Member Info for nanostory

@NRG1616: " in my view would be focused entirely on making as much money for themselves as possible"

What's the basis of this statement?

Why do you think the new board could be way worse? what have they done to give you that impression?

What good is a business plan unless you can deliver? Nanoco has been planning for commercial orders for 10+ years. When a Fortune 500 company looks for a new CEO, they do not solicit business plans from potential candidates but instead look for executives with proven track records, yes often outside of their own industry. Nanoco was founded in 2001 with a “business plan” to manufacture QD materials in high volumes. The current board is no longer credible as they have fooled shareholders with false projections at least for 5 years and have no history of success anywhere. What good is a business plan when the alleged $25B+ addressable QD market in the ’19 – ’22 annual reports is not addressable as Nanoco’s market share has been always 0%? Business plans don’t deliver results. Executives with track records do.

By contrast, over the same 20+ year period, Dooyong Lee (the proposed chair) has consecutively built four licensing companies, and every one of them has been successful. According to Hamoodi’s response to the circular, Aequitas recently had $17M in annual revenue with ca $5.5M earnings. While Nanoco was afraid of going to trial with Samsung, Mr Lee went to three trials last year and won all three with two eight figure and one seven figure verdicts. He grew his last company Acacia from $4M to $251M in revenue and from $110M to $2.1B in market cap in eight years, and half of Acacia employees became millionaires. Before Acacia, he with just another partner and a part-time secretary achieved $30M in annual revenue with 40% profit margins. He received two exceptional contribution awards at Bell Labs (where transistor, laser, CCD, UNIX, C, etc were invented and produced nine Nobel laureates). He was also a director of marketing at a data network company, which was sold to Cisco. It sure looks like everything he touches turns into gold. Much like he has achieved exceptional results with no prior knowledge of telecom, data networking, and patent licensing, I have no doubt he can manage and grow any business in any technology area including QD. It would be a blessing for Nanoco to have him as its chairman.

Jury verdict form awarding USAA a whopping $218M verdict against PNC Bank for infringing mobile check deposit patents in eastern district of Texas presided by judge gilstrap (the nanoco judge)

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzyerkkvw/IP%20USAA%20PNC%20PATENTS%20verdict.pdf

Here is a sample claim. Note how trivial this claim is compared to Nanoco's. PNC bank doesn't even charge for mobile check deposit but still got dinged for $218M.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8977571B1

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising computer-readable instructions for depositing a check that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

monitor an image of the check in a field of view of a camera of a mobile device with respect to a monitoring criterion using an image monitoring and capture module of the mobile device;

capture the image of the check with the camera when the image of the check passes the monitoring criterion; and

provide the image of the check from the camera to a depository via a communication pathway between the mobile device and the depository.

Tomorrow (Tues) is the 21st day.

It's difficult to compile data on pretrial details but here is another data point indicating the super strength of Nanoco's patents. The probability of all challenged claims of a patent being validated once an IPR is instituted is 10%. So the probability of all 47 challenged claims in the 5 patents surviving IPRs = 10%*10%*10%*10*10% = 1/100,000.

https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ptab_aia_fy2021__roundup.pdf

Page 12: 7%/(100-32%) = 10% all claims survive once instituted. FWD=Final Written Decision

Here are the lead inventors (first or sole inventor), their patent counts and current positions for Nanoco's 41 active US patents based on inventions since 2010.

11 NAASANI IMAD, Left in ‘21. CTO of Pharm2farm Ltd/Nanovate Ltd

7 GRESTY NATHALIE, IP Manager at Nanoco

5 DANIELS STEVEN; Left in '20. Research associate at Aston Univ

4 HARRIS JAMES, Section Head - LED & CFQD at Nanoco

3 PILLAY NARRAINEN AMILCAR, Unknown Status

3 PICKETT NIGEL, CTO at Nanoco

3 GLARVEY PAUL ANTHONY, Senior Scientist at Nanoco

2 VO CONG-DUAN, Left in '21. CTO at Quantum Science.

2 STUBBS STUART, Left in '22. Product Director at Quantum Science

1 NEEDHAM DALE, Left in ‘16

Nanoco had a strong case in every aspect (all claimed validated, excellent claim construction, all damages models survived, strong evidence of willful infringement, represented by two of the best law firms) before a judge and a jury predisposed to award large damages and punish willful infringers. It's now water under the bridge.

https://www.omm.com/resources/alerts-and-publications/alerts/patent-litigation-in-texas-what-happened-in-2022-and-what-to-expect-next/

Judge Gilstrap (Nanoco's judge) took nine cases to jury verdicts in 2022, with six resulting in infringement verdicts—including a US$31 million award against Ericsson and a US$218 million award against PNC Bank.

https://www.rpxcorp.com/data-byte/seven-out-of-ten-patent-jury-trials-favor-plaintiffs/

Seven out of Ten Patent Jury Trials Favor Plaintiffs

September 30, 2020

Makes no sense. Most promising prospects for commercial (volume?) orders in the company's 20+ year history + transformational settlement outcome + at inflection point + trading £10 below cash position .... sounds like a steal yet they are not buying in high volume? It simply does not add up.

