Member Info for JB1978

Boonco - You are of course spot on.

BlueOcean50 - My observations were not directed at long term shareholders such as yourselves who raise perfectly reasonable questions or opinions. They are regarding non-shareholders who carp without a financial interest (and who incidentally demonstrate similar levels of knowledge).

Radius - You have succinctly listed some of the many reasons I am invested in this company too; thank you . Whilst the share price bobs about on the marginal trade mostly by PI's, more than 60% of the shares are locked up with Institutional holders who appreciate similar features. To those shareholders who don't, I humbly suggest the use of the SELL button and putting the resultant cash into something better liked.

Good luck to all LTH's

The stock market is partly a mechanism for companies to raise investment funds. (Investors who invested in Ilika PLC when they floated in 2010 at 20p have made 700% on their investment). However, on a day to day basis, the stock market is a mechanism to shift ownership from weak hands to stronger hands. If your time frame for investment is short (i.e. if you thinking about being on the share register in units of less than years), Ilika is almost certainly NOT the right investment for you.

(If you are a short term speculator, there are a myriad of 'investment mediums' which have a higher levels of liquidity and volatility than Ilika PLC.)

For those who have the patience and financial stamina to back nascent technology, Ilika PLC might be for you. If you don't have such belief in Ilika's long-standing Management team (headed by Graeme Purdy, CEO at the time of the floatation) and their equally long standing scientific team (headed by Prof. Brian Hayden, who also founded the company back in 2004), then SELL your shares and invest in things you do believe in. (This allows LTH to add at cheap prices of course).

If you are a former shareholder who sold out much lower (yes, I am thinking RogK who is also Buzz Thomas who sold out for pennies and Phil2003) why do you waste your time posting on a bulletin board about something you have no financial interest in? Please do yourselves (and everyone else) a very great favour and devote your intellect to things you do have an interest in (i.e. MOVE ON).

Question - Will you be licensing Stereax IP to your larger clients in coming years?

Graeme Purdy CEO - Definitely yes. We have customers in our existing portfolio of clients who have addressable markets for their products which are much larger than our FAB's capacity. A key part of our strategy is to license our IP. We will be offering those customers the opportunity to license our IP to either fabricate Stereax batteries for themselves or take the license to a 3rd party FAB to produce the batteries for them.

Question - Do you have demand to take up your capacity from the FAB?

CEO Graeme Purdy - We have early commitment from a portfolio of customers who will take initial output from our FAB, and we will have to ramp up production so that we can meet that demand over coming years.

Question - Do you have demand to take up your capacity from the FAB?

CEO Graeme Purdy - We have early commitment from a portfolio of customers who will take initial output from our FAB, and we will have to ramp up production so that we can meet that demand over coming years.

Live in the Investor Presentation by Ilika ongoing via Investors Meet:

Question: Can you confirm that you will be selling Stereax product made in FAB1 from FY 2023 which starts in May 2022?

Steve Boydell (CFO) - Yes, I can confirm that we already have pre-orders which we will be fulfilling in the second half of 2022 from FAB1 (once product validation has been completed).

The only people 'worrying' or 'disappointed' are the non-shareholders, notably the ROGK/BuzzThomas and Phil2003, who having made bullish posts sold their shares (much much lower).

If you are 'worried' or 'disappointed' sell your shares to stronger hands who wish to hold them and go elsewhere.

The RNS this morning was unequivocal that Stereax production capacity has been built on schedule and to budget. At the same time "giant leaps steps forward" have been made with Goliath - quite the statement from Management who over the years have been keen to avoid hyperbole and instead concentrate on delivering on their projections.

Commenting on the results Graeme Purdy, CEO of Ilika, said: "Our Stereax manufacturing facility has been implemented on time and on budget, despite significant supply chain disruption. I'd like to thank our employees, partners and shareholders for their support in making this happen. At the same time, our Goliath technical programme has made giant steps forwards particularly in operating temperature and cycle life, the equity placing completed in July 2021 will allow us to continue to progress towards manufacturing readiness."

Having been bearish at £1.08, £1.18, £1.40 and £1.62, BustThomas aka RogK is back on these boards at £1.80 and is again (predictably) bearish. The IKA share price is now double where RogK sold his shares just over a year ago. I don't know but why he feels compelled to share his gift of (reverse) insight, but I am grateful for it.

I am delighted with their approach of setting realistic guidance and delivering it (rather than making wild claims to gather attention, and then failing to deliver, which any student of the history of the battery industry will know it is littered with). The future looks extremely bright for long term Ilika shareholders imo.

