Ilika Share Discussion Threads

[a.fewbob] 27/4/2020 19:01

I’m hopeful but I think Covid will likely set them back six months.

But that’s really not their fault!

[horneblower] 27/4/2020 17:26

Oh, so will I, I assure you.

[horneblower] 27/4/2020 15:13

Making a sustainable profit would be a step change for the company.

[horneblower] 27/4/2020 10:01

A.F.
You are absolutely right about AIM. The idea was good but the regulatory oversight is appallingly weak and therefore the market has become full of charlatans and spivs. A shame.

As for tech, when it works it can be great, but success is rare and depends on the details which are often glossed over, obfuscated or hidden either deliberately or subconsciously.

Take Ilika as an example. They used to run an accelerated discovery system as a service to industry to trial and test different mixtures of coatings on materials.
They had clients like Rolls Royce and Toyota. Their Chief Science Officer who lectured at Southampton Uni at the time was hot on integrated circuits and chip manufacturing and between Toyota and others an idea was floated to try to integrate a LI-ion battery onto a chip...ie solid state.

This seemed like a wizard idea and with backing from Toyota and Southampton Uni they eventually successfully produced a working battery using small-scale pilot equipment paid for by a rights issue. That was five or six years ago.

All seemed fine and the CSO said that the next step for the company was to increase the battery's output and the way to do this is to 'multiple-stack' the cell inside the chip.

Unfortunately it took two or three years to discover that this was not do-able, either for scientific or for economic reasons. Exactly when the directors knew this, I do not know. They may have known all along or it may have dawned on them slowly. What is known is that they never let on to the investors and still haven't.
Instead, they made a virtue of making their chip smaller and smaller and being able to operate in extreme conditions. Same output, smaller chip...announced as "a huge increase in power density". Lol.

In order to continue getting grants it was vital to somehow come up with a much larger power output battery. They could not use their own tech as it simply couldn't get any bigger. I applaud whoever it was who came up with idea behind the Goliath manufacturing system and I clap twice as loudly the genius who thought up the name. Compared to the midget David which is Stereax it truly is a Goliath. It's a pity that it's so low-tech. Rather difficult to get much intellectual property out of a screen printing system since that was invented several hundred years ago.

But I wish them well.

[a.fewbob] 26/4/2020 17:08

It’s a bit like dragons den. Arrogant, obnoxious money men. Spouting off about revenues and profits when valuing a company. These people are not investors, they are loan sharks.

All that matters with a tech company is the tech and the size of the market.

[malnu] 24/4/2020 05:35

Against this backdrop, it said the nation had a vibrant green and alternatives industry, which the broker split into four ‘verticalsR17;: batteries, hydrogen, utilities and the support services.

It singled out two potential winners from massive growth in the installed base of lithium-ion batteries: advanced materials group Ilika PLC (LON:ILK) and ‘upstream miner’ Bacanora Lithium PLC (LON:BCN).

[tp5588] 23/4/2020 13:41

Seems like it was initially £4m stereax: £7m goliath. 28.30 in the presentation - institutions “offered additional funds” for optional 2nd fab (£4m)

[horneblower] 22/4/2020 09:54

A.F, I thought you had been involved with investing in Ilika for the past nine years the same as I have. Perhaps not.

[swiss paul] 22/4/2020 09:10

History of promising and not delivering. A history of throwing the egg in the basket; they did after other eggs - but threw them away on this binary bet.

That history.

[a.fewbob] 22/4/2020 00:14

Hornblower,

What on earth are you in about????

What bloody history?

This is a fledgling company. The change of focus from a materials discovery company or whatever you would call the old business model to an out and out solid state battery company has gone bloody fast.

They are on the verge of break even (covid 19 allowing) with an excellent product and have an absolutely fantastic chance of being a large format solid state battery market leader!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but they didn’t even have a Goliath battery to speak of just six months ago!!

And now they are at the stage of optimising it and working on manufacturing process.

I personally believe these are grossly undervalued based on possible future prospects, track record of development and delivery.

[jimmyann] 21/4/2020 12:36

Why don't you sell and keave??

[jimmyann] 21/4/2020 12:35

Why don't you just sell and leave?

[horneblower] 20/4/2020 22:48

I think you're somewhat premature.
Saying you are going to achieve sales at that level is not the same as achieving them.
I wish them luck but their history does not inspire confidence.

[a.fewbob] 20/4/2020 21:26

If this was listed on the NASDAQ, we would be valued in the hundreds of millions.

[a.fewbob] 20/4/2020 21:24

As stated above,

15m Rev which will get them profitable.

By then, they will have OEM deals who will pick up production allowing ILIKA to focus on R&D.

It worked fir ARM and it will work for us.

So 15m rev with just Stereax!!

I think it’s obvious that IKA is undervalued based just on the micro batteries and we have Goliath in fir free which could catapult us into the billions.

What’s not to like?

[shieldbug] 20/4/2020 13:35

Developing Stereax will do two things. It will create a profitable commercial business and it will enable them to compress the development time of Goliath. Well that is what the presentation suggests.

Of course you could fling all of the money at Goliath and emulate the high growth, high burn tech start up model. But that is high risk and will probably need huge amounts of money pumped in to keep the thing going.

I prefer the more conservative model they are pursuing. Probably better suited to the post virus world.

Also entirely possible that they are acquired in the meantime.

I believe that the Stereax chips can by made using existing (second hand) chip making technology. In other words £4m to create a production line is peanuts compared to technology that needs custom manufacturing.

[horneblower] 20/4/2020 10:08

Ok.
What did you think of the cash allocation of the £15M?
I was surprised at how much they pushed towards Stereax particularly as I imagine that the money was mostly raised on the promise of Goliath.

[horneblower] 20/4/2020 09:47

I promise you, the Goliath manufacturing process is simple. It's called screen printing. That is not to say that the optimised product isn't special. If they can find a really good combination of materials, blends and thicknesses which results in a product even only as good as the current 'wet' cells they will be doing extremely well.

They have not released any data, which is disappointing but may not indicate that they have not achieved parity yet.

They've been at it (optimisation) for six months at least and should have results by now. I only hope that the turgid way the presentation was done is not an indication of what they have achieved. I wish them luck.