The current PPS is making optimism difficult, to say the least, but there is still hope … I hope.
The 'Advanced Quality Control Protocol' was announced on July 30.
When might we expect some results?
If I assume that a new generation of worms is required, is 3 or 4 months from the protocol announcement to WM's evaluation reasonable?
Anyone have have thoughts on this?

Silence is silence … nothing more. It can mean anything.
We can parse every press release and do all the fine DD that shows up on this board but at the end of the day, silence has no meaning.
Yes, it is possible that the big deal is forthcoming and yes, it is possible that there are problems with production or weaving that may constitute a delay or even a fatal flaw.
I've been a long for a long time with this company and intend to stay the course. I share the optimism that many of us have here. However, I do keep in mind a song lyric that seems to apply:
-------
" … Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see"
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The investor's version of silence is standing pat. No buying, no selling. Since I'm doing nothing, it's got to be a good move. Right?

Were they talking about MS or BR specifically?

I was the one who said that there is no demand for KBLB fibers.
As far as I know, there are no products using this fiber and no contract for some quantity be delivered. All of that might be in the works but right now we're only 'on track' .
That is why word from WM is far more important that a PR about production. Should they come back with 'no interest' then where would KBLB be?
You could make mountains of this stuff but without demand in the market place , all you got is a pile of string.

Kim & Co. seems to be on track for metric tons of vague promises.
We've been on track for so long it seems more like a rut.
Who is the 'scientific advisory team?'.
Metric tons of MS … nice. But for whom?
Frankly, I don't care about production at this point … DEMAND is the driving factor.
WM. That is who we need to hear from.
KBLB ought to change its name to Godot Biocraft.

Best DD I've seen on this board. Ever.

Something about spinnerets that bears repeating and is the reason that KBLB choose this path:

Most spinnerets are not simple structures with a single orifice producing a single thread, but highly complex structures of many microscopic spigots, each producing one filament. This is important partly because it produces the necessary orientation of the protein molecules, without which the silk would be weak and useless. It also permits spiders to combine multiple filaments in different ways to produce many kinds of silk for special purposes.

-Wikipedia

A glob if protein is a glob. Smear it on something if you like.

I think that the Arabic page can be interpreted - to some degree - as it stands. I also think that this translation came from another translation. EE Cummings would be impressed with the results.
This might be more fun than useful, but it is so very interesting.

the Firm's heavy duty yield regimen employing you'll find hatching in the firstly bowl about Colossal A silk duvet silkworms to receive alternative output.Extra, the insurer is currently spending cash to boost the shape of Monster Silkworm making compared to the afterwards 22 and Ninety days. It all turn coincides for the Organisation's new way for you to as soon as possible buildup it has a output quantity


This is saying that KBLB is working on (or has developed) a means of achieving recombinant silk output very quickly - perhaps in 22 days instead of 90? It is definitely making the case to a grower … this thing is not a stock pump.

focusedon the production of woven tissage free templates
Tissue templates were mentioned by Warwick Mills recently.

'"Given present day reserved development in the body make, we are able to the theory is that get providing Machine Soft silk using statistic bundle volumes of prints written by initial May. An additionally safe calculate approximately, considering the concrete realities attached to running a remarkably cutting edge coupled with vendor uncommon project, is generally make contact with so considerable motorola milestone mobiel phone present in early 2014

Contracts by early May (2014)? If contracts had been signed, wouldn't that have to be disclosed?
Conference call in early 2014.
Whatever the case, this timing is very clear. It is consistent with Kim's 'metric ton by summer' comment.

Colossal A silk
Beast Egyptian silk
Machine Soft silk
Sorry, KIM … you might use a translating program for naming fibers instead of thinking them up yourself.

Yes … thanks to Money4nuttin. Don't know what this means beyond the fact that you do amazing research.
Question: is this a translation of a translation? The article above the KBLB piece is well translated.

The Arabic Web page link:
http://www.banatmool.com/vb/showthread.php?p=68176

Among other things, it's just plain fun to try to figure out.

There's something about that Arabic web page that I can't shake off.
It is just sitting there, isolated and undocumented and I normally would not pay a lot of attention to it but the content is so intriguing; I keep wondering how is it that this page touches on so many legitimate questions about KBLB in general as well as KBLB's relation to growers?
Just wondering if anyone else has been wondering about this thing.