Ilika also hired another Sales VP (who also had an impressive background and who presented very well, but whose name I can’t recall – this is my lack not his; he was equally impressive as John Tinson). Through these extremely high quality hires, it is apparent that Graeme Purdy and his top management team are focussed on turning their scientific and engineering excellence into profits for the shareholders, whilst retaining a leading position in what will be a very rapidly growing market place for nano-scale batteries.

As previously advised by the company (and in line with stock exchange rules) no market sensitive information was given. No doubt some PIs foolishly bought in anticipation of the investor day and are now dumping those (tiny) holdings. Frankly, I am sure that long term shareholders would rather not have such myopic people on the share register (which is now over 15% US based according to Steve Boydell CFO).

Having said that, personally I think they will be announcing a full year ahead orderbook not long after product validation (which will happen after process validation, as confirmed by Paul Marron, who was clearly totally on top of the production process at FAB1).

They are also currently evaluating the relative merits of increasing capacity at FAB1, bringing in-house the rest of the many processes (thinning and dicing for instance) of Stereax production and FAB2 (for which there is space next door…). Recall that the cost of FAB2 was already raised in the May 2020 fund raise (which I am glad to have taken part in).

If there is an area of weakness, it was in my opinion their ham-fisted fund-raise of ~£25 mio for Goliath at a 30% discount to the prevailing market. If they needed the money (which they did; in comparison QuantumScape are making losses greater than the entire market capitalisation of Ilika in less than 3 months, every 3 months ...), they should have raised when the share price was rising above £2.75 less than 6 months earlier. This would have resulted in greater funds at lesser dilution. However, that is now in the past and the money at least has been raised and is being put to extremely efficient use.

In summary, we already knew that Brian Hayden and his team were world leaders in terms of the tech (both the chemistry and in overcoming engineering problems to turn the science into commercially viable product). The shift of focus to commerciality was definitely needed, but the quality of their hiring shows just how able to evolve this Management team are. They will need to follow this up with results next financial year in terms of Sales and scale-up plans in order to continue to show their effectiveness.

The company has changed a lot since my last site visit (pre-Covid) and is clearly gearing up for commercialisation of their world beating intellectual property. Overall, I was very impressed with progress.

Ilika was founded on the back of ground breaking scientific research headed by Prof. Brian Hayden. He and his team have taken the science forward through advanced engineering (Tool 1 and Tool 2 were made bespoke to Ilika’s designs for example) towards commercial reality. My top take-away was that the Ilika’s management are now also adding focus and resources towards commerciality.

Most of the traffic on bulletin boards about Ilika seems to be focussed on Goliath (batteries for EV’s). Whilst there was a very full update on Goliath progress (and a tour of the new Goliath Research and Development laboratories), which is going very well (the analysts at Liberum and Berenberg both agreed that none of the big name Goliath competitors were ahead of Ilika in terms of that technology, although they are vastly higher market valuations), I will concentrate this write up on Stereax as it will be the driver of nearer term sales revenue and seems to be less well understood. Bear in mind Ilika are in many ways creating the market through the imminent availability of Stereax batteries in quantities which will allow incorporation in commercial products.

The new(ish) VP of Sales and Marketing, John Tinson was clearly out of the highest of top drawers. It was clear that Ilika are determined to nurture their client base (recall ~27 med tech device makers and 11 Internet of Things sensor makers have already been buying Ilika’s Stereax batteries for evaluation, re-certification and research and development purposes). Through his presentation and in Q&A, it was quite obvious that he understood in great detail Stereax’s market segmentation and the price inelastic nature of demand from Med Tech in particular. Tinson made clear that given the limited ability for Ilika to supply in the short term (FAB1 will be able to produce ~£13 mio worth of batteries per annum) that Ilika will be exploiting their understanding of the market for Ilika’s commercial gain.

(tbc as there is a character limit).

Dissipline, you are spot on, in each respect. The only thing is, whilst I note that the (inverse) Force is particularly powerful with him/her/it (note for instance his previous calls on Rockhopper) and therefore RogK/BustThomas/ whatever her/his/its next name is is truly worth noting, beware that once such a reverse indicator is aware of broad interest, they sometimes change their methods and lose even their (reverse) predictive power becoming just noise rather than signal. I am grateful for all RocK's help so far.

"BuzzThomas was very bullish Rockhopper at 11p a share. Thats halved since. He took to deleting his posts as ROGK, but whether posting as ROGK or BuzzThomas, bullish or bearish, the posts are informationally laden and worth noting (as reverse indicators)."

