Polyfuel Share Discussion Threads

[jonwig] 07/3/2008 19:23

WRITZ - I agree with Don ... and clearly the PYF 'story' hasn't convinced investors, and the state of the market over the past 8 months or so hasn't been kind to small-caps anyway, let alone the blue sky stuff.

PYF themselves think they are the industry leader in small-scale portable applications, and their list of clients (potential commercial customers) is impressive, so they might have a point.

It could be that interest in fuel cell tech will revive now that power densities are matching those of Li-ion batteries and the run-time gap seems to be closing.

Look out for commercial launch of fuel-cell-powered laptops, say, from 2009 - I'd be surprised if PYF wasn't involved, either through its membrane technology, or its own system designs. As for cash raising ... that's something you need to take into account, since nearer to commercialisation means more cash eaten up.

[don muang] 07/3/2008 19:21

>callumross - 6 Mar'08 - 13:01 - 1049
>is this chart finally turning?

If it gets in to the 20's next week then the answer will be Yes....

Note that the PYF Pre-lims are due to be announced on 28 April 2008. So if no RNS's before then, we might at least get an updated mention of any development 'news' at that time.

[don muang] 07/3/2008 17:11

Writz .... with a stock like this it really is a case of DYOR as everyone will have a different perception of the risk / reward ratio of investing in this company and this sort of technology. There is no guarantee that the final milestone will be satisfactory - but it'd be a safe assumption that the people buying recently think the risk / reward prospect is worth a flutter. A dredge thru the PYF RNS's will give you an idea of a few things including how long the present cash is liable to last ....

PS: A good perspective on risk / reward was posted on CRA thread this afternoon -see 'Arf Dysg - 7 Mar'08 - 17:05 - post # 4677'

[writz] 07/3/2008 16:51

Can anyone give me some background on this stock? At first pass, I get the impression that pretty much the only thing left to do is wrap their new fuel cell in plastic, stick it inside a laptop, then buy a large bucket to collect their profits in. Yet the share price has been in steady decline for two years. What remains to be derisked here? Are there possible patent challenges? Is the technology really deliverable at laptop scale? Is the company about the run out of cash? Are there competitors with as-good-as or better products? Also, having read the information on the website, I'm having trouble figuring out what the application deals following the successful laptop fuel cell demonstration are worth to the company and its shareholders. TIA Writz

[don muang] 07/3/2008 16:43

Well, if it's confessions time, then I've topped up several times over the last few weeks - both before and after the Trading Update of 28th Feb. Nice to see it moving back up now. Only a couple of more 'p' rise and I'll be back in to overall profit on my PYF common stock holdings. Made about 300% profit on the PYF warrants in 2006. So I'd be quite happy to experience the same sort of % return on my common stock holdings by this years end...... Await the rest of the year with interest - especially if milestone 5 comes .....

[morgs] 07/3/2008 12:42

If owning up is the game, I bought (more) on Monday

[jonwig] 07/3/2008 07:14

I have to own up, Don, to being one of the buyers yesterday - as soon as it stirred, I joined in.

[don muang] 06/3/2008 22:21

jonwig .... thanks for that. Like this part:

...said Balcom. "Without exception, each customer stated their belief that PolyFuel is at the leading edge of fuel cell system technology – not just membranes."

Quite a 'neat' quote to make for a company with a market cap of only about £8m

[jonwig] 06/3/2008 19:38

A pretty good summary of where PYF stands, and where it could stand, if one more target is achieved:

[callumross] 06/3/2008 13:01

is this chart finally turning?

[argyle underclap] 01/3/2008 14:45

sa- lols

forgot to add Deltex (demg)

[sa0705] 01/3/2008 14:36

au

been looking at these too lover.

[argyle underclap] 01/3/2008 14:31

WEll, capped at just £7M, this baby could ten bag and we'd still only be at £70M!

I'm getting very tempted with these.

P.s that's not the only indicator i use!