I want to defend Spillmonkey's optimism, if not the detailed prediction.
- Viet Nam would not be wasting time with 'some 1 guy' with a mutant worm that belongs in a flea circus. Neither would that conference in India have KBLB as a featured participant if they were a bunch of stock pumpers. They were talking about revitalizing the sericulture industry. You don't hear that kind of thing often.
- It was investors in Warwick Mills that initiated the contact with KBLB. I find that interesting because as far as I know investors in Warwick would not be biased towards KBLB - like we are - unless the collaboration benefited Warwick. Warwick would not be spending time evaluating MS unless there was a good reason to do so, and I strongly suspect that the fibers - but not weaves- were tested in Warwick's DoD-certified lab before the JDA was signed.
- Warwick Mills is exactly the kind of partner KBLB is looking for: an established capability to design, weave and SELL high-tech fabric products. A leader in innovative woven fabrics has been given a totally new fiber with very favorable technical specifications. Maybe they will find some way to sell it for a profit. Will Warwick come to dominate the fly trap market? How about the most puncture-resistent and flexible gloves ever made?
Science, Sericulture, manufacturing and sales. all the pieces seem to be in place. Do they fit together?
--------------
I've been in KBLB since 2009 and I read this post often (thank you all). It seems to me that we always have to keep pushing the time line back. In 2009 I thought I'd sell with the news of a successful mutant (2010). After that, I thought maybe KBLB would be bought out or subsumed in a larger corporation. Then I found myself waiting on Zinc Fingers from SA to show the ability to customize fibers, and KBLB did exactly that (BR), but that wasn't the BIg News either. After that, production was the issue and all the time all the time I'm asking why The Big News is taking so long. Well, news of one kind or another is coming from Warwick within weeks. One way or another the news will be very important. It might even be big.
GTLA

Sportsprophet is right ....
There are a lot of posts for a 5 cent stock. Here's my take on why.
- Great expectations. Everyone here is expecting a windfall any day. Spider silk is the holy grail.
- A lack of information. Everyone here is trying to figure out what is going on with few facts.
We are speculating. We could be right but we are still just speculating.
Our expectations are based on the potential market for something like spider silk but we don't have enough information to say that MS or BR are superior fibers for specific applications.
The lack of information is often interpreted as a positive: NDAs, tipping off the competition and so on. It's got to be good looking 'cause it's so hard to see.
So, in the face of high expectations and a lack of information there is plenty of speculating to do.
People here think that the PPS could go to a buck in a day. Maybe it will. Maybe not.
In the meantime, it's fun to have an interest in KBLB and why I read this board regularly.

I didn't say that there is no argument ...
Just that KBLB's PR did not supply one.
KBLB could have said:
MS is (give us a number) times stronger than steel and has an elasticity of (whatever) and (other specs).
This makes MS a superior material for applications such as (....), and outperforms existing materials for this application such as (....).

Maybe I'm missing something but after years in discussions with companies, Kim could have said this much.

But ... kevlar is 5 times stronger than steel, by weight. So are carbon fibers.
What characteristics make MS a viable commercial product? We can guess, but KBLB's 'stronger-than-steel' PR, by itself, does not support the commercialization argument.

I'm a shareholder and I'm not selling - yet. That being said, I am also not surprised that the PPS is so low. KBLB itself undermines the faith that many people show on this board by withholding information that they certainly have but are not sharing and - more importantly - won't say why.
- If there is discussion in India, there is no reason that KBLB cannot comment on the general direction of those discussions. Is whom Kim talked to a state secret? Bet ya that DuPont knows - if they care at all. Why is the second country not even identified? What strategy is KBLB working on as plan 'B"?
- Unsupported business goals. Why say that KBLB is considering buying a sericulture company when KBLB needs financing to keep afloat?
- They say that they are hiring three new people. What are the positions? Is there an help wanted ad we can refer to?
- They say they are buying new equipment. Why not use SSM? They have plenty, and an MOU with KBLB. How has the lack of equipment held KBLB back? Give us an example.
- KBLB has frequently mentioned NDAs. Every single company they talk to demands a gag order?

I could go on but the point is this: I've been reading this board for a long time and I see a bunch of guys who do a damn good job of due diligence, in spite of the lack of communication by KBLB. Carefully parsing every word in a PR that says practically nothing is becoming routine on this board.

One question that is frequently asked here: 'what is Kim doing?" Certainly he can tell us more about that.

