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I hate to see you go, but I totally understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. Best of luck!! And hopefully we hear from you again if the circumstances change and there’s a nice pop, I’d love to hear you say you got back in as you spotted something happening.
Take care!!
big or small, what I see is an order. But more importantly what I'm getting in this is their style. They didn't go out of their way to publish or bring attention to the order, they're letting Martin do the PR unveiling their product. I see this as a service to Martin so they get all the glory and control over their market introduction. But I also see the fact that by not saying anything (LQMT) could have other orders they aren't disclosing that will have to surface someday. I can't imagine 100 sets of pins will shake the revenue world too much, but it gives some speculation to what other orders they may be working on...
Should have been an additional one liner in there...
*unless he can negotiate himself a bigger severance package where he could bail out gracefully.* it's like giving your kids a drawing of a bike on their birthday instead of an actual bike.
Honestly shareholders are way better off now than ever under Steipp. They actually have something to look forward to now. Sitting on those conference calls I thought to myself there's an inside joke here, and we're it. There was one in particular where someone asked a question about Apple, and he started coughing uncontrollably, I can only imagine he was making faces at the time to the others in the room poking fun. So many failed deals and partnerships.
Having a chair that opted to no salary while trying to turn it all around vs the old leadership trying to bleed a little more out before he goes. Should be ashamed, but I'm sure it only lasted till he cashed that last check. On the bright side, only 2M to get him out of there. Cost of doing business. I'm surprised he didn't "slip" on the last step on his way out and start a lawsuit. :)
I think it may only the the case with the liquidmetal alloy, although the, the arrangement may otherwise entitle to essentially a sales commission for a sale in the US, . I did a little research looking at Tesla patents to see if there could be any clues either way for use of liquidmetal or just the generic term amorphous alloy. Knowing hinges or brackets narrowed the patents down a bit, but there is still a huge amount to material to sift through when looking for clues. It would be good if we knew a little more about these brackets or hinges, lm105 is slightly limited in the size of the part, if it were a small part, it could be quite possible it would be a liquidmetal part.
Doing the gorilla math, I forget the exact specifics, but a 43k lb shipment would equal about 2.5 years work for two machines at the LQMT headquarters (20M 100g shots @ 3 min per, 40hr week, 2 machines) that's way too big an order for the company to handle already anyway, they would have had to sub it out anyway. So this still gives some validity to this being revenue generating. I forget if it's a 3 minute shot, I think they only have 2 machines, and I don't think they have a second or third shift? Other things, of the 100g shot, I think only 80g is usable, some loss to sprue etc. I didn't factor that in. This would be some serious money if it's pure LQMT order, Even if subcontracting to China, and as far as I know has always been the plan anyway to sub it out...
Who's to say they're going to make a big announcement about a contract? We know they're making production orders, that's a fact:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/martin-guitar-to-debut-three-new-authentic-series-models-a-new-fsc-certified-acoustic-electric-model-and-several-limited-edition-models-at-winter-namm-2018-300584332.html
(All the way at the bottom)
Why would they necessarily announce it, it could just show up on the next conference call. Granted this is probably not the biggest order they could possibly have, but it shows they're working on something that they havnt put any promotion into... So who knows what they have in the works? It's an order, they need moulds, in order for it to make sense, you would need to split the order over enough production to make it cost effective... Not to say they're necessarily going to switch to all LQMT, but a prototype or limited edition is a good market tester before you move in that direction, also what other little metal parts are found in guitars?
This just shows me they're leaving the publicity to the customer, either to have them show it off, or to keep their new product secret for an unveiling. I could see that being the case for other companies as well, if you're doing something big that could have a huge impact, why let your competitors know?
Thanks for that, totally made my day. On a side note, I would totally buy one as a novelty and to make fun of butcoin in the first place, honestly, it would probably be arty more than an actual bitcoin at some point! That would be a good note to management, make some sample coins, that will showcase the detail you could put into parts, make a cool desk chachki too.
