Astrotech Corp. (ASTC)

[mas]

ASO's profits were always limited by how many rocket missions Boeing and Lockheed Martin could garner and as they made the two most expensive medium-range rockets in the world, Delta IV and Atlas V, this was a situation that was not going to improve any time soon especially with cheaper entrants like SpaceX's Falcon 9 entering the fray who prefer to process their own missions. So ASTC as a space satellite processing company had known limits outside of its control that limited revenue to about $20m a year.

Now the spectrometer business has far more profit potential, for example if Battelle win the Army's next generation chemical detector award with 1stDetect technology this will initially be a $50-100m revenue contract and that is just one particular application.

The possibilities in so many markets are endless going forward if you believe 1stDetect's tandem MS/MS miniature mass spectrometer is ground-breaking and leading the market and I do as most competitors use heavier quadrupole-ion technology for their miniature mass spectrometers against which Rigaku have already validated 1stDetect's tandem MS/MS accuracy with, which is why they chose the lighter 1stDetect technology as there was no degradation in accuracy.

p.s. the Director Remuneration Committee decide Pickens's salary, bonus and benefits and not himself.