Ryan Mee, CEO of Fulcrum Metals, reviews FY23 and progress on the Gold Tailings Hub in Canada. Watch the video here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
Confidential in terms of who has tried but failed. There has been enough comment that others have tried but to my knowledge no one has named a company.
Slight amendment please -- Insert "Most worthwhile" instead of "mows worthwhile" Thank You. ----- Yours, Max.
Certification and Verification of Graphene.
There is no doubt that VRS passed the tests mentioned above. They were invited by the Graphene Council of the USA (NGA) to be the first company to take this newly devised testing system and they were successful. This sucess was heralded by the NGA. No other companies have been so heralded by NGA to my knowledge. I certainly don't expect to hear about any companies who have failed the tests.
I cannot for the life of me understand how Brassneck can say that other companies have failed and in the next breath say it is confidential.
The companies who might be thought of as USERS will decide if the tests set by NGA are the mows worthwhile available and are most lilely to base their purchases on their indivudual business decision.
Any other company trying and failing the NGA tests will eventualy go to the wall. ----- Yours, Max.
Father, I wouldn’t hold your breath on ISO standards. There would need to be some concensus in what the definition is. We know there has been pressure to try and get the definition wider than 10 layers but without success. If people can’t achieve sub 10 layer they aren’t going to agree to that as the Graphene ISO standard. It seems only VRS can achieve it as all others going through the verified producer program have failed. It will continue to be confidential as companies won’t submit to it if they get publicly exposed for failing.
Whilst it remains true that performance falls away quickly above 10 layers the current problem will remain and VRS will remain the only true provider of quality Graphene. Global major corporations will only want to deal with certified product, hence for a small company VRS have an unparalleled client list.
As more trials move to commercialisation it should be fascinating to see VRS mature and accelerate away on other 2d materials like Hexotene while the others try and find a way to knock a few layers off their platelets!
My apologies to fathereimer and the rest of the board.
My comment on ISO is incorrect; I had been thinking of the verification RNS and confused my interpretation.
True enough, however, I stand by what I said until there is a common, mandatory, test there will be a lot of differing opinions / claims. I also believe VRS have gone some way to proving their quality by having undergone the Verified Graphene Producer scheme, but until we can see who else has tried and succeeded / failed, the issue over who has what standard of Graphene will not go away - after all aren't there lot's of academic papers (eg by University of Singapore) that said lot's of companies claim to produce Graphene but upon testing few were found to actually do so.
There is also an argument, that can be made, that as different types of Graphene, have different properties dependant very much upon how they are used (functionalised) that even such tests will not demonstrate very much and that tests upon the functionalised product are actually more important (than layers and lateral size) as the users will only be happy if their needs are met / exceeded. Ultimately all that the Verified Producer Programme does is demonstrate that you produce what you say you do (which is a good thing as it removes one major area of risk) it does not, however, talk about the benefits you will / may get from functionalising the product (only testing by the users can do this - or sharing of testing already done by others).
Terrance Barkan wasn't happy with the belittling fatherelmer and the troll quickly retracted their attack. The 'blind' testing would be a nervewracking time for any company having samples taken from the 'normal' production process. Don't know why other companies haven't applied for the under ten layer confirmation.
Tinopener, as for bold opinions and not winning friends, I'm just saying it as I perceive it, doesn't mean I am any more right / wrong than anyone else.
Tinopener, no one (not even VRS) have ISO approval as the standards and characterisation methods have yet to be fully documented, and then standards testing bodies approved.
Having said all that VRS are probably closest due having had some level of confirmatory testing done by the NPL (who have published some initial British standards) as part of the Verified Producer Programme run by the Graphene Council. Until there are a single, common, set of standards, and some form of legal / regulatory requirement for testing / proof, its still the wild west and easy to belittle all claims.
Some rather bold opinions of other people in your last post father...
Certainly not out to win freinds by looks of it?
Anyway, back to Graphene. Possibly the biggest threat to VRS at present are those companies making claims on products when those companies do not have ISO approval.
Graphene failure to meet expectations, could hold back VRS for a while?
fatherelmer I find your article sobering in your analysis as you are not decrying the company and like a horse race the fences have to be jumped before winning can be considered. Probably at a very difficult time market wise, the company is facing a uphill struggle trying to gain traction and I would suggest the conditions they face are similar to those faced by I.T.M POWER. It may be of interest to learn that the current C.E.O changed I.T.M Power's fortunes by researching the various grants that were available. If Versarien is following a similar strategy then all they can do is to grind things out. At least since inception they have managed to make some progress and the only way we can make sensible judgements is by studying the reports coming from the company or maybe news media outlets.
