/solarwindow-announces-revenue-and-industry-partnership-initiatives/
I asked IR the question about compatibility with existing circuit designs, and this is what they replied:
The answer depends very much on the product. Power electronics products go through pretty regular redesigns to incorporate new features, reduce cost and improve efficiency. The performance level and cost improvement offered by incorporating BTRANs would make a design cycle well worth it for those applications that don’t use it as a drop in replacement.
It's a great idea, but they didn't share any meaningful performance data with shareholders such as how much power the film generates per sqft on a typical building window in a typical US city, nor any details on the costs. I suppose it's because the numbers aren't impressive, but they may still get their in several years. Every external expert's testimony on the call was carefully scripted to sound positive but stay vague on details.
Yeah the promotional video of the blonde girls skipping through the sand dunes tells me they didn't have much in terms of numbers to share, so they tried to win us over with imagery.
Fail.
They said 8 months to "commercialization", but on the OTC that's verrrrry loose term.
Yes, that he put $2 million of his own money on the line to keep the company alive, speaks volumes for his faith in its imminent commercial success.
That said, Mr. Hanbali is notorious for not mentioning recent events in SEC filings for periods that pre-date the developments themselves. In other words, any new developments since January will only be reported in the Q's from 2015 (also overdue, but that I suspect will be published shortly).
Yes, nice to see, but nothing super interesting in there other than these:
"commence product certification in several potential markets with a full scale product launch in the last quarter of 2015"
"the Company continues to work closely with the LESO-PB in the development of several new products which the company expects will exit the development phase in 2016."
"[the competitive differentiator offered by Kromatix] explains the number of companies engaging SwissINSO in commercial discussions.. company is pursuing additional discussions with several leading panel producers."
and the all important:
"we expect the first revenues in the 4th quarter of 2015"
It ran like a late-night infomercial. "Call in the next 15 minutes, and get 2 free windows!"
Zero details, no proof of anything.
Call is terrible IMO. Lots of rah-rah and self-congratulations. Flowery language. Thin on details.
I sold my position.
I do indeed think Mr. Brdar was working hard at suppressing his enthusiasm. But I respect that he does, and that may be part of the reason we can still get shares at these prices today.
There is really no reason that the B-TRAN won't perform in-line with simulations. And to your point, it's better to have a few thousand toasters to sell when you tell the world you've invented a toaster, than to merely announce a new novel concept of toasting bread.
Also, I would expect a few major licensees could easily be announced together with the results of the first prototype devices. It would be a slam dunk, if so.
Can't wait for this little giant to wake up. Soooo thinly traded.
Thanks for that esther -- it seems that this report is in-line with Mr. Hanbali's approach to building the Kromatix pipepline, which is great.
Hope to hear more developments soon from the company, and see their SEC filings caught up-to-date.
Then the media attention may help the stock get noticed and we can see a valuation that is more in-line with expected growth.
But until the company is profitable (won't take much) and on a senior exchange, I fear it may get entirely overlooked .. and that we're 3-4 years away from seeing all-time highs.
If they are sitting on a technology that is even half as good as they claim, then there is no reason they could not fund a field-test themselves. If indeed the demo tomorrow is a single pane of glass attached to a voltmeter, then nobody will be impressed.. that's just lab results.
They'll need to "prove" that manufacturing and installation costs can produce a 1 year (as claimed) ROI. Heck, a 4-year ROI would be fabulous. Anything else will just be noise, and the PPS will get crushed IMO.
$100MM market cap for a company that hasn't shown anybody anything. Either outrageous speculation, or people in-the-know are buying.
The company's mgmt team and BoD seems to be very solid.
Tomorrow could be a very binary event for the share price...
From the earnings call transcript, they do seem to allude to a significant breakthrough. I think they were just being their prudent, humble selves by not trumpeting the B-TRAN too much.
Bit indeed they seem to have thrown the gauntlet down with this white paper.
"The application to our PPSA technology is unique, but the concept of bi-directional IGBTs has been known in the power conversion industry for many years. Our bi-directional IGBTs offer significant efficiency and power density improvements for our PPSA technology, the potential for patent coverage is likely limited to only the manufacturing processes. During the course of our bi-directional IGBT R&D efforts we’ve come up with the significant development that provides an alternative to accomplishing bi-directional switching. The new bi-directional switch concept which we’re telling the bi-directional, bi-polar junction transistor or BTRAN for short, has the potential to meet or exceed the projected performance of the bi-directional IGBT. The projected performance of the BTRAN has now been validated to third-party stimulations. During the second quarter, the U.S. patent offers ideal power five new patents on our BTRAN bi-directional switching concept with several additional U.S. and international patents pending.
The recently issued patents cover the operation, control and manufacturing of BTRAN device. It is our hope that if the BTRAN performs as expected it could become a potential replacement for the conventional IGBTs we use in our PPSA technology and the bi-directional IGBTs we’re developing and as a result would add a significant power semi-conductor invention to our intellectual property portfolio. At this point in time our primary technology path for bi-directional switching remains bi-directional IGBT, but the BTRAN device if successful would give us an option with potentially higher performance and where Ideal Power could own the critical intellectual property regarding its operation, control and manufacturer. In order to further development and potential commercialization of the BTRAN device, with our key patents now in place we’ll be engaging in additional semiconductor fabricator to focus on developing the manufacturing processes and proof-of-concept of the BTRAN device. We’ll providing more detail on our BTRAN development and proof-of-concept efforts in the coming quarters.