Kim is really good at citing numbers that have less meaning than a scientific number should.
Ordinal: more or less than. Can't do arithmetic with ordinal numbers.
Ratio: has a zero point: can be added or subtracted.
'Stronger' is Ordinal.
Exactly how much stronger? Five times stronger, like Kevlar? How about a Ratio number, Kim?
Ahead of schedule, but no dates.
Results better than expected but no expectations given.
If Kim states that there are more companies interested in MS than he can handle, does he mean that they are interested in making a product with the stuff or that they are people in the business of creating things from fibers and are simply interested in keeping up with technical developments?

A company that says it has been creating cutting-edge materials for commercial application is just now announcing the capability to test what it has developed? I can't understand how you can try to develop something new, without first having a means to evaluate it.

I can say with great confidence that KBLB is real, but real compared to what? I don't know.

I recall the narrative that Kim contacted Fraiser and together they discussed the possibility of GM silkworms for new fibers. I was impressed by that because it implies that Frasier must have thought that Kim was worth talking to on a technical level, even though Kim was not a professional research scientist.

I've been a shareholder since 2007. I bought at 2 cents, 10 cents and in between.
I've always considered this position to be a crap shoot, with mitigating circumstances.
The Crap shoot: The company is one guy with intellectual property and that's about all.
The mitigation: the science is real.
The Crap Shoot: The company has no means of production and no customers.
The mitigation: They do have a fiber that no one else has.

Two things I keep in mind:
In the PC revolution lots of companies failed even though they had a game-changing product: Wang. Dec. Others did pretty well.
It took the Wright Brothers five years to sell the airplane to the military.

I'm going to keep my position but I think I'd like a blindfold.

Question:
What is new about this announcement?
Kim did not say 'independent testing'.
When BR was first announced, they said that initial tests showed that it was stronger than MS.
Why did KBLB not put BR on a parallel pilot track with MS, since it is clear that there needs to be enough quantity of the fiber to use in weave and product testing before market interest can be established?
Does KBLB think that MS has more market potential and so concentrated on MS instead of BR?
All the activity with India and the 'other country' happened after BR was announced and yet it is MS that is being produced.
Just askin'

Kim had to say something ... the conference call is overdue.
I don't think that today's PR qualifies as 'news'; it's a sign of life.
But it's more than that.
KBLB could have sold out long before this but didn't. I think that the sentence in the PR about potential customers being patient with the limited lab production is an important indictor that KBLB is not going to be content with being simply a development lab.
Kim has always said that he's got one chance to get this thing right and I think that it's less a matter of customers being patient with lab production than it is waiting for KBLB to come up with a business plan. Kim is being far more patient than his potential customers.
This is a new technology and this requires an innovative business plan. Think about all the false starts and confused business models at the start of the digital revolution. I'll bet Kim does.
Putting a timeline on commercialization is something Kim would not do unless there is a good chance of making that happen. Taking time to put this very complicated business together might insure that when it does happen, Kim won't end up like the guy who sold DOS to Microsoft.

Customers are one thing, Confederates are another.
The Conference in India might be the best commercialization-related news for KBLB we've heard yet.
Is it not probable that the Indian or other governments are interested in greasing the wheels of commercial development of MS, BR and other transgenic silks in order to boost local economies?
New markets for silk variants would be manna from heaven for India or South Korea. If I were those countries, I would be right in KBLB's corner, carrying the water.
Frasier and Lewis were in the prime-time speaking slots at that conference. It seems that some pretty well informed people in India are taking the prospect of using GM silkworms very seriously.
It would not surprise me to learn that some Indian sericulture company will get a tax break or two for getting involved.

I'm 4-5 times more disappointed in this PR than I was in the previous one.
First I want information. If none, then silence is indicated. Talking without saying anything generates only more questions ... some about the purpose of the PR.
Four to five times (something) might be better than nothing but that's about all you can say.
Ahead of schedule is nice, I guess, but what time will the train pull in?
Come on, Kim. Real compared to what?

Great News today ... Thanks to all of you for the information and lively dialog.
Does anyone here think that Big Red might have been the key factor?
The timing is right.
If SSM has been testing it they would be the first to know ...