Couldn't agree more, I loved how in his last 6 months he was there he managed to get his parachute doubled... They paid him out, I look at it as the cost of doing business, it was sleezy on his part to want more considering he was paying himself to Do as little as possible. If he were to read this it should be an taken and a justified insult.
I like how you think.
Please forgive me if this has already been covered on this forum. I've always been curious as to Li's holdings at eontec. The reason I bring this up, even though I'm sure he still owns a fair amount, i think he stands to make more from LQMT in share price than at Eontec because of where everything stands. If the iPhone thing were to happen as some are speculating, and I see no reason we shouldn't look at this scenario. I don't think LQMT would be able to produce the volume yet, but they could get the contract, and certainly subcontract the production to the chinese company. In this scenario, Apple worked with a company they have cross licensing with, an American company, LQMT takes a contract in accordance with their agreement with the Chinese company where a contract from North America would be theirs. Eontec gets a large manufacturing contract. In the end everybody wins... Li wins twice: LQMT explodes into the revenue world, share price follows, eontec gets the revenue, share price also goes up. So it's in Li's interest to get LQMT doing better anyway.
LQMT stands to benefit the most from any size contract from Apple. doesnt matter if they produce it not. Obviously they make more if they don't sub it out, but revenue is revenue, and if they can't handle the volume yet, they can sub it out. Being tied to Apple never hurt it in the past either.
I think $1/share is the bump in the road if this were to happen. They hit close to $2 when it was announced they were working with Apple, and that wasn't a production contract...
Company has some spending money now, but you forgot to mention that they'll be spending less in salaries since the new CEO has a vested interest in the company doing well, and is willing to work for no salary instead of trying to bleed it dry by doubling his own salary without any concrete acheivements.
Not bitter, just think the company is in the best position it has ever been in. Lots of good things going for it, progress has been made towards sales etc. and now Steipp is gone.not to say he didn't contribute to some of the good things, but a lot of bad has happened under his watch. I feel sorry for the guy honestly.
Unless Li proves me wrong, I see him being really good for the company. Steip brought mostly rumors fueled by NDAs, and not telling share holders anything.
Exactly, on the news, but big coincidence if it's people at break even. That's pretty good volume for LQMT, and no news to speak of... Or yet anyway... Wouldn't have to be insiders, could be relatives, acquaintances. The laws are pretty laughable when it comes to ancillary associations.
Long story short there's a lot more buying than selling today, wondering the sudden motivation, since there appears to be none to speak of.
Looks like somebody knows something we don't
There's a lot up in the air right now
Have to admit it's good timing... I know a while back crucible had a patent involving batteries and Apple, but could there be a connection? I guess the bigger question for me is if Apple has much in terms of connections with Tesla or not. Tesla a while back was willing to share their patents related to electric cars etc, but that wasn't specifically Apple. Now if there were a connection, Tesla would be the automotive industry not consumer electronics. There was a conference call a few years ago when there was speculation of Apple working with Tesla, or if they were designing their own car. Someone on the call asked Steipp if they were to incorporate LQMT into the vehicle if LQMT would stand to make any money since it wasn't wasn't consumer electronics as the agreement states.... Steipp in usual dodge and roll fashion played dumb, didn't comment, and instead said they never thought about it before. But wouldn't that be a pretty crucial part of going over contracts contemplating if something is done outside the specific industry your singing rights over to? Or was LQMT willing to sign anything for a little money? Anyway long sorry short I could see some similarities and coincidences to the two following articles (timing aside):
http://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-unveils-battery-with-a-315-mile-range-1471981062
http://macdailynews.com/2016/08/09/south-korea-companys-never-before-revealed-battery-technology-expected-to-be-apple-cars-secret-weapon/
Honestly I'd rather see the history being made tomorrow after some good news rather than speculators pushing it today. Funny when people miss the boat...