Two more from me to complete the picture....
Talga Resources - basically a Graphite miner with negligible sales (ca. £4k) and a huge loss of ca. £6m
Finally DirectaPlus (DCTA) a pure play Graphene company with ca. £1.8m of sales (mainly textiles related) at a loss of ca. £3.5m
So as you can see Graphene is still very much a developing industry, in the (very) early stages of commercialisation and very much pre-profit. Therefore anyone expecting anything different, or using traditional valuation approaches, is an idiot.
As for the so called 'prophets' they would have much more credibility if they did an industry wide comparison, and review, rather than just attacking individual entities, but then that would be serious research and journalism, something I doubt they understand, let alone are capable of.
AECOM in the news today: linked with a new start-up called Magway based in Wembley (Having a kick about ?) ----- Yours, Max.
XGS have been trying for bloody years and still haven't cracked it. Doesn't or shouldn't make any difference people calling it down either and bearing in mind XGS the real value in VRS is the IP at present and will be with the future commercial products which the focus is on at the moment. China knows!
Final one from me re the competition - XG Sciences (XGS) - which in the 9 months to 30th September 2019 had sales of ca. £1m and a loss of ca. £6m, from reading the reports this comes mainly from Graphenes above FLG as they are still working out how to manufacture FLG, so again a (slightly) different market to VRS.
Another outfit that is beloved on the other board is Nanoexplore (GRA.V) which posts very impressive sales numbers - ca. £30m - however they too are loss making (ca. £3m) and if you read the detail you'll see that they were actually taken over by a Graphite miner in 2015 and have then subsequently been on a major acquisition spree buying up 3 composite manufacturing companies and its these that actually provide all their sales. They also make a very big thing about mainly / initially targeting the Carbon Black Market which is very different to what VRS are focusing upon.
Theanalyser, if you believe the other board then First Graphene (FGR) is the leader of the pack yet in their last set of accounts their sales were only ca £12k and they made a loss of ca £4m (figures to 30th June 2019).
Tinopener, I just meant that Chris is careful with the cash and so to make such an investment in inventory must be for good reason (and probably with a high degree of quick expected payback).
Fatherelmer
There was no inventory in Cambridge Graphene at 2019 year and whilst it’s true that 2D Tech finished goods were up as you say massively overall I inventory increased from £40,502 to £226,513 so the numbers are not exactly huge in context of VRS market cap of over £100 million.
VRS is trading on a multiple of over 3,500 times Graphene sales which are currently loss making.
One for the brave IMHO
Think that may be typical of all small companies trying to grow ABLE.?
Not sure that is a fair adjective of Chris's nature, (parsimonious) so not sure where it comes from.
VRS are a small team that work closely together and decision make together from my contact with them.
No amount of good ideas on this board will do any wonders for the share price as it drifts lower. The only news that will reverse the drift is a substantial order, substantial revenue increase or a major taking a stake in the company. For the present time it makes sense to spread the risk. I am very much aware how much the big stakeholders will react but, my attitude is , it is better to be safe than sorry.
Bloody impossible to know unless you are the auditor I suppose, there must be a reason but what it is only the company will be aware.
I do agree that proof of production capability is required - but a 700% increase in Finished Goods would seem a strange way of proving it IMHO, and would also go against Chris Leigh's (CFO) reputed parsimonious nature. Therefore, I would posit that this was more likely in anticipation of sales, though admittedly the subsequent Interims weren't exactly helpful here....
You could argue that if they don't build it they definitely won't come fatherelmer, they do need proof of the ability to produce to required quantities before they will don't they?
Your take on the accounts looks more honest and do wonder if 'finished goods' , although that could relate to anything, will be Airbus, O&G and CPI related as they are all ongoing and there was a bit of a buzz around concrete but have absolutely no idea what that relates to?
They have said that they don't give it away which I hope is true as it doesn't make good business sense otherwise. Trouble is with figures that they can be skewed any way they like (shorters). I'm not an accountant either lol, but the shorters base their negativity on the accounts ignoring that fact that it is a growth company and Chris Leighs confidence in managing the finances is being undermined although there is a podcast with him that tells exactly what the situation is .