Liquidmetal Technologies Inc (LQMT)

[The Paraclete]

This first contract is not a joke, and nothing about management’s statement about their first volume recurring order misrepresented the facts. If there is a joke, it’s that we imagined the order to be a lot more than it was, and now we want to hold Li accountable for not meeting our expectations.

Fact: it was their first recurring order since Li took over the company. Instead of an order for just a single batch of product, as per previous orders, this order was for consecutive batches every month for a year. We may not like the fact that monthly recurrent deliveries won’t extend more than a year, but that doesn’t negate the fact that this is a recurring order.

Fact: the number of parts, 120,000 total, is by far their largest order, in terms of volume and revenues, since Li took over the company and their largest order in 17 years. The only order exceeding this one in number of parts was in 2003 when they made simple hinges for Samsung flip phones. And in terms of revenues, the current order may exceed the Samsung order because of part size. Hence it is a volume order. Again, we may be displeased because the volume wasn’t what we expected or hoped it would be, but it was an order of significant volume, especially when compared to the piddling orders they’ve had over the past decade.

Fact: before this recurring volume order, they had no track record of delivering product at this level. No executive from a company like Medtronic or Ford would risk placing a large order with a company that has no tract record for delivering volume recurring orders and no direct, on site, manufacturing facility of its own.

So this order is an important first step and will lead to other volume recurring orders.