Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Dbh.
You have not either not read the RNS correctly or most probably deliberately misrepresented it., they have not stated that the technology / product decision has been made and the only negotiation is just price points.
The standard tech categorisation where a tech decision has not been made is "weak up side".
Incredible - a direct communication.
“Successful delivery of existing and pipeline contracts would deliver in excess of $20m over the next 24 months. In addition the company continues to benefit from royalty and licencing revenue streams”. Wow licencing on top!
Page of cups.
What contracts ? There are no contracts.
From my notes direct from DL 15 months ago "we are advanced negotiations with four OEMs", so seemingly absolutely no further forward, two gone backwards.
Umair.
As I’ve said before the sales cycle on this sort of sale is at least 18 months - and even then a time to ramp sales to any material amount. Despite setting out timetables between parties you can usually double expectations.
If you’re getting from this that a contract will be signed in the next couple of days (or even weeks, months) from these opportunities you will be sorely disappointed.
- overriding everything from DL and ENET "potential" and "no guarantee" have traditionally led to nothing. They are not professional sales people who understand the sales science and detail required in managing opportunities and forecasts.
- this isnt a business update, its a product update. a business update would have detail of the progress on the chinese contracts so silence here assumes they are dead with large write offs in the 2023 accounts, as well as a tarana update where I am inclined on PATTs view that the order last year may have been for hardware with a quarterly royalty on software download - if this is the case ENET should tell shareholders.
- if they dont know the contract route (system vs licencing) they cant be near closing these contracts, also clear they are not in a preferred technology or vendor status.
- with the above they do need to get a wiggle on for the $2.2m - $3m, with a ramp so much could happen to take this out. Also completely unclear whether this fits into new customer products which have to launch and gain market acceptance, or existing products as new enhancements where there is an existing run rate of unit sales.
- cash cycle on a pure royalty model far suits ENET, they simply dont have working capital for system sales or even the hybrid royalty model of providing the fpga (even with a low cost of sales component %)
- if, a big if, they achieve orders and revenue no mention or understanding of margin from the c 100 posts today who understand ENET and DL inside out and back to front - margin drives the forward view on breakeven on fixed costs and the share price. the fabulously knowledgable ex CFO did tell us these were very high margin products with a high IP / SW content. Is the assumption that $2.2m is the royalty amount and $3m the system sales ? If so assume $2.2m is the margin (plus a bit of margin flowthrough on the h/w?)
- As usual with DL and ENET its all about execution
Far, far too many on this board got hooked into ENET in the "tulip bulb" moments in the TSP without any understanding of the two contracts placed in TSP, the company, its markets, its technology, its competitors and most importantly with smaller companies the leadership team.
A very, very long day at work today - will forward a couple of snippets from my emails to the Chair and CEO from the last two years tonight - they are not the best at understanding their opportunity pipeline, weighting it and executing.
No their new tech is neither proven or endorsed, new products have not been sold to anyone - Indian deal with 10k units a year (c $10m pa) nowhere, Chinese refusing to honour their contract, israeli deal canned.....
No it's not early days.
Forget the cfo, they have one new team member.
You really do need to check RNSs on how many times DL has said trials and evaluations.
Last year from my notes they were in " advanced negotiations with 4 oems", about 15 months ago now so assume they have all rejected ENET tech.
Investdonk,
After releasing Tarana in early RNSs I think they were told by Tarana not to name them in future RNSs, I think due to potential IPO or just competitors seeing what ENA=ET are doing and extrapolating numbers onto Tarana.
Most of what ENET do is under non disclosure - so hard to work out customers / usage / market potential.
Must say I'm still surprised we have no further Tarana order, although ENET can turn these round quickly surely they need to order for a 2 month lead time. If they have received small on going call off orders these should be rnss.
Worry that the order mid last year was akin to Bergen funding in its stupidity, on a massive one off discount in an attempt to ward off TSP.
Hope DL hasn't sold the upgrade to the existing estate for peanuts, and new units are at a premium price.
Main hope is that the price of the retention bonus at 1.5p (although they look to have a carry forward rather than use it or lose it) that they have a plan, but with DLs history of supporting every cash raise and losing money, that's a worry.
Aim. As I leave for work before seven use the couple of minutes walk from the car park to the office to look at the watchlist.
Yep - I am an expert in tech commercial finance, business operations, planning but in EMEA divisions with revenue 100x ENET.
Where I am not an expert is the real detail of the tech, I have had access to paid for Gartner / forrester research in the past where ENET are not mentioned. Without a sale of products since IPO, and cancelled orders, it is hard for us all to assess how competitive these products are in markets that have existed for years and what niche they have vs the multi bn $ behemoths.
Hull.
You need to ask the second, third, fourth set of questions against the market opportunity.
The market is here and has been for some time but Enet has zero market share, zero share of wallet. What they state as their "leadership" in the market is just laughable, it's like me buying a home brew kit from boots and then saying I have leadership vs inbev / heineken.
Read about the new products cisco has announced recently using PON, with their thousands engineers, years of history, position in the market, thousands of distributors/ resellers/ direct sales force.
Mickey,
Like most long term holders, including Miton (the only real institutional investor who backed consecutive rounds) and David Allen (who owned a disclosable amount) used the ridiculous trading late last year to sell a substantial proportion at a loss - but I am still a holder.
There used to be quite a tight register but all those who had been in ENET 2/3 years just sick of the, lets charitably say, "miscommunication of facts" from the CEO and CFO on the indian deals, the chinese deals, the trials, interest, orders round the corner etc means anything from ENET or DL really is not worth the paper it is written on.
The three H2 deals from last year are all deals from customers looking to protect their interest, not an endorsement of ENET.