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Hold Everything. The Defense has requested a 6-9 month delay in the trial....it seems that "the market isn't ready" for SGLB's software just yet. The judge is considering the Defense's request but since this is the ninth six month delay requested by the Defense the judge is leaning toward denying the motion. Stay tuned!!
You paint an idealistic scenario, but in my opinion it doesn't hold water. As a founder, CEO, and Board member it is inconceivable that Mark would voluntarily step down now. Your description of his expertise and what he brought to the table is likely quite accurate. However he also set the direction and priorities for the company as a whole. When John Rice came in and observed that the focus continued to be on R&D instead of production he was displaced. I continue to believe he was displaced once again due to his failure to produce a marketable product. The decision has been "prettied up" but no one will convince me that the "retirement" was voluntary. Unlike almost all of you I attended Board meetings and saw Mark in action. He ran the show; the Board at that time may as well not even have existed. His presentations bordered on arrogance, yet when he was asked the simplest of "business" questions he floundered badly. You will undoubtably continue to believe your scenario and I'll stick with mine. I suspect we will never know for sure.
To me, John Rice made a serious strategic error in his letter explaining Mark's departure. At the end of the day it really doesn't matter whether Mark is involved or not. What matters is that they have a product that will generate revenue. He needed to lay out a specific path to generating revenue and own up to what the current issues are that are holding this back. The old saw about the "market not being ready" for our terrific product which is fully commercially ready to go won't hold up much longer.
No, I did not. Read my post again.
Nobody in New Mexico cares. SGLB isn't even a blip on the investment radar here. The official story is not going to change either. It's in SGLB's and Mark's interest that it stay the same. The real issue, in my opinion, is SGLB's plan going forward to secure meaningful sales. I've felt all along that this was a product issue and not a sales issue. John Rice is going to have to be convincing next week that he has a solution or the stock price is going to take a serious hit.
Max. I believe the answer to your question is pretty obvious. John is the chairman of the Board and obviously had the Board's backing to replace Mark. Mark did not have a choice in the matter. The company was struggling, both from a product development standing and from an overall strategic direction and the Board felt compelled to take action. It's just too bad that John did not choose to replace Mark at that time.
Mark Cola doesn't need my assistance to be discredited. He does a fine job of it by himself. Note that he is now the CTO "emeritus" a synonym for "put out to pasture". You believe whatever makes you comfortable Jackie. A stiff upper lip is certainly required here.
Let's wait until Monday to see what the market thinks of your reasoning. If Mark couldn't get the job done in eight years I doubt his consulting skills will be in much demand by John Rice. It's all a charade in my opinion to "play nice" in an awkward parting of the ways. I've seen it a thousand times and I don't believe this situation to be any different.
Mark "retired" on October 10. It took the company four more days (Friday after markets were closed) to make the announcement. "Retiring", "departing for other opportunities" are standard rhetoric in the high tech world. It is done to protect the company from potential lawsuits and to provide a more graceful exit for long-term employees. As far as Mark continuing to have an interest in the company due to his share holdings, I'm certain he would not want to sustain a loss but I'm also pretty sure the company will want to clear the decks for some new talent that just may be able to accomplish what Mark did not.
You are naive beyond belief. I give you far more credit than to actually believe what you just posted.
John Rice needs to be practicing his tap dancing skills this weekend because if he doesn't have a very good story (one that is unscripted) to tell Monday morning SGLB its toast. Vis's incredulous assertion that Mark had produced a state of the art fully functional and marketable product, and was now retiring to bask in it's success is of course nonsense. Mark was fired for being unable to produce a salable product despite more than eight years of effort. The problem being that John Rice waited too long to take action. It was obvious from the beginning that the two of them did not see eye-to-eye and instead of simply moving Mark out of the CEO's position he should have been let go at the same time as Amanda. Now, with the dilution vote looming Rice will have to have a highly credible solution to the product issues in his back pocket or they are finished. The Captain brings up a good point however about the dentist with the seeming insatiable desire to own shares here. If he knows something (maybe a shift in emphasis to producing dental implants) perhaps all is not lost. Of course that also brings up the question of why he would know about such thing ahead of all other shareholders. At any rate Monday morning should be highly entertaining.
Outlook:
1. I am not invested and have not been for some time. I made a very good return on an early investment but sold several years ago.
2. I neither trust nor believe what management has to say. They are looking out for their own best interests and not the interest of shareholders. The "product" has not been marketable for a very long time now. I see no signs that additional shareholder commitment would change that fact.
