Ft Fbt Discussion Threads

[nickb] 19/2/2018 13:11

Bio Tech

Company raises money to develop a new concept drug after many years of development it goes to trial earning small sums of money the trial builds evidence of effectiveness then if successful it goes for industry/ regularity approval.

Depending on the outcome it is either worthless or worth a lot of money.

FBT is “awaiting approval” stage.

Interesting time.
Worthless or worth a lot

[nickb] 19/2/2018 12:57

Mcsean

And you would invest in a business with little to no business revenue?

[mcsean2164] 19/2/2018 12:50

Investors, aim listing, accounts published.

Of course it is a business.

[nickb] 19/2/2018 12:00

It’s not a business it has no revenue!

It has been developing unique video codec technology which it now has to licence. The company is worthless if it is not able to licence or get acquired.

[paulcon1] 19/2/2018 11:39

Absolutely correct- FBT is not a Technology company, it is a business with technology as its product/service ....
GLA and IMHO

[nickb] 19/2/2018 11:34

Blackbird Codec being adopted by the industry was the only reason I invested and it was always high risk.

[bonio10000] 19/2/2018 11:26

Correct.

There is some immense revisionist history around FBT.

The codec was always there but, whilst being part of the product, wasn't the sole reason for investment and the saviour some are making it out to be now all the other products they pumped are being pushed to one side.

If you had said two years about FBT was a pure Blackbird play - nobody would have believed you.

[mcsean2164] 19/2/2018 11:19

Anyway the whole purpose of FBT investment is the Codec

It seems to be now but when I invested it was Forscene, Eva and captevate.

I'd just love to know their plans to get an ROI to me. New all time lows today.

[bonio10000] 19/2/2018 10:38

Can you imagine this shower on Dragons Den?

"So how long have you been in existence, what is your turnover and when was your last notable deal."

And then have SS mumbling about codecs and blackbird doing magic stuff.

Fills you with confidence about a possible sale.

[undertaker] 19/2/2018 09:02

meanwhile...

[nickb] 19/2/2018 08:43

Mcsean
Soccer is always a good Codec test in fact I was involved in those official tests many years ago testing multiple Codec concatenation issues in the broadcast chain.

However Blackbird to my understanding does not work like traditional Codecs as it is more AI based.

Anyway the whole purpose of FBT investment is the Codec the rest like Forscene has little value unless you get adoption of the Codec first.
IMHO

[mcsean2164] 19/2/2018 08:19

Interesting, the point I was trying to make is that the maths is interesting etc. but it is pretty simple to expand on an existing algorithm. The work is done and in the open, so someone can simply call the dct function and quantisation functions and do something amazing. I studied image and video compression as part of a master's degree and lots of other people did too. I've worked on automotive vision systems and last year was on a medical high camera project but I'm no expert. However, if I spent a couple of months on it I could probably come up with a new non generic codec e.g. for soccer where there is a lot of green. I've been far from impressed by talk of ss's supposed genius because of a codec.

It's hard to see a great use for a variable frame rate codec in video editing but in saying that, the end of net neutrality could be a great day for FBT, if the codec is actually that good.

[nickb] 18/2/2018 20:26

“...using the discrete cosine transform etc is pretty amazing...”

Mcsean
You might like to know that Blackbird does not use DCT I believe.

[paulcon1] 16/2/2018 15:21

Pretty much a year to the day since Aziz resigned!

[paulcon1] 16/2/2018 15:15

Nick2412 and McSean ... I have had similar experiences with Emails... If the policy of FBT is not to respond or even acknowledge Shareholders questions or concerns I guess there is not much we can do.... GL

[chriscallen] 16/2/2018 08:25

"They need to speak to retail investors as well as institutions."

If they are giving briefings to IIs whilst maintaining a shutdown on PIs it should constitute an offence. For years people have been arguing that briefing analysts and not disclosing to the market the same information should be insider dealing if the analysts companies act on it.

[the stigologist] 16/2/2018 07:44

The Iron Law of Institutions.

The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power/success of the institution itself

[nick2412] 16/2/2018 07:24

McSean, thanks for that, I share your frustrations with the board and tried to get a better understanding of the prospects for my investment. I asked reasonable politely expressed questions in just a couple of emails without success.

For example, I tried to ascertain why they had not given an update on the North American major media player POC. I was requested by Jonathan Lees not to communicate anymore so that they could spend their time on trying to grow the business.

I addressed the emails to Ian McDonough but Jonathan Lees replied on his behalf. As a consequence of the unhelpful and unnecessarily defensive replies I reduced my investment. I have to thank them for that as I had some decent success with a couple of less opaque and more shareholder friendly companies. Surely they can't be deliberately trying to hack off investors to the extent they sell, but it's an odd company attitude to shareholders for sure.

[bonio10000] 16/2/2018 07:04

Correct. Blackbird was never mentioned as a reason to invest until a few months ago.I thought captevate was getting 800 trials a week two years ago with no push? What happened to the conversion rate?More Aziz smoke and mirrors.

[mcsean2164] 16/2/2018 02:20

Nick2412,

What I said was developing a codec is not that impressive. It is of course impressive in another sense, using the discrete cosine transform etc is pretty amazing but in the context of the discussion, I was saying it wan't that impressive.

I'll have to row back a bit now.

A variable frame rate codec might have useful applications for a company like Netflix/ Amazon/ google/ apple depending on how the net neutrality battle works out.

I can't see a low bit rate editing platform being a big selling point to any media production company. I can do it at 1.5Mb/s, who cares, I have 75Mb/s fiber. In my opinion, a variable bit rate platform is essentially useless to such customers.

I've explained several times why I invested but here goes again.

I invested thinking that the Forscene was worth at least 5p and that eva & captevate had blue sky potential. It was a gamble that could pay off.

All I've been asking for recently is a roadmap from forbidden on how they intend to give an ROI to investors but they won't give it to me. I don't know how to value the stock or my investment anymore. Are they trying to sell the codec to a corporation such as google, if so everything adds up but if they are not, what the hell are they doing? Record number of PoC's from a silent CEO means nothing to me.

[nick2412] 15/2/2018 23:57

McSean, you described the Blackbird video codec as 'unimpressive' and said you had studied video codecs. You're obviously honest and open in your perspective but I'm just slightly puzzled why you would be invested in FBT given Blackbird is the USP?

I'm no expert but, based on the advantages and claims the Company makes for Blackbird, it should make it an easy license sale. They have also said the new model for licensing deals are of higher value but take longer to conclude. Well, they need to start delivering soon as nice sounding claims without commercial deals don't help the cash burn.

The Company should also give more specific details on the 'record number' of POC's and also update on the North American media major POV announced earlier last year. I'm trying to fathom the reason why FBT have developed such antipathy towards investors. AIM companies, especially those like FBT that rely on funding, need to speak to retail investors as well as institutions.