The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
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I am going to need to qualify what I said earlier about cost of production. I don't know the total panel production costs. What I do know is that indium tin oxide is ridiculously expensive and China has most of it, whilst graphene is plentiful. But I have no idea about manufacturing costs of graphene panels - they are not quite there yet so probably no-one knows.
By the way - if you don't know the MW investment site take a look as it as some of the Verditek reports are with the free stuff. It is well worth the annual subscription money as he is covering this stock, and also the site is an excellent source of original investment ideas and comment.
http://www.michaelwalters.com/stories/news.phtml?num=5640
http://www.michaelwalters.com/stories/news.phtml?num=5647
At the end of the video it talks about the joint development being succesul integrating graphene with a PV. What is the next steps and what does that actually mean for Verditek ?
Sounds even more positive than I thought. Not sure how I missed that.
Thanks
Great discussion guys.
Verditek have created a new twitter account. The new CEO is making good on his promise of more PR.
This tweet has a new corporate video:
https://twitter.com/verditek_plc/status/1268474535352958976?s=21
I like this tweet showing solar cells on tents
https://twitter.com/verditek_plc/status/1268833847145385984?s=21
cheaper. That's great. I wondered on the cost/benefit. If its cheaper and more efficient its a no brainer.
I looked at Paragraf. Seems they list Verditek on their website amongst several applications they are working on. Clever stuff.
As COVID restrictions are being eased I expect people to try and get back to normal. Much interest in renewable market at the moment and this is just a great option to disrupt fossil fuels. The next 5 years will see significant growth in renewable as technology advancements make them more competitive on cost with traditional fossil fuels.
Oil was expensive at the start. The relative cost of production has come down over the last 100 years or whatever it is. Same will happen with with green tech eventually replacing fossil fuels.
Fingers crossed Feeks, thanks for keeping me company on here. Its very quiet at the moment.
But actually there is another important factor with the graphene cell: it is also much cheaper to produce and nore environmentally friendly because you can do away with expensive indium oxide.
Yes I believe 1% is huge in solar efficiency terms and hence commercial pay-back. At 20% solar is already able to compete very effectively
Responding to your earlier post, I believe I read that the current PV Efficiency is 20-22%. The graphene will hopefully take this to 25%. Doesnt sound like a huge improvement but apparently it is huge?
I don't know. I have a large investment in AFC Energy and have done for 10 years. I am hoping this will be the year for AFC.
VDTK is presenting a valid alternative to my green tech investments and I have taken a smaller holding here than AFC. I may invest free money from dividends back into VDTK. This would come from other stock holdings or may add some more through ISA allowances. I would like to see some more publicity for the products and continued buying from the market. I have to say that this does look like a great opportunity but there has to be market interest to keep the price rising. I did reduce my investment just before buying yesterday through fear of doing the wrong thing. Maybe it will drop a little and I will re-assess. At the moment I wish I had invested the larger amount which I had originally planned. I am learning to live with decisions.
Banaman have you finished buying. I thought I had done because I have a lot now but goigng through the numbers now I am not so sure.
Ok glad we agree on that then. PE of 10 on that sort of profit assuming there will be plenty more sales to come and it looks very tasty! I dont know what panel efficiency is now, but 20% would be in line with the usual best in class for monosilicone and seems to reflect the costs savings brochure claims. 25% efficiency would be a 25% improvement on that, so the costs figures would by my reckoning bring the payback period down to something like 1.43 years. It seems like a no brainer for the logistics sector.
ps. It is Paragraf with an "f"
Feeks, yes. Making some assumptions if capacity is filled then it could be that there is £19.5m in revenue after business overheads and factory running costs. This is speculative but I agree and had also read the same regarding the break even point.
Why set up a factory line in Portugal if they are not confident that the Italian factory can be filled to capacity?
I hold much promise for this. Was also reading about the Paragraph PV cell development. All sounds quite promising.
Feeks. Yes, sorry, I missed a zero. Quite a big error for a chartered engineer ! My point was the time taken to return the investment.
My apologies regardless.
Bananaman --
I read in one of the RNS from last year that they need to sell 6-7MW of Italy capacity to break even. Again, I might need your valuable help with the revenue/ profit calculations please. Someone here said annual cash burn is £2m? I have not checked but I am using that figure just for illustration. Taking your figure of £1.5m revenue per 1MW sold (from the brochure) suggests that current business running costs are covered by 1.5MW and maybe 5.5MW additional revenue (£8.25m) is what is required to cover the annual running costs of the factory - presumably this is due to what would be a big increase in employment costs, energy costs and the cost of purchasing expensive solar panel raw materials. That still leaves 13MW (approx £19.5m) clear revenue which drops to pure bottom line profit. Does that look right to you or am I making a stupid error somewhere?
