No doubt about it Phin. The whole global market sell off and DDD's revenue miss where a double shot to the 3D print space. SGLB is just enduring until it all gels together though.
The whole SGLB world is watching the GE thing through a micro scope. I expect that like a 'black swan event', the out of left field news will come from a different direction; a non GE direction. The printer manufacturers are missing numbers because there is only so many companies using, or contemplating 3D printing, and those companies already have their current inventory of printers. Who are the printer makers going to be selling to? They too have to await he continued ramp up of the industry. But SGLB can sell to those machines already out on the manufacturing floors of the world. It is certainly possible that the first news of PR3D sales will be to other than GE machines. We have efforts being pushed on several fronts, as you well know. Big data, Materialize, Burke, Honeywell, Military, the EOS machine that will clearly be used to work out he final actual closed loop control issues, and lets not forget the dental thing. Beyond that, who knows what the rest of the OEMs know and desire from SGLB? The automotive industry is likely to be looking into IPQA. We know what the time frame is for GE to happen. It will be months and months before anything truly concrete comes out of GE. But the rest of the print industry, that can benefit from IPQA, won't have the same 'all or nothing' restrictions that GE has. I see the move by SGLB to move out into the general industry as a potentially very lucrative thing, and expect the first really nice news to come from that.
I like the recent move to register shares for the employee incentive program. It is probably another dot to connect in the continued march toward success. It will enable the keeping of talent, the attraction of new talent, and may indicate the imminent event of rewarding the work already done because success is about to be realized. Cola and gang have a long history of being cost frugal(aside from the parachute jump with the 120 million share private placement). The incentive shares lead me to believe that he sees the need from a position of good timing.
I remember reading a book long ago that was about what it was that was the difference between those that succeeded in a big way, versus those that went big and failed in the end. A very big study was made to identify the contributing factors. It turns out that the single biggest, most overriding factor, was that the winners held out that laaaast little bit. They went the last extra effort, mile, pain level, etc. That is the difference. If it happens here, that will be the difference for the shareholders in SGLB as well.
Patience everyone. 2015 is the year of gold for SGLB if it is going to happen.
All the best,
Silversmith