Correction:

Shares bought by LOAM since 28/3: 0.98% at ca 20.2 - 20.45p on 28/3 or 29/3 (concurrent with the RNS)

2017

No commercial volume production from these announcements:

• 4/4: "Nanoco is engaged with more near term commercial opportunities than at any time in its history”

• 30/6: “Nanoco receives first commercial order… its CFQD® technology is now being evaluated in 16 active TV and monitor programs with 13 major OEMs”

2023

• 28/3: "We are closer to commercial production than at any time in our 20 year history, with orders anticipated by the end of 2023”

• Current share price: ca 18p

• Shares bought by directors since 28/3: Nil

• Shares bought by LOAM since 28/3: Nil.

• Richard Griffiths sold 8.5% (if holding 2.99%) to 11.5% (if sold out) at ca 19.85p or above in 2022.

You can change assumptions but it gives you a sense of what the numbers look like under three different models in the damages report, without enhanced damages for wilful infringement.

1. Samsung sold ca 10M units of CFQD TVs worldwide in ’22 (13% growth from ’21).

2. The damages report submitted to court suggests 7.24M units sold in the US during the 6.7 year damage period (1/2/15 to 4/10/21).

3. Per BT, US represents 1/3 of worldwide sales for Samsung. 7.24M * 3 = 21.7M units WW during the damage period.

4. The later of the two patents set for trial expires in Jan 2028, providing a royalty period from 10/21 to 01/28 (6.2 years).

5. Assuming sales grow at 13% CAGR starting 2022, total worldwide sales = 87M units during the royalty period.

6. At minimum royalty per the report, fair settlement = $6.06 * (87M + 21.7M) = $659M.

7. At medium royalty per the report, fair settlement = $2.04B.

8. At high royalty per the report, fair settlement = $6.19B

A few Nanoco employees left Nanoco in 2018 to found Quantum Science and has developed QD ink, which appears to compete with Nanoco. Note they built the company from scratch without Pickett's involvement. So how crucial is Pickett?

https://quantumscis.com/2022/11/23/facilitating-the-future-with-infiq-quantum-dot-inks/

However, until recently, there were significant barriers preventing QDs from reaching their full potential. Traditional QD deposition methods struggled with inefficiency and production at a large enough scale to keep up with demand.

This changed with the advent of Quantum Science’s revolutionary INFIQ® QD inks. These solution processed QDs overcome the volume production issues that have plagued the industry, significantly reducing costs,and facilitating short wave infrared (SWIR) imaging at mass market prices. This offers a cost-effective answer for consumer and machine sensing applications.

Previous attempts to commercialise QD technology have relied on a multi-layer process. This process involves applying QDs in individual layers to form thin photoactive films capable of converting light to electronic signals. Additional chemical treatments are carried out on each layer to ensure the functionality and performance.

This process is highly inefficient, with up to 90% of materials discarded. Each new layer applied also raises the risk of defects forming, significantly hampering mass production capabilities, which in turn limits the commercial applications of QDs.

Put simply, the current QD thin-film stack formation process is an overly complicated process that is prone to error and leads to low product yield.

Quantum Science’s INFIQ® QD inks change the game for QD deposition. Our process enables QDs to be dispersed as a nanoparticle ink that can be solution- deposited onto a wide range of substrates. With wafer scale processing up to 300mm, our inks deposit INFIQ® QDs in a single thick layer, dramatically reducing material waste and removing the risk of defects occurring. This process effectively solves the high-cost, low throughput problem of SWIR detection.

@nanonano: "Better to direct your inquiries to the company and ask them about this, they're in a better position to comment than folk on here."

Considering they haven't provided any meaningful answers to Hamoodi, I won't bother.

@Kooba: "It also would appear such a major asset sale would have required shareholder approval"

Absolutely. The settlement term sheet, the license agreement and the sale agreement were all subject to shareholder approval. According to the FCA's Listing Rules (10.5 Class 1 requirements), Nanoco was required to distribute a circular for each of the three and obtain shareholder approval as they each were not in the "ordinary course of business” and represented more than 25% of the market cap. LR 10.1.5 states, “In assessing whether a transaction is in the ordinary course of a company’s business under this chapter, the FCA will have regard to the size and incidence of similar transactions which the company has entered into. The FCA may determine that a transaction is not in the ordinary course of business because of its size or incidence.”

Whatever price you get, it's found money. Brokers would typically charge 20 - 25% of the selling price as success based fees. and absorb all costs. Forward looking companies routinely buy patents to quickly build portfolios for defensive reasons. 200 patents in the right hand can fend off many potential infringement claims from competitors as it would take serious efforts to assess risks of counterclaims. Also what may be non-core to Nanoco could be core to others. Just to point our the board is like a baby in the woods. No clues.

Wow! 700 going down to 503 in 1.5 years. They should have sold 200 for cash instead of simply dropping. Not too smart.

@intrusivethought

That's called insider dealing, a criminal offense.

@intrusivethought

Instead of continuing to spend your typical fake news, why don't you, once and for all, take my original post and add your comments point by point based on FACTS. Otherwise, you are wasting everyone's time.

Supply then a few years later has placed this country in an inflationary crisis along with energy insecurity. I do not want certain assets liquidated and particular creative research staff made redundant from the company.”

Why do you (and others) keep saying the new board is going to sell Runcorn? Where does it say that in the presentation? It would be absolutely stupid and a breach of fiduciary duty for the new board to sell when commercial orders are expected by year end and breakeven is on the horizon. Regardless, such sale, if any, is a material transaction subject to shareholder approval where you will have a say.