In the interim we’ll continue to develop the bi-directional IGBT as our primary approach to increase our efficiency and power density of our next generation PPSA technology. The addition of the BTRAN patents now brings our total issued patents to 30 with over 100 patents still pending the cover of broad range of technologies, advances, production techniques, control algorithms and applications of our technology. We’ll keep you apprised of our progress on both the bi-directional IGBT and the BTRAN switch development activities in future calls."
I think the answer is actually in the summary at the end of the whitepaper:
"The B-TRAN topology is a simple, yet radically different topology for power semiconductors"
This would seem to imply the need for a change in the design of any electronic component that wishes to take advantage of the B-TRAN technology. A simple one, on the surface, but a change nonetheless. And he who says change, says prototyping and testing, and certification, etc.
So the up-take of the B-TRAN may well be many years out.
Any other thoughts about this from the 9 of you who follow this board?
I misspoke, Dr. Blanchard only consults to IPWR and is not an employee of the company. It appears as though he was brought in as the foremost expert in his field to help IPWR's CTO Bill Alexander firm-up the design. He's a co-inventor, but the patents are all IPWR's.
https://trexpertwitness.com/wp-content/themes/trews/pdf/Blanchard-Dick.pdf
IMO Dr. Blanchard's co-inventor status and quote in the PR lend enormous credibility to the invention. I hope the patents they have around manufacturing and operation are sufficient to keep copycats at bay.
And I hope they can move to industrial-scale manufacturing rapidly
No doubt the whitepaper was written to solicit industry interest and peer-review / validation of this new technology. Even a single high-profile licensing deal of the B-TRAN tech to a giant like Siemens or ABB would indicate that the goose is indeed golden. I suppose that won't happen until they're out of simulation mode and into production mode though, so maybe 6-9 months out?
And all this B-TRANS talk is on top of the PPSA-based inverters, which already has a healthy looking future.
It feels good to be an investor in this company, today.
I'd love to hear the good doctor's opinion on the B-TRAN as a replacement for his invention.
The quote in the PR is from the B-TRAN co-inventor. But if it's true (and if this invention has a moat such as patents that prevents others from catching up as there is undoubtedly enormous focus on energy efficiency in power conversion and storage these days) then Ideal may indeed have their hardware in a gazillion devices within a few years.
Hence my question about whether the existing components can simply be swapped-out for a B-TRAN (like changing brand of spark-plugs), or whether the systems need a re-design to accommodate this new device.
Hoping for a comment on this from IR.
Man, those GEVO directors sure have a lot of tax obligations to cover. Says a lot that none of them is buying lately.
Took a small speculative position this morning, just to see what plays out on the 20th.
IMO it will either be the real deal, or a complete flop. This is the OTC, after all -- not much room for gray.
Can anyone here with an electronics background talk to the nature of design change required by power systems vendors required to adopt the B-TRAN? Is this a drop-in product that has the same electrical interfaces as the "SCRs, MOSFETs, diodes, rectifiers, and IGBTs" that it hopes to replace (i.e. it's just a swap out of one component for the other), or will adoption of the B-TRAN require an system design change to integrate it?
Thank in advance!
It was an open market buy from the CEO. That is so refreshing to see a CEO put his money where is mouth is.
Was that a $50k insider buy by the CEO, or options granted?
Another extension filed for their 10K. Grrr....
This is a sensitive time for the company -- I hope they don't get tripped-up on any legal details. They seem to be doing so many things right on the commercialization front.
uh, and this part:
OMG.
Loved this part:
Regarding Boeing, here is a slide deck circa 2010 about Boeing Energy:
PPT version: http://www.boeingsuppliers.com/esd/Boeing%20Energy%20Overview_ShelleySebby1.ppt
online version: http://slidegur.com/doc/1240000/boeing-energy-overview---doing-business-with-boeing
A bit broad, but that's all a quick Google found for me...
Agreed, this company is still WAY under the radar, but one day that will change and there will be too much noise here.
That said, there isn't much balance here.. (all 3 of us seem to be long). What potential risks do you see to this young company that might put a dent in their growth? They appear to have some great IP locked-up in some markets, though still had to encrypt the software on a unit they sent for demo to China for fear of reverse engineering their proprietary s/w algorithms. So that could be a risk. Or simply being leap-frogged by another technology that makes power conversion even more efficient (but when you get to 98%, there must be a diminishing return on pushing to closer to 100%). Anything else anyone can think of, objectively?
We all know what happened to Sony's Betamax... sometimes the best technology doesn't win in the end.
I'll do some digging about Boeing.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with these two thoughts:
Here are some nuggets of wisdom from an old Harvard Business Review article (https://hbr.org/1993/03/how-architecture-wins-technology-wars) about the IT industry, that I find translates well to Ideal Power's PPSA and the power conversion space today:
More DD on Ideal's partners:
A bit of interesting background on Sonnebatterie, who have chosen Ideal's inverters for their residential BESS offering in the US.
Shares up a little on 15x volume because of this news: http://www.addextherapeutics.com/investors/press-releases/news-details/article/addex-dipraglurant-demonstrates-anxiolytic-and-antidepressant-like-activity-in-multiple-preclinical/