The pilot program is an extremely important sign because it means that the chicken-egg problem has been solved.
- How can you make enough fiber to prototype commercial products if you don't have a customer?
- How can a customer buy the material when they don't have enough fiber for product development?
This announcement implies that this conundrum has been solved.
1) The amounts of MS available to date have brought potential customers to the point of needing enough silk to make full-blown products for field testing. This is probably not a small amount: how much fiber would you need to create a dozen parachutes and a hundred shirts and so on? Lots more than Lab production, it seems to me.
2) That interest has brought Kim a manufacturing partner that can provide the volume that is needed for product development and presumably for subsequent full-scale production.

That it has taken some time to get this far is no surprise and it will certainly take some time to come before we see Acme Parachutes put in a big order. However, the identification of the manufacturer might come a lot sooner and along with the pending results of Big Red testing we have lots to look forward to in the short term.

I would have liked to see more information on Big Red.
Was it the result of ZNF technology?
How do MS and BR differ in terms market segment applications?
I don't understand why Kim publicized Big Red before independent testing. It lends an air of prematurity to the announcement. One or two metrics about BR would have been very appropriate here.
I'm excited about the Big Red development and its implications but I am troubled by the lack of technical information and by neglecting to say something, however vague, about intended market penetrations.
I am not at all surprised that the business model is taking longer than the science.

Better Red than dead ...
I was hoping for a deal with a manufacturer but this is excellent news.
The science is working and I would bet that the increased tensile strength was a feature desired in the marketplace. Could the gene from an unrelated species be the color gene?
Designer organisms that manufacture the product. Swap 'em in and out ...
Simply amazing.
Test results, PLEASE!

On Joe Cunning's question ... 'what are your expectations for this product?'
I could translate this as a rhetorical question: "What did you expect?", posed to an eager investor.
... did you think that MS would be snapped up by DuPont in the flash of a business card?
... that MS would revolutionize the textile industry?
... that arranging for the manufacture of MS could be done in a few months, concurrent with negotiations with potential customers, which are the only kind of customers we have?
... or something along those lines.

At first this interpretation looked negative to me but after a while, maybe not so negative.
Joe advises us that it will take time and money.

In a way, that's a tacit admission that bringing MS to market is worth time and money. OK I'm good with that but I have a question.

Dear Joe:
Whose money?

Hey ES1: can you reference your statement that 'we were told that ZF did not work.'
I've heard that but nothing beyond Kim's August letter. Have I missed something?

MS is real and probably has market value but I still wonder about Zinc Fingers.
As far as I know there has been no substantive word about progress with ZF since the April insertions.
Kim mentioned the need for new protocols in the August letter but he did not say when that need was discovered. Was he referring to the new configurations from December, 2011 or something learned in the April 2012 mass insertions? Can anyone here elaborate on this?
My impression is that the new configurations from Sigma-Aldrich in December was what Kim was talking about and that the mass insertions in April used them. It seems to me that they would not have gone to mass insertions unless the new ZF configurations had tested out well.
After that, dead silence.
If the mass insertions had failed we might not have heard about that directly but it would have led to another set of new protocols from SA and/or another round of insertions (previously worth an announcement and probably not covered by NDAs for MS).
I think that the above leaves open an important possibility.
The ZF technology worked and that gen2 exists at this time. If so, then silence is perfectly in order. Access to large quantities of the type of fiber Gen2 is supposed to produce would represent a sea change in silk applications and might have strategic implications that the military is not so eager to publicise.
Call me a cockeyed optimist and a fool in love but in this case, silence might be very good news.

Hey Mojo. Been reading and liking your posts.
I want to agree that nothing can be construed from silence by itself. You are correct, sir.
Silence - or something like it - has been a frequent complaint on this board, usually sense that too much time has elapsed. However, if a lack of communication is consistent with both successful and unsuccessful scenarios then the non-communication is, as it stands now, unimportant.
There is a lot of boom/bust sentiment on this board as well. I agree that both are possible, but I have been wondering about the middle ground.
Can KBLB is double or triple it's PPS by commercializing MS? I have come to think that it is a good bet.
First, they don't have to sell that much. How big a contract to drive the PPS to ... 15 cents?
They don't have to sell it this year or even next year for shareholder to realize a good return.
MS is ... a product. I don't know what MS will finally turn out to be, but right now it is unique. It is stronger and smoother than regular silk, or so they say, and KBLB has the rights to it.
Hell, maybe it's only good for catching flies or maybe it makes you itch, but somebody's gotta want it for something.
It may be worth a little or a lot, but is it worth $X00 million for socks or sutures or Silly Spider String?
Of course, this is a forward-looking attitude.
Oh, yes. I've never invested in a company that has managed to make itself disappear. Maybe they could market that.