Rather see the longs win on this one
Wasn't something supposed to be released today. I could swear i was expecting something from management today. Earnings are next week, I know that...
Is this confirmed that they have Engel machines at prometaltech? A few conference calls ago Steipp slipped and said there were machines purchased by someone else, and they knew about or were involved with it somehow, but wouldn't say how many or where. If this is the case I've had this theory...
Indulge me a little... If li was buying machines before getting shares, this could be part of a bigger plan, not just that he could potentially be using the machines for his own formulations, but that he could one day be a partner commercializing LQMT, doing fabrication. My theory goes like this. If there were something big in the works, LQMT would need some bigger production capabilities than the two machines in california. If he bought some machines and was getting them up and running, that's money LQMT didn't have so couldn't spend, but also inactivity would drive the pops down and after loosing vissor, has nobody to produce parts for them. Li can use the machines himself anyway, so not a bad investment, but if he can be the production partner he could make some money there. If he becomes manufacturing partner he could even sell the machines back to LQMT and get his money back, and technically jobs aren't being lost overseas because they were never here in the first place.
Now let's go a little deeper, if Apple needed to produce parts, there's no reason they'd have to go with LQMT, they could go anywhere, but if prometaltech already had machines that could do the work, even better right? Apple has tons of money and could invest in another company to retool to produce parts for them. But they aren't stupid, if they don't have to invest in machinery, they can make more money. Li wouldn't want to buy machines he couldn't use, and he certainly wouldn't want to buy stock that won't pay off. But if he buys machines he could use anyway, what's the reason for buying the stock. If he gets a contract to produce from Apple, he makes good money, but if LQMT gets the contract, and he produces it, he gets paid for producing, probably supplying the material, but also suddenly 63M in stock is worth in the billions. In this scenario, he doesn't want the contract directly, he makes more money being the middle man.
If li were going to just dismantle LQMT for the IP, he could have done so for cheaper... Had he waited a little longer the stock would have gone down and he could have just bought shares at the door as people were walking out of the shareholder meeting.
My point is these guys that do this type of stuff usually want their hands a little more in their investments. And if this theory were to pan out, li would be basically in vertically integrated control of LQMT. Also making him some serious money in the process. I don't know how much money he has, but I can't think of many ways to turn that much of a profit in that short of an amount of time. This isn't a day trade, he knows much more than any of us do, and he had this information a long time ago. I'm sure he visited the center for excellence several times and had several one on ones with management to arrive at the decision to buy this.
And 1000 shots at 100g, for a little 2 gram part in the home button of a phone... 1000x50x365=18,250,000 per machine per year if 20 machines 365,000,000 parts. Those are iPhone numbers.
I'm going to get dumped on for this, I know, but that's what the Internet is all about. Hiding behind a computer while belittling others ideas. At least come up with a counter argument.
Oh, don't get me wrong, Steipp deserves a big ol medal.
But at a price of about 900k per ton vs 500 per ton, I wouldn't see China building subs out of the material instead of steel any more than the us... I don't think even Dubai would think about that. My math could be wrong, but the costs would be too high, even if I'm off by a decimal.
I completely agree, as a bonus for him too, wouldn't that be putting the money he used to buy shares to good use on his terms since in effect his current shares would be worth more, and would give him more control? That's probably how you get his cost basis of around .15 to be worth .25.
Using your money to buy shares, then taking the money on the companies behalf to buy back other people's shares...
My question would be, why buy it through the company instead of on the open market. With the announcements recently, it just drove up the price a bit, wouldn't it have been smarter to buy on the open market as it came down as it usually does and save money or get more shares? The advantage to doing it this way I can see making the company look good with cash on hand, and being able to get some quantity quickly. On the open market it would have taken a while to buy that many shares, and the company wouldn't have the cash to operate... But his shares would be subject to further dilution (which Steipp would do).
