Member Info for Nanonano

Okay. So why are you here if you're out?

TG2D do you presently hold any Nanoco shares?

I don't believe they've always acted in good faith. I think the offer of £33m return was a clear sop to the ii's to win their vote and save their jobs. They were also in possession of knowledge that the companies outside of STMicro and Samsung were of little consequence, which makes the handback of the amount of funds extremely risky.

Some handback of funds would have been sensible, but I think they should have retained enough to take them through to potential commercilsation with the Asian customer at least.

Realign on resign.

STMicro did fund the R&D work. If you’re also expecting them to fund the day to day operations of the whole company, that’s not how these agreements tend to work. Also it would muddy the waters as to who owns the IP.

Much larger corporations lose contracts a recent example is OsramAMS losing a microled display contract to Apple. I wonder if this was going to be the display contract that was mentioned last year, as the display was reportedly to use QD’s, and Apple would want cadmium free materials.

The majority of the cash was spent on the tender offer, the return on capital voted for by the shareholders last year. It’s clear by the volume of votes returned that the II’s are the ones who vote, most shareholders don’t bother, probably because their stake is small and or part of a managed fund and thus have little interest in the activities of the company.

The c-suite are also expensive for a company that remains a cash burner, so definitely some scope to resign things there so that the managers are incentivised to win some business and get the company on a stable footing.

Well they could slash executive pay and place them all on a deferred bonus scheme dependent on them meeting the objectives of getting the company to at the very least break even.

That would save a great deal of money.

That could happen, can be another company doing likewise too- it’s a competitive world.

Onsemi seem the most likely challenger in the QD-cmos sensor space with their recent acquisition of SWIR Vision Systems.

A larger company would have the financial capacity to quickly challenge an infringer, whereas Nanoco have to rely on third party funding , and that is only likely to be available if there’s the oppotunity of a significant return for them.

Gen 1 is a material that’s been used by many manufacturers, only Gen 2 is specific to Nanoco patents. The company did say they had some specific trade secrets to the use of Gen 1, but of how much value that is unknown.

I said QDvision got $70m. What was

Valuable about their IP?

What was the value of QD Vision to Samsung? They sold up after being challenged by Nanosys for infringement.

The core IP relating to QD seeding and manufacture is licensed to Samsung for display only. Where is the value, well that's to be determined by any potential purchaser, assuming the company chooses to explore that option, Samsung chose to pay tens of millions of dollars for a license alone, but I am also mindful that the company put itself up for sale before and had no takers, although that was before the settlement and PTAB verdict validating IP.

"Selling half of it to Samsung including core IP"

They didn't sell half their IP to Samsung, that's a gross exaggeration by any estimate. The main patent that was sold related to coating film with Quantum dots, something that is of little value to Nanoco.

All the other four patents contested remain with Nanoco.

Those reports tend to quote the value of the completed item e.g. value of Tv‘s sold or compete cmos modules, they don’t reflect the value of the dots, which is much lower.

Some of the data is often dubious too.

If QD Vision could get $70m for their portfolio of patents many years ago, Nanoco’s IP should be worth far more or something is seriously out of whack.

They've had a product they consider good enough for sale for over a decade, if they can't find buyers by now they probably never will. Nanosys were heavy on the marketing but they still ended up running out of cash and being swallowed by a bigger fish.

I think a decent offer for the company Ip may be a better fit for investors and employees alike- they may get a more stable well well-funded company to work in and investors get a chance to get some reasonable return on their capital, although we may may still get burnt.

If they'd retained more of the settlement funds, perhaps they could have survived, but I really think it's a pipe dream to expect a turnaround within the cash runway and time they have left. It was only the litigation that saved them from going under last time. They no longer have anything to fall back on besides a sale of the company.

I recall this chap being appointed, great expectations were forecast-

https://www.nanocotechnologies.com/media/david-yao-joins-nanoco-in-the-newly-created-role-of-senior-vp-of-global-sales/

He's now with these guys. Might provide a potential bridge bearing in mind their product range.

https://spectricity.com/news/spectricity_appoints_new_vice_president_of_worldwide_sales/

Here is a list of OEM’s they have partnered with over the years. Apologies if I miss some

Samsung

Dow

LG

Merck

WahHong

Osram

Plessey

Apple

STMicro

Innosys

Merck

TCL

Hisense

Plus the yet as unnamed world top ten Asian chemicals company.

They’re hardly some little unknown spin out.

Cash not cab return. Maybe a cab return will be what’s left after all this!

They’ve made some very poor decisions.

When they had over £50m to play with at the start of the year and are now in this pickle takes some spectacularly poor choices.

They should have at the very least allowed a cash reserve to take the company through to the gen 2. They could have still had a cab return. Maybe £20m handed back leaving them with about £30m. Then perhaps a second return of cash later if and when the contract worked out.

Could simply be the tech isn’t good enough, or something else works just as well if not better and is cheaper.

I said before that the Metalenz PolarID chip (using a Samsung sensor btw) looks a very strong contender to match or surpass Apples Face ID at a fraction of the cost. Uses normal NIR sensing, so no lead or materials that might be sensitive to heat.

The other markets are AR and automotive. Gen 1 too sensitive to heat to appeal to the latter, the former I thought a good fit, but the market is small and even the big players like Meta and Apple have had a rethink on their strategy.

If you read some of the technical articles about the use of QD’s in sensors you soon realise their use is fraught with difficulties. They create as many problems as they solve.

They have development times measured in years not months. They’ve lost their only customer, the only one they’ve had to date (by their own words, inflection point blah, blah).

There are no pending customers for Gen 1 tech. Gen 2 still years away . No other business in display.

Less than two years cash.

Well there you go, problem solved. Discounting the fact they’ve been working alongside many of the largest electronic and tech OEM’s not to mention licensing to huge chemical manufacturers like Dow/DuPont and Merck, what they need is bit more marketing.

Don’t know why they didn’t think of it before.

Oh and the delays in validation for production also aligned with delays to the AVP.

Sadly it seems they had no marketable item at all to sell to, or perhaps the one customer STMicro had has backed out, or perhaps it was the AVP after all and they’re only going to make one batch of them- I’ve read reports they’ve only sold 100k to date, about a tenth of original expected volume .

The cancellation of Gen 2 was complete surprise, and I now wonder whether there’s a market for this sensor tech. That onsemi purchased SWIR vision systems gives me some hope, although that could be an acquisition that leads nowhere like Apples purchase of InVisage a few years ago.