Member Info for Nanonano

No, they haven’t been active with Plessey for years.

I thought Samsung made no formal bid for the company despite showing some initial interest in acquisition?

Perhaps they considered Cynora better able to fight any infringement of its IP. After all Samsung had a golden opportunity to make a bid when Nanoco placed itself on the market back in 2019, and yet declined to do so.

I'm just going to sit back and watch what unfolds over this year, Nanoco appear to be about a year behind the original plan for sensor commercialisation. I still think we may to wait for gen 2 materials for large volume orders, but I may be wrong and sincerely hope that gen 1 materials are more widely adopted, and gen 2 materials are just seen as an upgrade.

Hence why I said beyond Samsung.

Doubt they have made $60bn, although doubtless the QLED and QD-OLED have been hugely profitable for them.

Beyond Samsung there is little to no market for CFQD at present, and certainly none whatsoever back in 2019-20.

The company spun a line of big revenue just around the bend for a few years until it lost all credibility with investors. I well recall Michael Edelman eulogising about how the company had never been closer to commercialisation back in 2017. Here we are in 2024 and the company is still trying to break even.

I think ultimately if they get a buyout offer it's most likely to come from a chemicals company rather than a tech company or electronics supplier.

I think the chief risks surround competitors entering the fray, how effectively they can compete against Nanoco remains to be seen, but they're certainly getting some exposure.

The second risk is that a competing technology gains a greater share of the market. This seems less likely bearing in mind other technologies appear to have a number of disadvantages in cost, speed and bandwidth.

Yole forecast the SWIR image sensor market to be worth $2.9bn by 2028. If we made some assumptions of say $10 a sensor, and a company like Nanoco got say 20-30 cents per sensor, that would look like around $60-90m per annum revenue, with earnings of around $36-63m depending on what you think the profit margin would be. That assumes the market scales as predicted and one company wins the whole shebang. Also doesn't account for sensors in NIR band.

So converting into pounds, about £28-50m earnings per year in sensors assuming exclusive market. £500-1bn company value in four years or roughly £1.50-3 per share?

Yole forecasts were on the optimistic side with regards to display, but equally they may be light on numbers with sensors. Suck it and see.

I think the multiples of market cap related to a worst case scenario win for US past royalties only.

e.g. Question 3 here where he says around £100m market cap - https://youtu.be/RKWOkO7hfKM?t=2628

I think it's extremely likely, but we will have to wait and see.

The VP may incorporate a mixture of sensors that are standard items alongside something a little more proprietary, e.g. a SWIR sensor.

My view remains the same.

There are a lot of strong reasons to believe this device is using QD enhanced CMOS, so I think delusion is too strong a word.

Some are presenting it as a dead cert however, no doubt in the hope of puffing the share price, which is rather dangerous IMO.

I’m sure that some confirmation of Apple supply would lend some significant lift to the share price. Not sure that rise would remain once it was understood volumes are low.

A bigger contract of medium or large volume would certainly put the share price on a sustained recovery. I’m still unsure whether that will come until gen 2 materials are on the market, all assuming competitors don’t steal the market from under Nanoco’s nose.

"94000 STM VD55G1 sensors (1.7x1.7mm array) to consume as many dots as a single 32" display!"

Density of materials would be higher than display and the pricing structure is completely different.

The key points to bear in mind is that eye tracking doesn’t require QD based sensors. Plenty of eye tracking units out there not using anything beyond standard NIR silicone sensors. Meta Quest Pro is one such animal. A key difference is the accuracy and speed of the eye tracking in the VP, which does suggest some higher gain sensors, but who knows it could also be down to the software algorithms Apple have developed.

More suggestive is the Optic ID feature. This has to look at the iris, which means scanning the eye quite brightly. SWIR at around 1400nm is about six times safer than NIR, as it doesn’t penetrate the retina. AFAIK only two technologies which can reach that frequency, InGaAs and. QD-cmos. The former is out of the question for a consumer device, so that narrows it down somewhat. Sadly no news of a SWIR sensor sampling or in production yet, although we know that materials in the SWIR waveband were sent to STMicro.

The external IR sensors may also use QD’s, perhaps for speed and accuracy. Like eye tracking however this has been done with normal NIR cmos.

There are half a dozen cmos image sensors in the preview stage at STMicro, any of which could potentially use QD’s, however no mention of such in the data briefs, so speculative.

https://www.st.com/en/imaging-and-photonics-solutions/cmos-image-sensors/products.html

Https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/12/12/stmicro-vd55g1-small-low-power-global-shutter-i3c-camera-sensor-for-computer-vision/

Apple were originally looking for around 1m units or more in the first year, weren't they?

Perhaps with lowered expectations the guidance was lowered accordingly.

If, and it's big 'if', the VP is using Nanoco tech and we assume every IR sensor in the device is using Nanoco IP in some way, and that's a large assumption, then with a 400k production estimate for this year, they're looking at around 4-5million sensors. With an estimated 20p per sensor revenue - I think this would be a bit higher bearing in mind volume- then that equals about £1m revenue, and with a 50-70% profit margin £5-700k earnings.

We should all know soon enough whether the VP uses STMicro sensors or not, unless Apple have asked for all legending removed from the chips inside (I think that would be a first). From there it would require STMicro or Nanoco to declare the sensor chips are using their QD's. There will be a lot of people digging around to see what makes this device tick.

Sensor chips that seem likely to be using QD's are still not on the general market, but are scheduled to be by March according to STM website.

I think many can well remember the 'Prototypes on Pouffes' at CES.