I guess there's less risk in doing it this way to avoid further dilution. But what to say about getting the quantity quickly, other than something has to be in the works... Obviously he knows something we don't. And with potential revenue upwards of 25M? If the prognosis was that dire and this guy was patient, he could wait for belly up and buy it for even cheaper. He could have bought his shares for pennies :). Oh wait, he did. Kinda makes you wonder if this was planned.
I couldn't agree more, in addition I would say there's usually a 2 day sharp pull back after a conference call, followed by 1-2 equalizing period before a long downward trend.
Usually the 2 day sharp pull back is attributed to lack of news and the same old dog and pony show.
I think this one is a little different in that instead of a long downward trend waiting for news that we usually see, this time there will be two days sharp down, then it might build back up slowly. I don't think the conference call was bad news, if anything good news, but time is needed to filter and let momentum build again. LQMT now has money to invest in production capacity, and some additional product to sell and hopefully get some additional revenue that wasn't possible before. I hate to think this way, but it might be good to be able to sell someone else's product to help liquid get off the ground.
Should make for an interesting conference call
The dog and pony show might actually be working for us now. Of course they had a nice long period of PR silence LEADING into a nice sell off towards the end of the year, probably to try and get a write off before New Years for tax reasons. Then conveniently after the new year, there was some really nice support on the buy end that could almost come off as someone trying to take up some position in a stock, right before the announcement came out about the surgical parts. Then as things were cooling down, a couple weeks later this announcement. At this rate, if 2016 keeps getting this type of press, this could finally be going in the right direction, and could justify the raises that were asked for.
My two cents, management has always been pretty self serving, but could they have been looking to line this stuff up all at once? They had mentioned a break even year, I forget when exactly, but could they be trying for a Big Bang to get this stuff off the ground? This could make them look like geniuses if they orchestrated a huge stock rally year. Some sort of record growth would be nice. Would make them come off as some sort of leader/dominant in tech, like Apple (pun intended)
Please correct this info if it's wrong, I got it in a google alert this morning...
David Choi, SVP at liquidmetal, on LinkedIn
Listed experience as general manager of electronics at LQMT , and profile under consumer electronics.
Was that a joke posting on linked in? If not, I think that could be a position to get rid of and help the bottom line.
Can anyone tell me why LQMT would have a general manager of electronics, consumer electronics, or the like? According to the AAPL. Contract, doesn't LQMT have free reign with all crucible patents etc, and can go after any industry for sales and manufacture, as long as it isn't consumer electronics? Basically the only one they can't have, and they have a pv devoted to it?
My point is, wouldn't this be like PETA having a division devoted to smoking and curing exotic meats?
Bacon is delicious :)
What's this say for the theory that MA is upset with the deal with LQMT, if they put out somewhat of a new edition to the existing knife...
I'm sure LQMT can't just put out the knife on their own using the MA mould... So they have to be still working together.
Thanks that was good to know, I learned something
Not being sarcastic
Not a great name then if all that differentiates from the generic is a space...
I could totally be off base here, if so I completely apologize, and a little embarrassed.
I thought liquidmetal was a bulk metallic glass, or amorphous alloy. I always thought of liquidmetal being the trademarked one offered by LQMT. Basically the generic vs brandname.
Assuming it would be like coke marketing their water under the brand "water" instead of "desani"
Yeah, I've meant to comment on this very topic a few days ago, but you got there first.
what's the deal with this, there's got to be some money made with this by LQMT. either by producing the phone (which I thought they couldn't be because of AAPL agreement) or some sort of commission on alloy (if that's the way around the AAPL agreement), or at least copyright infringement since it's being marketed as liquidmetal alloy...
Not to bash management too much again, but this is something they should be acting on, they need to get on this stuff. Someone on a conference call once asked Steipp if AAPLE were to develop something in a car instead of consumer electronics, would LQMT stand to receive some money since it's outside the agreement, sadly his comment was that he didn't know and he hadn't really ever thought about it... This should be something they're thinking about. Did they just sign the agreements without reading? What else were they doing with their time? There are recent developments that show promise and some pretty busy times for staff etc at LQMT, but the AAPL agreement was signed 5 Years ago, and the first order was just filled a few months ago. Realistically, with one customer, they should have been trying to play all angles.
