Polyfuel Share Discussion Threads

[hectorp] 10/3/2008 13:12

Well if 40% is to your liking!
Makes one wonder what these 3-4 small cos in the UK fueld cell sector should really trade at.

[don muang] 10/3/2008 11:16

Hectorp .... Hi.... never ever went near banks & insurance stocks - nearest was Experian. If that drops sub-400 might think about getting back in to that again. Don't plan to start now looking at anything else in finance sector !!!

I'm also in CFU - very lucky timing as picked them up sub 20p prior to announcement of the conditional Dutch order. Happy to sit on those (CFU) as well as these (PYF) and await developements... As can be seen this morning, doesn't take too much activity in PYF to move the price.

[hectorp] 10/3/2008 11:12

U, Don:
I am in CFU these days.
I agree that the fuel cell sector is starting to return into favour/fashion for good reasons too.
All these have been oversold. A good alternative to worry about Banks etc.
I am too reticent to buy here, I shall wait having missed todays spike.
My take on CFU is also that it is now destined for considerable success and in 2009-10.

[don muang] 10/3/2008 11:07

Well, one report covering the fuel cells sector that was published a couple of months ago gave an estimated 'conservative' fair value price for PYF as 71p per share. So, if anything a 're-rating' was apparent then .... but presume after that last RNS from PYF then their potential has been 'noticed' ... :-)

Nice to see it in the top3 on the advfn gainers list at the moment...

[unionhall] 10/3/2008 10:37

Hp - No, beginning of rerating now that the reality of Fuel cells becomes closer and PYF consolidate their pre-emminent position in the Membrane space and extending to further engineering.

imho, dyor

[morgs] 10/3/2008 10:24

jonwig> It is a Compliance arbitrage. The condition which allows them to be listed and not have to comply with expensive Sarbanes Oxley requirements, it must have saved at least $4m off the bottom line in the last 4/5 years. The problem is that the share have to be kept on a physical ledger as opposed to CREST. Therefore in the electronic trading world that this is a Class A pain to deal with. This arbitrage actually attracted me in the first place, this is highly illiquid and doesn't take much to move it in either direction!

[hectorp] 10/3/2008 10:23

Whats going on here now? Hmm! trading 'spike'?

[jonwig] 10/3/2008 09:29

That's probably because they aren't settled under CREST - and they said on admission that they had no plans to introduce CREST settlement.

Which seems strange to me. FWIW, TD Waterhouse do deal.

[writz] 10/3/2008 09:17

Huh - well, I was going to buy a few shares this morning, and it turns out that Selftrade don't cover them!

[writz] 08/3/2008 17:26

supernumerary, I'm looking forward about 20 years... by which time, of course, all this may have been swept away by the cold-fusion microcell! I rather agree with you about the complexity. In addition to which the methanol capsule becomes, in effect, "the battery", because, like ordinary disposible batteries, you have to keep on changing it. So from the consumer's viewpoint there could be a feeling that one is taking a step backwards in order to win the prize of the all-day power source. A lot depends, then, on just how long the recharge lasts. We don't mind changing ink cartridges on printers, for example. But then we only have to do that every few weeks!

[supernumerary] 08/3/2008 14:37

WRITZ - I fear not quite as simple as that, although I admit I haven't looked into it at all.

Will your local newsagent stock multi-purpose capsules that fit your cells? Or will the laptop manufacturers each have their own, slightly different, design, so they can make monopoly profits on their supply, and which can only be bought from specialists? When was the last time you bought an ink-jet cartridge at your local newsagent? Wherever you got it, I doubt it cost 30p!

[writz] 08/3/2008 14:06

OK, so the battery itself would sit inside the computer, and there would (for example) be a slot next to it into which you would slide a 100mg methanol capsule which you could get for 30p at the local newsagent. So laptops off-mains would be a little like cars - you'd need to keep on refueling them. Quicker than recharging a normal battery, but not automatic. On a long-haul flight (in coach class!) you'd buy a fistful of methanol capsules before boarding. You're right - a touch less elegant than simply recharging.

[supernumerary] 08/3/2008 11:51

WRITZ - as jonwig says, 'from a capsule of methanol, for example'. I guess it's like refilling a lighter with butane, and smokers seem to manage that without problems.

It's not a solution that attracts me personally - if the batteries on my laptop lasted four hours rather than 2.5 then my problem would be solved since I don't take the computer to places which don't have that degree of access to mains - but I can see other people have different needs.

How big the market is will depend on cost and convenience etc, but it will certainly take some time for standards to emerge (eg so you can use any capsule with any cell) and a methanol distribution network to be put in place. There's a way to go before PYF hits profit, I feel.

I continue to watch, with interest.

[jonwig] 08/3/2008 08:41

Fuel cells are rechargeable - the cell stack and system sits there and works so long as a supply of fuel exists - from a capsule of methanol, for example.

In some situations, there might not be mains electricity to hand for recharging a Li-ion battery, or plugging in the mobile device.
For example, airlines (permission has been granted for methanol fuel cells to be carried in the US), on boats, on the beach, by armed personnel (this is significant ... the fuel cell system is lighter and more compact than a battery)

These are probably just stack designs, but commercial versions could well be made smaller, and balance-of-plant would sit inside the device anyway:

[writz] 08/3/2008 07:54

supernumeracy - yes, I take your point. Can you clarify - I thought these fuel cells were rechargeable?