Hi bananaman. Thnakyou. Actually I am very glad you said it is 200 lorries not 20 as I did my maths last night and that's the number I arrived at too! And even more comforting that it might not just me struggling when it comes to coverting W to KW and to MW - it all makes my non maths brain hurt and its easy to get it wrong by a factor!
Feeks, Sorry. Its not 20 lorries per Mw its 200. That would mean 4000 trailers to fill a 20Mw capacity. Regardless these are obviously estimates and retrofitting solar cells to refrigerated vehicles will not be the only way to fill a manufacturing facility order capacity.
Impeccable timing ..... and with much more to come I expect. I also bought more today.
well Feeks, hoping I timed my purchase just right this morning. Have been looking for the alternative to AFC Energy. Been invested there 10 years. I think this year is the year for them. They have a lot of catching up to do with their peers but I think they will do it. This for me here is my alternative green tech. Cleverly that is the name of the company Verdi (green) tec.
Hoping that this one comes good. This is a really strong and prominent sector and will be for some time.
Best of luck
banaman that makes a lot more sense now. I was getting some astronomically huge numbers for MW factory capacity required...!!! I will share further thoughts once I have gone back to my drawing board....
Yes, the beauty is it can all be retrofitted, so no problem there. It's quite simple I believe. Aware of all the other possibilities too, I've spent a lot of time looking at all those and will be happy to share some of my promising conclusions anon!
I would guess at 5kw per lorry that 20 lorries would be 1Mw therefore you would need an order for 400 lorries to fill the the Italy 20Mw capacity. Not sure how many refrigerated trailers are manufactured each year but expect they can also be retrofitted. The online download I copied makes reference to a haulier with 100 vehicles. Let's say Waitrose for argument sake. How many refrigerated trailers would they have ? 100, 200? Then you have Tesco, Morriston etc etc etc. That's just the UK. Globally this could be a huge market.
Not forgetting any potential from retail building for solar roofing the list of applications is endless due to its weight saving, power density/efficiency and flexible nature meaning they can be fitted to places that could not previously utilise solar PV due to weight constraints are shape of structure or both.
banaman you seem to be on top of this, so much appreciated for sharing your workings out. I might have been well out with my initial calculations for the HGVs as I was assuming this:-
- 15 panels per roof
- 5,000w per panel
= 75,000w per HGV
But maybe what it should have been is 15 panels = 5,000w per lorry roof? Rather than work out the customer costs I was trying to work out production capacity was how many MW production was needed for, say, 100 HGV s/lorries. Or basing it on the Italy factory (10MW), how many lorries that would fit out?
Feeks, They demonstrate the payback period in another document for covering the HGV refrigerated trailer roofing. The cost of the PV's was covered by fuel saving from reduced idling time and solar production, estimated cost saving per annum is £4138 and recovery of the solar panel cost is within 1.74 years. This is no time at all.
https://verditek.com/uploads/product/Verditek_Transport_Brochure.pdf
This stacks up with the previous figures. Looking at the image in the attached brochure. 18 panels per refrigerated unit with 275wp per panel = 4950 watts per refrigerated roof.
£1.5 per watt x 4950 watts = £7425 for the system per truck
£7425 / annual cost saving of £4138 per ruck = 1.79 years to repay the cost of the system.
Very close estimate and very short payback period for a customer.
That's what I am trying to work out, and why they believe they need a second factory set up right now (and bigger than the first) - shows confidence! I think there might be a reason for this.
You are correct about thin film flexible solar - traditionally it has only had 5-8% efficiency or thereabouts so pretty useless. VDTK are now producing at >20% I think, with sights set on 25%. Even a 1% gain is massive in terms of overall costs efficiency, return on capital and payback time frames.
Also, the thin film solar panels are not commercially viable in many applications because they deteriorate faster when exposed to the elements whereas our panels are now certified with two important classifications which prove it has been independently tested, is rigorous and durable.
I have a large holding already but bought a good deal more today.
I assume VDTK could exceed capacity in sales of the two factories. Not immediately but eventually. Assuming that, to increase capacity they could licence the production to an additional facility. I can only assume there is no end to the possibility and the use of the PV's I greater than rigid structure PV's but with the same output per m2 but at a 10th of the weight and above all else flexible. Previously, flexible PV's have not been known for their power output working at a reduction to the fixed types you see in massive solar farms. Massive benefits being flexible, reduced weight and same output.
Thank you bananaman - and I take the point about revenue not profit. I will need to wait for the weekend to try and get my head round the numbers
This would be turnover not profit I would add.
However, fitration in the oil and gas industry according to accounts is a £55bn per annum industry. Focus may not be here but still a very big opportunity especially when CEO has connections in oil and gas sector.