Unless Steipp is flipping burgers on the side, what was he doing with all his spare time? And what kind of money should LQMT expect from the DOOGEE?
I know this post comes off as very money hungry, but I want to see this company succeed. And I think investors are really in the dark about what management is doing behind the scenes and what they're trying to do to build the business, or they're not protecting they IP. They either need to be more transparent, or get on their game...
Thoughts?
It does sound tasty
Yeah, I googled some the text, and found an exact match at a website: producecareers.com/home/
Maybe somebody's looking for a job. :)
Just ironic
Just a funny but ironic moment,
I have web alerts for liquidmetal, and this morning a link popped up leading to the LQMT website:
http://liquidmetal.com/product/identity-design/
I was going to cut and paste the picture at the top, but I can't here. It has an iPhone, MacBook, and an ad for the iPod.
I don't think there's anything worth reading into here, I think marketing at LQMT was just stealing a design template from another site (that happened to feature a picture of 3 apple products). I can't get to this page by clicking from within the LQMT website, but I can however navigate to other sections of the website from this starting point... Not a webmaster, but I assume this is saved on their website as a work in progress and not linked to officially from the outside.
Just ironic that's all. After all the conference calls I've been on, there's always the Apple question, and I almost cringe every time, because you know there will be a BS answer with no substance, but when this stuff pops up here and there, I can't blame people for trying to find dots to connect...
In the past a few conference calls and earnings calls ironically were scheduled the day before or after an apple announcement.
One year I wanted to send Steipp a fruit basket of Apples as a joke after someone asked about APPL and he started coughing almost in a mocking sense before finally addressing the question with the same BS.
I'm not advocating for MA's need to make more money, my point is that there's still plenty of profit here, even with fixing the problem... Your original post was picking at shipping costs after all. I hope both parties make out well, it just solidifies the technology.
Just as important to your DIRTFT; is learning from mistakes. As this was a first contract I hope they learned a lot. And I'm sure they did, even had the production gone through perfectly, I'm sure they would have learned from the admin process, and fulfillment etc...
Chung or Steipp may have had to use a GPS to find their way to the bank to cash the check (haven't been too many of those). But my point here is: even they must have learned something from this endeavor. I hope they'll remember the directions next time. Something tells me they're making enough off this company to have navigation in their cars (willing to bet a company car as a retention perk they gave themselves), and over the past several years of not selling, they've had plenty of time to learn to use them. Still curious as to what they do on a day to day in Rancho... That would be a good question for a conference call. Anybody want to ask that one?
We're probably not that far apart with our opinions, but the banter helps keep it interesting. I have respected many of your posts in the past, when they offer insight, good or bad, they can be productive. We can all research, but nobody can see everything.
That was I knew the specifics on the knife size, I still stand by my comment today, in the old comment I mentioned the knife taking two shots of material to produce, now that we know the final knife weighs in 2.7oz, that's far under what can be done with one shot. If my math is correct, LQMTs shots size of 100grams is about 3.5 oz.... We'll over what is needed for one knife. Even with a allowing a 20% waste for a casting sprue, you could produce a single knife with one shot. Willing to bet that played into the final design/size of the knife.
That just gave a much bigger margin than I had originally commented on before we knew the size of the knife.
And $40 divided by 300 knives, costs about $0.13 to ship a knife from LQMT to MA, so, again, if .13 kills MAs margin, they are in pretty rough shape.
I appreciate your looking up my old comment though :)
Oh dear, two additional freight charges, 51 pounds for 300 knives, southern ca to southern ca, ground would be about $20 each way... With potential revenue on 300 knives at $78k. If the addition $40 kills the margin, the company shouldn't be doing business.