Currently I'm waiting for my Meldex (mdx) shares to play out. MDx are Currently evaluating several approaches. So there's a Very fair chance their days are numbered. So when the dust settles, i'll be looking for new home for some of my cash. PYF and GNG are high on the list at the mo.

[callumross] 28/2/2008 19:48

POLYFUEL MEETS KEY MILESTONES ON ITS ROADMAP TO HELP KICKSTART COMMERCIAL MARKET FOR NOTEBOOK FUEL-CELL POWER SUPPLIES
New Membrane plus MEA Breakthroughs Among Final Steps to Surpass Lithium-ion Performance; Demonstrable Prototype the Goal

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – FEBRUARY 28, 2008 – Delivering all-day runtime in a notebook PC is a Holy Grail for battery manufacturers, PC OEMs, and fuel cell developers. Today, portable fuel cell pioneer PolyFuel announced that it just completed the fourth milestone of a five-step, multi-year development plan intended to kick-start the commercial market for such power supplies. The endpoint of its roadmap is a working prototype designed to be integrated with a representative notebook PC, and which surpasses the performance of today's Lithium-ion batteries in terms of runtime versus size, and weight. The underlying technology would then be made available to PolyFuel's customers and partners as a reference design. With today's announcement, that goal is closer at hand.

What PolyFuel has accomplished is to have fundamentally solved the water management problem that has plagued portable fuel cell developers for nearly a decade. All fuel cells create water as a byproduct of the electricity generation process. The trick is what to do with it.

For this achievement, PolyFuel engineered an entirely new membrane, a breakthrough "membrane electrode assembly" (MEA) design, and a new system design that not only reduces the amount of water byproduct produced during fuel cell operation, but recycles a significant portion of that water directly back through the membrane to the fuel side, where it is reused to generate more electricity.
The new membrane and MEA allows the water to be kept in perfect balance throughout the system. The result is a considerable simplification in the design of the fuel cell system, eliminating components, reducing overall size and weight, and lowering cost. These are significant, as the primary difficulty with fuel cells has been to make them small enough to be able to be integrated into the notebook PC itself.

PolyFuel recognized some time ago that despite the best efforts of fuel cell developers, certain problems were simply not being solved. Unfortunately, that state of affairs increasingly has contributed to lowered expectations for fuel cells in general, and as a high-performance replacement for batteries in particular.

In response, the company put together an aggressive internal program to work on not only the membrane challenges, which were PolyFuel's area of proven expertise, but also to solve the system-level problems, such as water management, fuel delivery, packaging, notebook integration, and so forth. PolyFuel sought – and received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to support and expedite the program.

According to Jim Balcom, president and CEO of PolyFuel, the five milestones of the program are as follows:

Develop a conceptual design for a complete fuel cell system that can outperform Lithium-ion batteries, and identify the membrane and MEA requirements to support this.

Engineer a membrane that has a high level of water permeability but a low level of methanol diffusivity – usually mutually-exclusive attributes.

Design an MEA that can recycle much of the water that is created in the fuel cell back to and through the newly engineered membrane.

Demonstrate the "proof of concept" by operating a fuel cell incorporating the newly-engineered membrane and MEA in perfect water balance using the conceptual system design target operating conditions.

Incorporate that cell into a functioning notebook PC power module and demonstrate it powering a commercially-available notebook computer.
Of these milestones, PolyFuel has now met the first four of the five. In particular, multiple "proof of concept" fuel cells incorporating the new membrane, MEA and other newly-engineered system components have been running for hundreds of hours under PolyFuel's dramatically-simplified system design and target operating conditions.

With these results, PolyFuel has reached a key milestone in its goal of creating a fully-referenceable design that it believes will re-energize portable fuel cell development programs around the world. Additionally, they should prove once and for all that a fuel-cell-based power module can have the size and performance consumers will require and desire for their increasingly power-hungry notebook computers.