How prophetic was this! 2 weeks after BustThomas/ROGK called it higher on this platform (having consistently called the share price lower, most recently just 2 days earlier on the 15th November on this very thread, since he sold his holding out for pennies a year ago), the share price remained glued around £1.40 for a fortnight. This was the least volatile period since last December when Parkwalk Advisors sold the EIS shares they bought 3 years earlier, at the £1 level (just as they were doing again this month with the EIS shares they bought in 2018).

I don't know why ROGK/BustThomas hangs around this share chat when he has no position in Ilika PLC, but he's so consistently wrong, he is worth encouraging to continue dispensing his 'insight'.

I am confident that IKA will trade £2.80 (ie 100% higher) before if trades sub £1 (ie 30% lower and where ROGK/BuzzThomas sold his long).

BuzzThomas was very bullish Rockhopper at 11p a share. Thats halved since. He took to deleting his posts as ROGK, but whether posting as ROGK or BuzzThomas, bullish or bearish, the posts are informationally laden and worth noting (as reverse indicators).

ROGK/BustThomas has got bearish again ! (This time on the removal of potential Goliath competitor Johnson Matthey). Don't question ROGK's curious logic; just tune in to the power of his reverse signalling...

I have been a professional market maker (not in equity products) for almost 3 decades of my working life. I have never come across as effective a (reverse) indicator as ROGK (also posting as BuzzThomas). He is quite remarkable. He bought some IKA shares a long time ago and then sold them just before they catapulted higher. He is again very bearish at the localised lows. I don't know why he posts his informationally laden posts (under 2 handles now on this and the ADVFN board), but he is providing a very valuable (reverse) indicator service. Please do feed that troll !

(I am a very long term IKA share collector - GLA).

Just to say that Parkwalk also participated in the fund raise in April and will likely be holding those shares for at least the 3 years they need to in order to maintain their eligibility for EIS tax benefits.

Parkwalk Advisors appear to be offloading their shares which they bought under EIS in 2017

It strikes me that some of the obvious takers for the bonds would be the sovereign wealth funds who are already heavily invested. Their equity investments will fail if the RCF is not unlocked and they also need yield in their portfolios (especially in a world with $15 trillion of negative yielding bonds). It could just be the case that they are playing hardball and by operating a 'buyers strike' they will be able to negotiate even better terms in the eventual issue (for instance the convertible element of the bond will have a much lower conversion price as a result of the share price drop, as well as a higher yield. I will be personally interested in buying the bonds when they do come to market - they are relatively low risk compared to the equity as they won't issue less than the total amount - its fill-or-kill on the quantity - and if they do get sold, the RCF etc will be unlocked and the project will be funded to the point of initial production (assuming no further cost overruns - a big assumption in mining admittedly).

The clear upshot of all of this is the bonds are a much better risk / reward proposition at this point in time than the shares. You will get a whopping running yield, you will only be invested if the proposition is likely to be funded to initial production and if things go swimmingly well, you will be able to exercise the convertible option and enjoy equity returns (most likely at a higher price than people buying shares at today's prices, but at a vastly lower risk along the way). The only downside is the $200k minimum ticket size - they aren't making this easy for private investors.

(I say this as someone with no axe to grind; I have been watching SXX for years but have been happy to see bigger potential returns go to the bravest / earliest investors - I am happy to wait until I feel surer of admittedly potentially lesser returns.)

Is my analysis correct?

It strikes me that some of the obvious takers for the bonds would be the sovereign wealth funds who are already heavily invested. Their equity investments will fail if the RCF is not unlocked and they also need yield in their portfolios (especially in a world with $15 trillion of negative yielding bonds). It could just be the case that they are playing hardball and by operating a 'buyers strike' they will be able to negotiate even better terms in the eventual issue (for instance the convertible element of the bond will have a much lower conversion price as a result of the share price drop, as well as a higher yield. I will be personally interested in buying the bonds when they do come to market - they are relatively low risk compared to the equity as they won't issue less than the total amount - its fill-or-kill on the quantity - and if they do get sold, the RCF etc will be unlocked and the project will be funded to the point of initial production (assuming no further cost overruns - a big assumption in mining admittedly).

That however is the clear upshot of all of this, the bonds are a much better risk / reward proposition at this point in time than the shares. You will get a whopping running yield, you will only be invested if the proposition is likely to be funded to initial production and if things go swimmingly well, you will be able to exercise the convertible option and enjoy equity returns (most likely at a higher price than people buying shares at today's prices, but at a vastly lower risk along the way).

(I say this as someone with no axe to grind; I have been watching SXX for years but have been happy to see bigger potential returns go to the bravest / earliest investors - I am happy to wait until I feel surer of admittedly potentially lesser returns.)