This was their first time, and I'm sure that was built into the pricing that they received. Unfortunate as that might be that they needed to sharpen some knives, it shouldn't be the end of the world, it's a learning experience for both companies. I'm sure there is still plenty of meat left for both parties after it is made right.
On a side note, when the word spread about LQMT working with Miltner Adams first came out, I went and bought a MA knife, more out of novelty than anything else, it's nice, pretty cool, I love the design, i just keep it in my desk drawer and mess around with it when I'm on conference calls. I wouldn't say it's extremely sharp though, the edge it does have I'm sure it'll hold well, but I wouldn't say it's the sharpest knife I've ever owned. Will I buy the new MA-6? I'd like to, but I'll want LQMT to have a nice bump first. As is I'm reminded whenever I play golf by my driver I bought some years back... I like the driver for what it is, for golf I'm quite happy with it. But I think of the PPS when I use it. And for those of you who thin $260 is crazy for a custom knife, think again, that's extremely cheap, I've seen knives that size sell for 3x as much for just pocket folders.
Another point from a recent post was about the pops and what it's worth. Honestly it's a speculative stock, so take that into consideration, but the tons of patents added, with R&D by Apple that LQMT has access to, is worth a huge amount to me. The revenue may not have skyrocketed, but their patent portfolio is getting more extensive, and that's big. I still believe in the tech, and see a huge upside potential. And for today, I see a good upside on the speculation front. If the conference call is the usual dribble, siting nondisclosure agreements, with no other substance, then that's where we were yesterday too, so no big deal, i don't see a huge negative effect. But the potential for good news, with the recent RFQs, is to me an upside that can't really be argued with. I might be delusional. It's a speculative stock, think about it that way, it could lead to something cool, but it certainly isn't an Apple right now.
As for the original post I'm replying to, your just scratching for something to complain about, lamenting about shipping when it turns out to be about $40? If your that down about the stock, sell off and move on. If you've already sold off and your just bitter and that makes you happy, keep on posting, I just want you to be happy! I respected your posts far more when they had more substance! You must hate Enron, are you still posting about that one? I hope you didn't double down when the price got good;)
$40, I had to put it in there one more time.
Their having to sharpen them again does suck, but there has to be some efficiency there, they are a knife manufacturer after all, they have to have a machine that does this quickly. I can't imagine Mr. Miltner is sitting on the porch, one at a time with a DMT, sharpening, spitting on the blade, then holding it up to inspect with one eye, then back to sharpening with a piece of straw in his mouth.
LOL,
The sad thing about the morality clause, being god fearing men and all... I've read the articles about Steipp too. People who are truly religious are religious, but you can also make pretend to be. Kind of a one way street. If your truly religious you don't pretend not to be.
Honestly, that's one of the things that led me away from the flock, people who were holier than others, really only when it benefitted them. Time will tell which is which.
So just so I have all this straight...
The guy who was originally running the show that they got rid of for running it into the ground and had hired all his cronies in jobs where they didn't have to do anything and left the company in shambles, created another company with almost the same name, that sells products that compete with the original company, where his friends still work. This company pays Royalties for the use etc... But whatever deal was signed was signed with people he knows who he hired. I'm sure he's paying market rates for everything. I'm sure he isn't paying royalties in smiles on Tuesdays.
I'm somewhat concerned that through all of these dealings, lqmt is acting as somewhat if a shell taking the hits while luxury brands is making profits. Whether or not he's pulling the strings at LQMT, he still has people he's tied to there signing off on his deal.
I'd like to see the terms of these dealings between the two become really transparent. Let's be honest neither of these company leaders show much evidence of acting in the companies best interest. They've admitted mistakes have been made, but if they're always being made by one company while he other company happens to be around to pick up the pieces at pennies on the dollar, there's something big here. I'll be pissed if we later find out that Visser is producing parts for Kang, after LQMT gave him shares off the shareholders backs to get the deal rolling. Later that deal sours, lqmt takes a bath, but all these machines and capacity get used to create Kangs stuff and get him off the ground.
