Of course, you post some good questions.
Let's address Materion:
No matter who does R&D, no matter who does manufacturing, Materion can sell any of its current formulations of liquidmetal (all of which are on the open market without restriction) to any or all. In other words, they will make money selling the vitreloy formulations whether or not LQMT is in existence or not. This should be abundantly clear. So, it is not the Liquidmetal management which Materion management is counting on. It is the formulations. Further, Materion is free to develop new formulations all by itself.
Do you think they need Glenton Jelbert and team to devise and tweak new formulae? Hardly. Finally, Materion has been selling products to Apple FOR YEARS, independent of LQMT. Materion has its own relationship with Apple and will make tons of money from Apple, regardless of the process (injection molding, blow molding, sheet making, the glassimetal process, etc.
Now, Engel is a different subject.
Engel is in the business of SELLING ENGEL MACHINES.
They are not limited to injection molding machine manufacture.
They are not limited to the materials used in manufacturing (plastic or metal). They want to diversify away from plastics only. This is obvious. I can envision Engel making blow molding machines and other machines of fabrication which can be totally independent of LQMT's niche market of injection molding ONLY.
I am sure that they would love to develop, for example, Dr. Johnson's plunger methodology which he has patents for. They are not beholden to LQMT in any way, except for a very small niche market.
ENGEL could care less about LQMT management or shareholders.
ENGEL only cares about making a buck.
ENGEL has obviously seen LQMT's competency and capability as a marketing entity. They cannot be impressed. They have seen their own team of engineers develop the attachments necessary for making the Engel injection molding system work. Anybody who thinks that the JV team at LQMT did all of the heavy lifting in making all of the iterations of machines needs to do some homework.
ENGEL did all of the heavy lifting.
So........MATERION will MAKE MONEY, ENGEL will MAKE money from LQMT and we already know that AAPL knows how to MAKE money.
The only partner who does NOT make MONEY is LQMT...
Do you think that is because MTRN is incompetent?
Do you think that is because ENGEL is incompetent?
I don't think so.
The clock striking thirteen is NOT WATTS.
The clock striking thirteen is LQMT MANAGEMENT.
