Member Info for Nanonano

Samsung have plenty of form for inviting small companies to pitch their wares then ripping off their IP.

I do think that a lot of information probably leaked through Dow, bearing in mind their QD facility was adjacent to a Samsung factory.

I don’t recall them saying there were firm deals with these companies, I think any company will reserve the right to cancel a deal including Nanoco themselves and the usual risks of lack of adoption were outlined. However poor comms and lack of important detail (size of orders etc.) is bad form especially after what investors have had to put up with for years with this company.

I think I along with others hoped the days of vapourware had ended with the departure of Michael Edelman.

What I find more galling is the simple fact that by handing back as mush cash as they have they’ve put the company in a very vulnerable position that may not be recoverable.

If they cannot attract new business, find a buyer or trim costs then the Asian.customer seems to be the only card they have to play.

I don’t think the number of customers was a lie, however they weren’t forthcoming about the small nature of those companies beyond ST and Asian chemicals co. Only when questioned about the noticeable reduction I did they tell investors that the other projects were deemed to be too modest to be worthwhile pursuing.

With regards to material quality and performance, the sensor materials supplied to STMicro passed all the validation stages, and the QE figures on earlier test chips looked impressive .

I’d have expected them to have abandoned the tech at an earlier stage if they thought the materials were inadequate.

Samsung QLED is considered to be the industry benchmark for QD based displays using licensed Nanoco IP.

How can they not be performing?

The process for applying them may be a factor if they are using a slower method than competitors can offer e.g. Quantum Science Ltd? Nanoco lost some good people to that company it seems, but BT was somewhat dismissive of their capacity to offer any competition.

Re STMicro cutting back, not likely. They may be offloading anything they deem to be unprofitable, trimming the deadwood so to speak.

Hardly sound like a company in trouble- https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/05/31/stmicroelectronics-gets-2-billion-grant-as-eu-ramps-up-chipmaking

The amount they spent on QD sensors would have been trifling to them. Something more behind this cancellation, but I don’t expect we’ll find out via Nanoco.

7 months ago they had enough cash to last them well past R&D development of Gen 2 material, now they're either going to have to win a lot of good business very quickly (seems unlikely going by past form), or cut costs by around 40% and hope the Asian customer comes good, or (try to) sell the company.

Any other views on how they will make ends meet welcome.

I expect we'll get the usual Power point presentation with smarties and potential market expectations, but skimming over the detail on those important commercial deals, or lack of.

Tenner is less fanciful than his predecessor, but a trained bean counter and seemed fine as a CFO, but CEO was likely a promotion too far and his shortcomings have become apparent since the settlement. Grand talk met by disappointment.

90% sounds less impressive when only about a third of the shareholders vote, and that third is largely the ii's , and they've since taken their money elsewhere. We won't see that again on such easy terms, we know from the loan notes the cost they extract.

As I recall NWit/GWit/TWit was very bullish on the first RNS and only turned bearish on the second RNS, and only announced he'd sold down once the share value had taken a hiding.

It was a very uncertain situation bearing in mind that low end figures bandied about by Edison et al were quoting $250m for the US market only, I think most sensible investors weren't expecting billions froma settlement, but something better than $150m, half of which went to the funders, plus sale of IP (not very important IP, but still) and we had to wait a year for the second payment, which could have accrued a couple of million more in interest during that time for the company.

I expect the commercial order Nanoco received last year reflected the minimum amount for STMicro to fulfill their contractual terms, which wasn't very much.

I'd agree that up until the second settlement RNS and the subsequent delayed announcement of the final figure. the CEO had an untarnished image. Trust was badly damaged after that and hasn't recovered, he should have departed then really, but I think many investors, including myself thought he should have a chance to prove he could grow the organic business, and the results speak for themselves

Patent IP is now several years more mature, and any addressable market seems years off with no immediate visible revenue generation.

The board is getting a clearout though, only the CTO is likely to remain I think, assuming the company isn't sold.

The failure to get any traction with STMicro does not excuse the company handing back £33m of the litigation settlement when they had a lot more information than investors did about the business they had with that company. Doesn’t align with their self proclaimed stance of being cautious managers. When the vote was cast they said they had eight or nine contracts with multiple materials in play, and the vote was dictated by the big II’s anyway, and we know what they wanted.

It also doesn’t explain why they cancelled smaller contracts just a few months ago, which may not have made the company profitable, but may have extended the cash runway further than the 20 months presently quoted.