I'm taking some big liberties on the scenario above, but you have to admit the timeline works. If Steipp says something to the extent that the terms of this deal have to be held private because it's a private company. I don't know where shareholders stand on what we can ask for, but I think some things will need to be addressed
That would be a bold move, but nothing surprises me anymore. I doubt that would be the case because that's a huge conflict of interest and no one would be that stupid.
The biggest insult would be that they would have to have been quite active getting that venture off the ground, and been completely lacking in activity at their actual jobs at LQMT. Would explain a lot though :)
Honestly at this point I'd like to have it made public what they do on a daily basis.
Where did you find the lqmt luxury products? And who owns it? Tell me it isn't Steip and Kang who pay $20 in royalties a year for the name :)
I'm not totally new to lqmt, been following for about 6 years or so, but didn't know about the luxury products... I knew of some of the offshoot spinoffs like the spray coatings etc. but that's totally different in every way, this is cast etc...
There are a few names on here that I've been seeing forever, I've only been on here for about 6 years. Rather than try and single out anyone in particular, wondering if anyone else had seen these?
http://www.newmontblancpensoutlet.net/html/Nmbpojgy_Product_3557_USD.html
When I first got interested in the stock I wanted to get something made of it, just as a matter of curiosity, so I searched everywhere and ended up getting a driver off ebay because that was really the only actual product I had ever seen produced. Ironically it was shipped from a guy named Kang... I would have bought the omega with liquidmetal, but made some bad stock picks ;)
Long story short, I looked every where and couldn't find anything but some minor sports stuff. Today, I have google alerts with all my stocks and this came up. Never seen anything like it anywhere, so was surprised, but it's in an "outlet" so I figure it's old? Anyway, just wondering if there's any history here I don't know about?
http://www.newmontblancpensoutlet.net/photos/picbig/big_MB0979_0.jpg
Sorry, just got the ihub app and I don't think it lets you insert pictures, just links...
I really hope your right...
I noticed on one of the disclosures, just a little while ago, Steipp had gifted shares instead of the usual dump, thought that was out of the ordinary... So that to me reinforces some shadyness. And if Apple wanted to introduce something big with the material before the knife came out, I'm sure Miltner Adams would happily step aside to to let apple unveil something, after all, it would lend some free credibility to the material before theirs went on sale. Personally I always wondered why it was going to take so long to bring the knife to market. They had to have a prototype made before the contract was signed, and with that mold you'd be able to make more rather quickly, But then again, that would mean LQMT would have to put everything else on hold till that order was done.
To bring things back though, for as long as I've been tracking this stock, management has always rewarded themselves with large bonuses like this. I think it was once referred to as "talent retention." Unless something big is in the works, the only accomplishment I've seen is that they've managed to land these high paying, no accountability jobs. (Prove me wrong fellas). But also, in all fairness, the MA contract is a significantly larger step towards success than just the revenue that will be derived from it.
Do you have anything concrete to reinforce your statements? Maybe a link or two? I'm sure everyone would love to read whatever you've found, I know I would.
By the way, I think you froze up the market on this stock today, clearly the people that were dumping the stock are afraid to sell now.
I think MA would have a decent margin considering one of the major selling features to Liquidmetal is that they can make fairly complex parts that require minimal machining afterwards. If that's the case, and I have a feeling it would be. This could almost be a drop ship operation for them. Looking at their current line up of knives, the blade is almost the same as the handle, but sharpe, with really no additional materials thrown in.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm saying with this contract LQMT will be rolling in the money, but in order to get more contracts, not only do they need a "first" contract, but they need to deliver well on that contract. If I were even thinking of having a part made by them, I'd want to at least have a testimonial from another company. Let's face it, as a company they haven't had the greatest track record.