Well, I bought some more KBLB and now I'm thinking about entering a 12-step program.
Thought I'd give my reason for buying.
I had been wondering if there was anything to glean from silence, positive or negative and I finally settled on a slight positive. It seems to me that Kim is very interested in Military and possibly medical markets. These two potential users would be the most demanding and would require extensive testing and evaluation. Military procurement can be very complicated, especially with a new material. The NDAs are perfectly understandable in this situation and Kim is not likely to make a deal with someone who makes socks while the premium users are mulling things over, possibly with an interest in exclusivity.
Therefore, I came down on silence not being negative and leaning towards a positive.
This, of course, is a forward-looking statement.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year, which is also a forward-looking statement.

Well, having just published a positive post, I'll try a more hard-headed one.
What could be going wrong?
1) MS is not exactly stable. Are all generations breeding true? Is it a viable product?
2) ZNF isn't working. Dead silence on ZNF since the 5,000 insertions in April. No Gen 2?
3) MS is stable but isn't worth the risk. It's a new product. Decision makers in business don't like unknowns. Think of the emergence of the PC. The old saw 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM' really applied. Businesses trusted IBM and the PC did not take off until IBM marketed it. Who is KBLB?
4) MS is stable and only after Kim awaits exhaustive testing and approval by his most exacting market niches: medical and military, can he come to a demand that justifies a merger/acquisition of production. Demand THEN production. It's not likely that KBPB would go to market with a sock manufacturer while the Pentagon or Johnson & Johnson is mulling over some exclusive use contract.
5) In the meantime, some other biogen process or synthetic fiber makes the whole point of this message board mute.
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Actually, being a long, I have to confess that I think that MS is real and stable and that #4 is likely.
#5 is why I'm a long. I think that #5 is not likely. Manufacturing via silkworms is more than just an ultra-green and sustainable process for making fiber. You get the fiber and you get a programmable organism for product variation. The Computer revolution was all about programmable machines. No change in hardware. A programmable organism is similar in concept but far, far more powerful. Change the genome but not the care and feeding of the organism.
KBLB is in this arena. The technology will succeed. KBLB?
Maybe Apple. Maybe Commodore.
Maybe Wang. Maybe Microsoft.
Maybe ...

Hi Everyone. I've been long with KBLB for a number of years and have been reading this board for quite some time. I'm impressed with the posters here and find this board both informative and fun to read.
OK.
I'm no expert in either stocks or genetic engineering but I wanted to post my thoughts on the significance of silence and why I am still very hopeful.
Of course, silence can mean anything but ... with regard to Monster Silk:
The scientific developments in 2010 were described as sudden. I don't think that KBLB expected the advances so soon. More than that, they had no product prior to that and thus no idea of what specific applications the resultant fibers would satisfy.
It was not until May 2011 that a MS strain was achieved in a 'commercial' worm.
KBLB stated that potential customers were educating them on potential applications.
The point is that Kim had to have been faced with a bewildering set of application options and probably a number of companies that wanted to obtain and test MS. Any military application would require approval of new material by both the manufacturer and by the government as well. That can be a long, frustrating process.
In addition there is the material production question, as the companies that make products would not be silkworm farmers. This puts KBLB in a rather complicated position: to solve both the production and application issues at virtually the same time. Want to bet that the Military is interested in exclusivity? More complications.
Kim has had to create a business model for a new technology, pretty much on the fly. Anybody remember Wang? Short-term success with a new technology but long-term failure for underestimating the potential.
The worms may be 'plug-and-play' to a silkworm farm but the creation of KBLB as a business entity is much more complicated.

Now, let's throw in the big marketing monkey wrench.
The Sigma-Aldrich Zinc Finger deal still has potential for much more specific process and product line. First insertions: July 2011. Mass insertions only a year ago.

Kim is trying to sell MS while also working on fibers that may well make MS obsolete. What's a customer to do? Lock in on ver 1.0 when ver 2.0 may well be coming out soon?

Sorry about the long post but all this leads me to believe that the silence is not negative. I cannot say it is positive, but gee ... in the digital revolution lots of companies got it wrong. Kim keeps saying he wants to get it right. I like hearing that. I am silently optimistic.