Where are the contracts in display and or further licensing opportunities, we’re 20 months post settlement and that all seems to have gone very quiet indeed.

Bearing in mind it’s taken several years of R&D to get to the point of commercial sales with STMicro, it doesn’t bode well for a company that has less than two years cash in exploring new revenue streams.

I think if they continue as they have done until now they’ll just run cash down and then sell the company IP to a third party to protect their jobs and leave shareholders with a worthless shell.

Time to put it up for sale and see who wants to kick the tyres.

Sorry for the typos.

I put that list up, far from exhaustive, there are many more companies they’ve worked with, some of whom probably none of us are aware of.

Plessey had a change of plan, instead of using red and green QD’s with blue microled they went for an approach of using native red green and blue microled. They also entered into an exclusive agreement with Meta, although that doesn’t seem to have gone well for them overall.

The concern now is for a company like STMicro to walk away from what is expected to be a very lucrative market doesn’t suggest either a technological alternative is now looking more promising or that there is an inherent issue(s) with QD enhanced CMOS, that makes it less attractive to OEM’s.

SiGe sensors can see into the SWIR band, not as far, and not at such high resolution, but no lead either. They seem to be getting quiet. A bit of exposure recently, so perhaps they’re considered good enough.

Looking at the team involved in the R&D of the STMicro sensors, it looks like many of them are originally from InVisage, then worked for Apple after the 2017 purchase of InVisage, then switched to STMicro in late 2019 presumably after Apple ditched the QD sensor that left Nanoco high and dry.

Seems they are now looking for jobs elsewhere, so will be interesting to see where they might end up.

However not sue how any of this will help Nanoco though. When the best the Chairman can come with is ‘ Smaller scale opportunities are available for this technology in the short to medium term’ it’s not confidence inspiring. Not that he’ll be too fussed, as he’s on his toes anyway along with the CEO. Someone else’s problem now.

“Better off going to the dogs!”

I think we may already have done so.

Good luck with that!

I’m very sure that Edison and others being paid for pundits would have left out estimates for potential lost revenue and/or damages if requested to do so by the company.

They were content to let it ride however, I’m sure it made it easier for them to raise cash from the retail base and create a nice puff in liquidity for the II’s to sell into.

Whilst I’ve always understood why investors were aggrieved post settlement, there is a time to say that it’s now past tense, which is not to say it should be forgotten, but perhaps not constantly picked over ad nauseum.

The organic business strategy is pretty much zero at this point, and it seems from what we have seen so far, there has been some very poor decisions with regards to distribution of cash versus security of contracts.

As I recall many here wanted the full £40m handed back, and a few others questioned why they were retaining any cash at all.

With regards STMicro, a great deal was taken on trust, with the information investors had it was difficult to assess where it was going. Had investors been informed that was really little more than an extended sampling program, I think many would have realised the company was far more vulnerable to a cancellation.

Further erosion of trust is caused when a company says there working with eight or nine companies in sensing, but neglects to tell investors that seven are insignificant, and were then quietly dropped.

It’s not without good reason that BT is out the door, and it’s not for a better offer, although I dare say he’ll pop up somewhere once the dust has settled.

All of Samsung QD screens are cad free. Just looked up sales figures and they’ve dropped a bit in the past couple of years, but are still around 9-10m a year including over 1m QDOLED sets.

Be interesting to get an update on what is happening with regards to further licensing in display, at the egm last year they said they expected to gain another license by this year.

Last estimate was they were shifting about 12m sets per year, but may well be more bearing in mind QD-OLED (which use a lot more dots) and monitor sales have been scaling quite a bit.

Nanoco’s own low end royalty was $6.60 as I recall. So $70-80m a year based the 12m figure?

If they’d got tenth of that they’d still be in profit.

There’s clearly been a change of plan higher up in the supply chain for both Gen 1 and Gen 2 to get the axe.

Management were confident in expecting mobile phone adoption of SWIR CMOS sensing in 2026, and that now looks very unlikely, I recall Yole analysts not expecting significant volume production until 2027 at the earliest, assuming it happens at all.

To get to cash break even at present spending requires at least medium levels of volume production, either through multiple contracts or one or two large ones. I think this is very unlikely, so I’m expecting that they’re going to have to trim the company back or look for a buyer.

We should also ask ourselves that if there are other interested parties out there, why haven’t they been doing business with them already?

It’s cuckoo spending a good part of your day posting on here and other pages related to Nanoco with zero stake in the company.

Because I hold shares in the company.