[supernumerary] 07/3/2008 23:51

WRITZ - Buffett's interested in earnings, not potential - he wouldn't give PYF a second glance.

imo the question is not really technological, it's whether PYF can generate earnings before someone else occupies the space - better battery technology, supercapacitors, whatever. If you just want a punt, this is a great place to be, and all power to Don M, but I've been watching for a long time, and I prefer to reduce the risk a bit more.

Instinctively, I feel orders and profit can't be far away, but PYF could still get completely side-stepped. Like everybody else I want my laptop batteries to last longer, but do I want to use capsules I have to buy somewhere rather than just recharging from the mains? Personally, no, but I guess others would feel differently. Whether there's a business in it is not clear to me yet, so I prefer to give up some potential profit, and wait.

It's only a question of where you want to be on that risk/reward curve. PYF is certainly very interesting at this market cap.

[writz] 07/3/2008 23:33

Does anyone have a view on the section of the most recent report below? It seems to imply that PYF waded in to solve the technical challenges that had bogged down the fuel cell developers. But are we to understand the the MEA technology answers these challenges? Or is the solution to those challenges still being sought by PYF? Semantics, but could be important!

During the year, the world's leading fuel cell developers endeavoured to reach
the commercial benchmark of Lithium-ion battery energy density. Contrary to the
Company's prior expectations and fuel cell developers' public statements, no
test market activities were conducted by portable fuel cell system developers in 2007. PolyFuel recognised that, despite the best efforts of fuel cell
developers, certain problems were proving challenging to solve, and so the
Company embarked on an aggressive internal programme to help address these, the
results of which are detailed below.

Delivering all-day runtime in a notebook PC is the Holy Grail for battery
manufacturers, PC OEMs, and fuel cell developers. The primary difficulty with
portable fuel cells so far has been making them small enough to be able to be
integrated into the notebook PC itself. PolyFuel brought its extensive membrane
engineering experience to bear on the problem, as well as its strong fuel cell
stack and system design capabilities. The Company also received a $3 million
grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to support the programme.

The goal of the programme is a working prototype fuel cell designed to be
integrated with a commercially available notebook PC, and which surpasses the
performance of 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 to help them implement the solution quickly and easily.

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. All fuel cells
create water as a by-product of the electricity generation process. The
challenge has been what to do with it. To address this, PolyFuel engineered an
entirely new membrane, a breakthrough "membrane electrode assembly" (MEA) and a
new system design that work together to not only reduce the amount of water
by-product produced during fuel cell operation, but also to recycle a
significant portion of that water directly back through the membrane, where it
can be reused to generate more electricity.

The new membrane and MEA allow the water to be kept in optimal balance within
the fuel cell. The result is a considerable simplification in the design of the
fuel cell system, eliminating components, reducing overall size and weight, and
lowering cost. PolyFuel has operated multiple "proof of concept" cells,
incorporating the new membrane and MEA materials, for hundreds of hours under
the newly-engineered system architecture. PolyFuel is now working on the final
step of incorporating the fuel cell into a functioning hybrid power module and
integrating it with a commercially available notebook PC.

[writz] 07/3/2008 22:20

jonwig, thanks for that link (kids in bed!).

That table at the end is pretty sobering stuff - and probably the kind of tick-list Warren Buffett would be applying.

The 64 thousand dollar question really is whether PYF can pack this technology into portable-sized units at a price the market can bear.

No idea what the development costs would be. The negative for holders is that on current market cap big funding could mean big dilution. The positive is PYF may be on the brink of some concrete JV deals?

And I sure would like a computer battery that lasted more than 90m!

[don muang] 07/3/2008 19:51

>children time

No..... but it is playtime :-)

.... as opposed to pyftime ;-)


The news of PYF's progress is slowly trickling thru to the 'media':

March 06, 2008

PolyFuel Announces Milestone Completion

(Wireless News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Portable fuel cell provider 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 all-day runtime power
supplies.



PS: jonwig .... thanks for another link - are you doing a Phd in fuel cells by any chance...?

[jonwig] 07/3/2008 19:48

WRITZ, try the pdf download from this:

[writz] 07/3/2008 19:47

Yes, children time! Thanks for your input.

[don muang] 07/3/2008 19:41

>The chart says PYF is cheap.

In a word .... Yes - especially given the mkt cap is under £10m.

>Patience of Buffett's kind is a rare commodity on the stock market!

In todays short-term outlook then it certainly seems so.

As I've said several times before on this thread .... I'm happy to sit and wait (and accumulate) with my holdings of PYF. I'm also doing that with one other tech/software stock. If both pan out then I'll be :-) and :-) . If not then I'll be somewhat peeved ;-(
But there do appear to be some great opportunities out there in terms of risk / reward at the moment.

Have a good weekend one and all. See you on Monday....

[writz] 07/3/2008 19:39

jonwig, thanks. What do you mean by "the run-time gap seems to be closing"? I got the impression from presentations that fuel-cells were already delivering demonstrably longer run-times.

[writz] 07/3/2008 19:30

Don Muang - thanks for your response. Asking "local" investors for a view is part of my dyor. Sometimes one gets more helpful insights that way than by trawling through news releases which may be contradictory or just plain not just very informative. In the end one does both, but I'm at a very early stage with this stock, and I guess I'm trying to get an overview of whether, in Buffett's terms, I'd be paying 100m or 900m. The market is solid and very large. The chart says PYF is cheap. But it also says that investors have been losing faith in PYF for two years, which contrasts with what seems, on the face of things, a rather compelling story. I bought into another compelling story last year - GGP - and that has suffered a similar, though less drastic, decline, really for no other reason than a long lead time on production. Patience of Buffett's kind is a rare commodity on the stock market!