Member Info for Nanonano

I'll be gobsmacked if Nanoco technology shows up in an iphone before 2025 at the earliest.

I think it makes sense to retain some decent cash until orders stabilise and the company is well in profit (fingers crossed).

Especially if they need to press their advantage home with reference to infringers- e.g. if they know the company has a decent stash of cash they're less likely to call their bluff with court action and settle the matter before it gets there.

They had a fund raise which hugely diluted shareholders, and sunk the share price. The resultant funds have almost been spent now, as they’re making a pittance so they will need more cash. How will they get it? Fund raise at sub penny levels?

Agreed, however the Samsung money is a one-shot deal,not recurring revenue into the future which needs to come from new contracts.

Pundits are predicting potentially 115k of the Apple Vision Pro in its first year, limited by micro OLED on silicone yields. Even if every IR camera/sensor on the thing is QD enabled and we assumed say £1 per sensor royalty, with a 60% profit margin that gives about £750k, which would not get the company to break even.

The pundits could be wrong however. Plus it may not be the Vision pro that the dots are going into, although it looks to be the most likely device.

I think further sensor contracts are only likely when solid state SWIR illumination sources start to scale, which is not expected until late 2024 or more likely early 2025 at the earliest.

I don’t think Runcorn adds much value beyond that they have the capacity to produce materials if contracts are inked.

Outside of that it’s just some secondhand industrial equipment in a rented facility. IP is another matter, but that tends to be proportionally valuable based on its ability to enrich the owner.

To date that’s not been demonstrated by Nanoco, hence the company valuation.

I think it's likely orders will arrive by the end of the year, but they may be on the small side if it's for the Apple Vision Pro, even if the majority of the sensors use QD's, as media reports suggest volume will be significantly constrained by the difficulty in producing the microOLED on silicone screens.

I'm not overly fussed, because if they can win some decent contracts in sensors, and they're subsequently linked to Apple products, then the share price will rocket IMO, and make any dividend look modest for shareholders.

$1.28 to £1 at present and could be stronger by the new year. Plus payments to company advisors and paying off loan-notes. They may be able to award a few more million to shareholders depending on conditions at the time of the second payment. Perhaps some reward for the hardworking staff of Nanoco who are not all that well rewarded for their efforts IMO?

A buyback may prove preferable on a tax basis for most investors.

" This special dividend will leave £35m - £40m of cash".

RNS text-

"Nanoco intends to retain approximately £20 million of cash"

Some of you really like to argy bargy. Far as I can see simply isn’t enough information to say how orders will play out at this stage, and we very likely won’t know until the contract is signed, all assuming it gets that far.

I find it difficult to believe the company would even be contemplating handing back money to shareholders if it thought contracts were unlikely to materialise. Just relax and wait.

There shouldn’t be any need for the company to keep huge reserves if it’s expecting a decent order book. They’ve already stated they now have the personnel they require to cope with expected orders having taken on about eight additional staff. They also stated that if more staff are required later on, then they will recruit accordingly.

If they need more cash than the £20m they plan to retain for expansion, I expect that it would be very easy to raise when the orders are coming from the companies we believe they are working with.

Banks hate risk but love a sure thing.

I don’t see any change there. Prior to any Samsung settlement the company had stated on several occasions they had cash to take them 2025 by which time they expected the organic business to be self-sustaining.

The Apple Vision Pro looks to have eleven sensors operating in the IR spectrum. Four inside the unit for eye tracking and iris recognition and seven facing outward including a Lidar sensor for gesture control and mapping the face, body and environment. All of them could potentially require QD's to get both the best sensitivity and optimum power consumption.

Pundits are predicting anywhere from 200k-1m units shifted per annum, which is believed to be constrained by OLED on silicone production limitations.

Not a huge volume, and difficult to predict how much could be made in revenue assuming Nanoco tech is inside and thet win the supply contract.

However I'd expect other companies operating in this space to be looking at adopting similar tech. Apple have set a very hgh bar here, and despite other companies like Meta's rhetoric , they will have to match or get very close to Apple's spec to stand a chance of competing in the space.

Currently being appealed.

The value of Acacia didn't hold though, it is presently trading for less than when Dooyong Lee took over in 2005.

With regards to 2d materials, how far out are we talking before commercialisation? Sounds like a few years to me.

I’m surprised that the chairman remained after ME departed. There’s been the whiff of shady dealings for a while now.

I think a contract, and preferably one linked to someone big like Apple is the surest route to investor confidence though. If that doesn’t boost the share price, I’m not sure what will.

Who replaces the board though, and with what strategy? I saw little in the document put out by Tariq’s group that inspired confidence.

The chief two bullet points I saw were - sell off Runcorn, monetise patents.

Without Runcorn you can’t manufacture materials , so that would mean licensing a third party. Monetising patents is what Nanoco have been aiming to do since their inception, they look to be on the cusp of doing that with regards to recurring income, and now someone else wants to waft in and take the tiller- hmmm.

Or possibly they would simply like to flog off the IP, temporarily drive the share price higher and award themselves huge bonuses in the process and then disappear leaving shareholders with a shell of a company.

This is a brand new material in a brand new market. Outside of Samsung who behaved in a disgusting fashion, the adoption of QD’s be they cad free or not has been small and largely confined to one industry- display.

That now seems to be changing and quite rapidly. There’s still risk, but it’s much lower than it once was when the company had to break out the begging bowl every couple of years.

I agree that it’s a poor narrative to say sell if you don’t like what the management are doing.

I disagree that the majority of investors believe that the c-suite have an unlimited time to execute their strategy. I say give them to the end of the year, as present delays are well outside of their control and the organic growth was the major part of the companies strategy (cherry/cake). It looks convincing that the sensors are earmarked for this new Apple Vision Pro. Some think the sensors are going in an iPhone, I think they will eventually, but not quite yet. Looking at articles recently published it appears the oled on silicone screens in the Apple Vision Pro are very difficult to make and extremely constrained in volume by Sony, who seem to have exclusive expertise in this field. I expect the lag between announcement and production is to allow a build up of screen stock.

If the STMicro contract issues further delays or cancellation of contracts, then clearly the company needs a new strategy and a fresh team to guide it.

Probably goes without saying that some additional contracts would be helpful so they’re less dependent at on one or two companies for sales.