Observer:
I was negative about the company early on for very valid reasons. I live in New Mexico and I attended Board meetings. I listened to Mark Cola and quickly came to appreciate that he knew absolutely nothing about running a business and worse that he was simply not interested. His personal reward system had nothing to do with benefitting shareholders it came from recognition from other researchers for the academic papers that he presented at conferences. The Board was made up of fellow academic retired "good old boys" from Los Alamos that also had absolutely no interest in shareholder values and allowed Mark to run the business with absolutely no oversight. I constantly complained about this and it took years for them to assemble an independent Board who unfortunately seems equally uninterested in looking out for shareholder interests. I also became disillusioned with the borderline deceit present in every product release. (Announcing that a new product had been released, only to discover months later that it had been released for testing and not for sale). I continue to be embarrassed that this company continues to operate in my very backyard and that they have strung along so many shareholders with their false promises and lack of follow-thru. I sold my stock early on at about .17 a share when I recognized some of the issues I've outlined and made five times my initial investment. I believe my observations have proven to be accurate over the years and I stand by them. I continue to have an interest in the company because New Mexico has so few high tech companies and very early on I had great hopes that SGLB would put New Mexico on the map. I'm as disappointed as everyone else.
Outlook, Silver, Jackie, Vis, et al: Let's suppose for a moment that Printrite has been commercially viable for some period of time now (you pick the time period because it seems to vary with the poster). It hasn't sold, the test sites have not ordered additional copies. The company is desperately in need of revenue and credibility for their offering. Who do you suppose would be the first person shown the door? Ron Fisher is the obvious answer. Yet, Ron is still there. Moreover he has had salary increases, additional stock options and his bonus target extended so many time I've lost count. Why do you think that is? I believe it's because Ron is likely a very competent sales manager who has a product that is NOT commercially viable at this point in time and both Rice and Cola recognize this. They don't want to lose Ron because he is a talented guy and they are hoping that if/when they get their act together he will be able to move the product successfully. I spent an entire career in high tech sales with Apple and a number of startups and I can tell you that organizations have zero tolerance for sales directors who don't perform. To me, at least, this is the clearest evidence that what Wick has been saying for some time is true. The product is still in development and testing. You obviously feel differently but the evidence seems pretty clear to me.
Come on Silver, I give you more credit than that. You are starting to sound an awful lot like Mark Cola. "We'll just publish scientific papers and the rest of the world will come to us." How has that worked for SGLB so far? This supposedly best of class software has not only not brought the world to it's doorstep it has not even been successful in getting the folks who have been in their test group for years now to part with any of their cash for additional units. Yes, I know, mass production is just around the corner and all that is going to change in the very near future. (How many times have we all heard that with the "corner" always being only being 6-12 months in the future?) I'm still waiting for a credible user to make the claims that SGLB makes for it's software, perhaps at that point I'll join the admiring chorus. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen, nor should you.
Don't let those rose-colored glasses get fogged by actual results.
:What software is perfect? Every software, famously Microsoft is in perpetual development stage, surely bugs in every software ever made". You have a point, certainly with Microsoft (Apple has had their share as well). The difference is that NO developer in their right mind releases software to the commercial market that has not passed THEIR rigid test criteria. To do so just opens the developer to a world of hurt that they try very hard to avoid. That being said, software errors often turn up later that were not adequately tested for by the developers and cause them lots of grief. The fact that SGLB continues to test Printrite in a beta test environment is a clear signal that problems remain. Very few end-users want to put up with the headaches and uncertainties that occur with utilizing software still in a test mode. Hence the lack of sales. In my opinion, the SGLB sales team has been tasked with the impossible job of marketing software that is still in testing and been unfairly criticized for their lack of success in doing so.
What difference does it make? The software would not continue to be in a beta test mode if it were commercially marketable....at least that was how it was done when I developed software.
Simple. The fact that it is in beta test confirms to anyone who has ever developed software that it is NOT a commercially marketable product. This has been the problem with SGLB since day one. They develop software and then continue to enhance it, but the downside is that it is continually in a test mode and never bug free so it can't be sold. This has been going on for the past 4-5 years.
"But why would they disclose valuable proprietary information in a highly specialized technological market to their competitors or non-customers?" There is nothing at all proprietary about any of this information. It's basic marketing 101. What can my product do for you and what will it cost you. Simple.
One would think that they would want to promote the benefits of their offerings so that someone at some point might actually lay some cash on the line.
Great post Windbag. I think it illustrates clearly that Ron Fisher is earning his keep. Lot's of agreements, joint ventures, contracts, etc. but absolutely no follow-up by customers. To me the evidence could not be clearer there is problems with the product. It defies the imagination that with all this activity no significant orders have been placed. Vis can live in his dream world that SGLB is being tested behind closed doors and a major order is on the near horizon. I think Windbags post clearly illustrates that the interest in utilizing the software in a production environment is negligible.
"He also mentioned that he hopes to have closed loop commercialized over the next year." Translation: He means he hopes to actually get it working reliably in a high volume production environment so that he can actually sell it to someone. Right now it is still in beta and not marketable. Note that he "hopes" to have it commercialized over the next year. SGLB's "hopes" have not panned out terribly well in the past
"The value of the company will be shown in one multi-unit sale, which is on the brink of occurring." Vis seems to believe that if you repeat this mantra enough times that it increases the likelihood of it actually occurring. He refers to this hypothesis as "due diligence".
Lot's of testing and evaluation, yet no follow-up orders. Ya think there possibly could be a message there??