Fresh with feedback from a recent round of customer visits with top consumer electronics manufacturers in Asia, Balcom confirmed that success in the program would likely have the intended market impact. "At each customer, we unveiled our specific technical breakthroughs and the performance benchmarks we've attained – particularly the measured progress against our reference-design development milestones," said Balcom. "Without exception, each customer stated their belief that PolyFuel is at the leading edge of fuel cell system technology – not just membranes. Moreover, we were uniformly told that if we indeed surpass the performance of Lithium-ion batteries – the ultimate goal of the program – that our technology, when made available as a reference design, would enable them to develop and introduce a fuel cell powered notebook PC and other fuel-cell powered portable electronic products."

Environmentally friendly, portable fuel cells operate by transforming readily available, inexpensive methanol into electricity with the use of a membrane that literally strips the electrons out of molecules in the fuel, and uses the resulting electric current to provide power. A substantial advantage that fuel cells have over batteries is that as long as fuel is present, the cells will continue to provide power.

In consumer-oriented portable fuel cells, the laptop power supply would have "hot-swappable" fuel cartridges – easily and safely carried in a pocket or purse – that could effectively provide continuous power all day – and all night – if necessary. PolyFuel's ultimate program goal is just such a power supply, no larger than a Lithium-ion battery pack having the same runtime as is attained with one cartridge of fuel, but also at perhaps one-half the weight – a welcome portability improvement for mobile consumers.

The use of direct methanol fuel cells and the personal carriage of fuel cartridges were given a significant boost last year when the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) and the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) approved the carriage and use of fuel cells on board civilian aircraft.

[don muang] 28/2/2008 18:02

yes, that's the point I was making ..... so, it is a case of waiting until a different catalyst e.g. more news, a newspaper article etc....as I said I am personally happy to sit on my PYF holdings and wait .... (but then I'm in profit quite nicely from trading the PYF Warrants when they were around.... so am laid back about it all - but can understand those with risked funds being impatient).

[callumross] 28/2/2008 16:23

except that unlike CFU, PYF doesn't have a dual listing in order to get the "next day" effect, Don!

[don muang] 28/2/2008 15:36

Argyle, callumross: I'm quite happy to see how PYF have changed tack. Could be interesting as the year progresses. As I said in my previous post "await with interest to see what the market thinks". See what happened with CFU's RNS yesterday morning ('Capex and volume order' announcement) - that didn't move the share price of CFU too much yesterday - but that's dual listed and it was todays AUS rise got it going up here to #2 on advfn gainers board so far today. I'm happy to have bought in to CFU last week near to the bottom and I'm happy to have averaged down on PYF. I'm now happy to sit on my PYF holdings and a await further developments ....

[callumross] 28/2/2008 13:37

conference call by the CEO at 4pm

[argyle underclap] 28/2/2008 12:42

very bullish statement at the end by CEO. nice.

but we found out in that update why the share price has been drifting for soooo many long months,

i.e the expteced trials etc by third parties did not take place. which is disapointing. obviusly some investors got wind of it and have been selling out. shame we (the many) had to wait for the update to tell us.

still watching closely as i really think this co could go far.

[asparks] 28/2/2008 09:06

CFU seems to be the fuel cell to invest in at the moment I'd say

[garth] 28/2/2008 07:59

Thanks Jon

[don muang] 28/2/2008 07:37

Well, here's the RNS we've been waiting for...

"PolyFuel recently completed the fourth step of the five-step programme, and in
doing so has fundamentally solved the water management problem that has been an
issue for portable fuel cell developers for nearly a decade....

..PolyFuel intends to work with battery and notebook/PC OEMs to seek
to introduce the fuel cell system into the high growth, 100+ million unit per
year market."

..... await with interest to see what the market thinks.

[jonwig] 28/2/2008 07:35

Will send it later, Garth, certainly.

The Trading Update just now is two-edged ... "We've solved some crucial problems, but our customers are dragging their feet and should get their fingers out."

[garth] 28/2/2008 07:25

Any chance of getting a copy of the research note?

G.

[don muang] 22/2/2008 20:01

jonwig - thanks for the research details you forwarded.... interesting valuation they put on PYF compared with present share price