Incidentally, does anyone know how much these molds cost? I think it could go either way... But if it's relatively expensive, that adds to the overall cost of manufacturing a part.
Also, looking at one if the knives by MA sold by Boker, at 1.6oz for stainless, you could easily make the same knife of liquidmetal at 2/mold, that would help the margin considerably. These figures all take some assumptions too. But this is just an initial purchase order for parts, it doesn't have to be the end all contract. That being said, I'd assume they'd want to cover the cost of the mold and design work on the first batch in the event they don't order more later.
I agree with some of your statements, but not all...
I'm sure there will be some delays, everything is new, and I think thats a huge part of other companies signing up to use the material: just waiting to see that the process works. I can only assume some extra time has been put into the timeframe to make sure they make delivery when agreed upon.
But the other unknowns, if MA was willing to pay for the molds etc, they'd have to know the knife is going to work. The not knowing if they'll be able to sharpen etc would be a big risk, and to have a backup plan of crapping out a plain blade only to coat it after the fact is a pretty poor plan. They'd have to be better than that. If they're small and don't know any better, it would be a sizable investment for molds, if they're big, they'd have to be at least somewhat smart enough to realize the huge risk here.
Regardless of if LQMT has made knives before, engineers on both sides would have known the properties they're working with before an order was placed... They'd have had samples to know the laser etching will work, the metal will sharpen, or forge or whatever needs to happen to give it a good edge. As far as the manufacturing, they have to have been running some material through the machine by now, I don't really see how materion would make a better producer as no contracts have been filled to date. If anything, LQMT. Would be the best place to do the first runs regardless, they have a dedicated place that does only this manufacturing, since this is all they're meant to do, why give more money to the middleman to do something you could do. Even if both materion and LQMT have the same inexperience, the smart move would be to have some engineers from engle on hand at least in the beginning regardless of where it's done.
I know down the road the plan is outsourcing big contracts to certified production partners. But this is one contract, before others, why have LQMTs machine idle and pay someone else. Staffing the production is the only thing ii see as an issue.
Now, on to the contract... 500 pieces? In two parts? Would that be 1000 shots of LQMT? @$100 a shot, assuming from your statement of 2 different molds... That'd be 500k, that's a move in the right direction for revenue, but part of me thinks they'd have to be making multiples at a time though, by the time the knives were marked up, and sold, the price would be more in line with a custom knife, not a production knife as has been mentioned on other posts.... At $260 for a final price, doesn't leave much margin for MA, unless there's no processing for them after production. Could be the case, their biggest seller is pretty cool, and incredibly simple.
Just thinking out loud
I don't know, aluminum has some pretty neat features associated with it. If the phone were made of liquidmetal, consumers might not be able to "customize" their phone... Some consumers might like having the ability to mold their phone into the shape of their butt, to give it a nice stylish curve maybe thats why they still made the last one out of aluminum... Otherwise a phone case by LQMT would probably just maintain a boring straight profile.
Just kidding, I like your insights and where your headed with it
I too am glad the shareholders shot down the plan to issue shares for management incentives. Clearly other shareholders felt the same. I just hope management doesn't take this as an excuse to drag their feet to get back at shareholders for not wanting to pay them. That'd be counter productive for them too. I'd be all for paying them incentives, It'd be nice to see some results first. There has been what appears to be good progress made as of late, but we've gone through all this before, where all these partners are signed up, we give a bunch of shares as incentives, then for whatever reason things fall apart, the dilution is done, and they have to start over again. I'd be curious to see the incentive plan, willing to bet it would be proprietary and they couldn't discus that, better keep it a secret. I'd certainly hope it would be results driven, maybe with a little revenue wouldn't hurt either. If they didn't produce could they have to pay, sort of like a reverse incentive plan? I'd like to see that.
I work for a non-profit (similar to LQMT ;) , where the management was able to essentially write their own incentive plans. Long story short, they never make their goals but still get payouts., funny how that works.