Just another example in a long list of freebies provided by SGLB for "testing and evaluation". No evidence that I can find that Siemens ever paid for anything. If you are going to give things away, most folks will take them.
Common sense would lead one to believe that if a corporation was on the cusp of initiating a large scale additive manufacturing initiative that they would be vigorously testing all components of the project, both hardware and software for considerable time before spending millions of dollars on a radical new way of producing their metal components. The pundits here seem to think that it's only after large scale production begins that SGLB's software will be in demand. If you were the engineer in charge of such a massive changeover in production don't you think you would be testing every component involved as far in advance of your start date as possible? SGLB does not appear to be in that mix, at least not for any corporation that is willing to pay for their software.
With no sales if you believe the product is worth zero, why do you believe the patent is valuable? If the product is flawed in some way, which appears to be abudantly obvious at this point, would not the patented process also be flawed?
From this mornings Albuquerque Journal: Sigma Labs, Santa Fe, has been assigned a patent (9,999,924) developed by four co-inventors for a "method and system for monitoring additive manufacturing processes". The co-inventors are Vivek R. Dave, Concord New Hampshire, R. Bruce Madigan, Butte Montana, Mark J. Cola, Santa Fe, and Martin S. Piltch, Los Alamos. (filed August 21, 2015)
Probably did it just to make Kanya happy!!
I'm wondering how many here have actually looked ahead and tried to calculate the sales volume that would be required to generate the first penny of net profit per share given the upcoming dilution. Yes, the stock price will bounce when, and if, they make their first substantive sale, but to actually turn a profit given the further dilution is a whole different story. Until they actually turn a profit after taxes you are going to see a continuous drain on your investment. Most here must see things differently, but the road to real profitability does not look promising to me.
Mason:
I'm neither a flipper nor a shorter. I have done neither with SGLB. Several years ago watching Mark up close and personally, I began to doubt his honesty about the product. In my opinion, it has been abundantly clear for years now that there is something fundamentally wrong with the software. I have sympathy for those who have lost a great deal of money on this one, but the outlook continues to be grim
Jackie. Thank you for your thoughtful response to my inquiry, however I simply don't buy it. It's hard to imagine that Mark would not literally jump at the chance to have the impact of his work discussed in a real scientific journal. SGLB has put out a number of PR fluff pieces designed to look like a real journalism. Of course they would cooperate. They simply have not been asked. I wonder why?
Jackie/Silver/Vis: For the benefit of all of all us clueless, unappreciative, unknowing, participants in this forum I'm curious why the technical journals, significant metal fabricators, etc. are not publically singing the praises of this breaktrough IPQA accomplishment? It has never been done before and will revolutionalize 3D metal printing, yet no one in the industry seems to have taken notice. The investing public clearly sees it as a non-event. Could it be Sigmas track record of over-promising/under delivering? Mark's established record of not telling the whole story, just the parts that make him look good? Certainly an achievement of this seeming magnitude should generate a good deal of press. Gosh, it's been quiet on that front.
Jackie. I guess you must laugh a lot because this is the third time Sigma has pulled this gee whiz look what we've got only to announce later that the gee whiz is still in testing and far from releasable. Pretty funny, except to those who lost a good deal of their investment funds on the misconception.
" Little bit like saying we are working on a mission to mars and actually being the first to do it." Actually it's a bit like saying: "We got the software to function under test conditions in our lab and now we are going to put it out in the real world and see what works and what does not".
As a certified nay-sayer I suggest you read the announcement more closely. Particularly this sentence:
"Sigma is planning beta testing with select, end-user customers across various market segments"
Translated what this means is that the software is not commercially releasable. It is in a testing phase that may take many months or years to perfect. It's Mark's old song and dance that he often repeats about "new products" that are not really operational in a user's environment. Wake me up when somebody other than Mark Cola tells us that this is fully functioning software. Or, better yet, when they actually accrue revenue from selling it.
Joe. Your message to Brent was "tell it like it is". Couldn't agree more, but unfortunately, I don't believe that is in his nature. He exaggerated, stretched the truth, and outright deceived, one too many times to suit me. I was an early believer but he convinced me that he can't be trusted. I have better places to put my hard earned money.
"The problem is that the 3D printer manufacturers have not yet figured out that if they promoted PrintRite 3D to be run on their printers they would sell more 3D printers because their customers would have more confidence in the printed products they produce with them." That's the funniest statement I've read in a very long time.
Smart guy.....honorable, not so much.
Great list, and I would add yet another theory:
The theory that all versions of Printrite 3D up to the current 3.02 release was really "beta software" and was recognized to be simply in a "testing environment" even though it continued to be actively marketed to end users. When they come out with the next softwarev release will 3.02 be retroctively declared beta as well? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Doesn't matter how targeted this is. Training and some level of support by SGLB will be essential if they are to see any results at all. Better to choose one or two sites and attempt to provide at least minimal training and support. I don't see the manpower or money available to even accomplish that.