Ilika Share Discussion Threads

[pj 1] 05/5/2016 18:42

Surely no one would trade this? Its way too technical.

[supernumerary] 05/5/2016 17:36

I don't think the directors regard it as part of their job to make life easy for share traders, a point of view I strongly support.

[a.fewbob] 05/5/2016 13:41

Because they can get risk free options constantly reissued at lower and lower prices. At least that's what usually happens now days especially with the majority of aim stocks.

[toptrump1] 05/5/2016 11:35

Very large trade at 8.40 at 68p I would say is a sell, the way the deals have gone and prices paid I would guess R Griffiths has reduced again. We should get RNS as 1% of co.

[theklf] 03/5/2016 10:46

1990's comedy reference ?

Newman and Baddiel Mary Whitehouse Experience I think

[big7ime] 03/5/2016 09:19

Think he means he doesn't trust you

[horneblower] 03/5/2016 08:59

Sorry to mislead you.
I bought 20,000 at 75p. I see that the time was 1050am.
This was while the presentation was going on.
They were to replace the shares I sold in March when it appeared the chart was collapsing.
Not good trading I grant you.
What's the "itchy chin" reference mean? I'm curious.

[toptrump1] 03/5/2016 08:35

Ok, itchy chin


Just it's not what you said:


29 Apr'16 - 22:57 - 1555 of 1582 5 0

Ok. Here's a short report on the presentation.

There were about 50 attendees and maybe 6 to 8 Ilika bods including...

Mike Inglis, Chairman, ex ARM
Graeme Purdy, CEO
Brian Hayden, Chief Scientific Officer
Steve Boydell, FD
Denis Pasero, Product Manager
+ 2 or 3 others.

I gathered that attendees include fund managers from some major funds including Zeus Capital. Sorry, I didn't network with them.


Mike Inglis introduced and Graeme Purdy did his longish spiel. Graeme is a nice chap but his delivery about the internet of things is old hat and a bit patronising.

Anyway the major points are exactly what is on the Ilika website which is required reading...

hxxp://www.ilika.com/battery-technology/information-and-downloads/

Basically, the battery being launched is the Stereax M250 which is a single layer chip about 10mm square and 0.75mm thick weighing 0.25 grams.
It outputs 3.5 volts, charges to 90% in 10 minutes, can happily cycle its charge from full to empty more than 5,000 times and can operate in temperatures between -20degC to +100degC. It features a silicon anode which apparently gives it excellent temperature qualities.

So, it beats the competition in ALL physical ways by between 1.5 and 10 times. As for cost comparison, that is hard to define as there is no like for like but in Q&A later, Graeme suggested that the unit price might be around $1.

No licence deals have been completed but they are talking to many potential clients. They were saying nothing (quite reasonably) regarding when they thought the first licencing deal might be made but Steve Boydell (FD) told me that it would be this year! Yes, dear reader, I snorted at that on your behalf, but he was not being drawn.

The company is currently producing about two wafer discs per week at 48 batteries per wafer.

Samples of the product are being given to suitable clients for initial appreciation. They are given four or five and if they show interest and want more they have to pay - at least, that's what Purdy said.

There was an interesting discussion between a questioner and Mike Inglis (ex ARM) regarding warranties and who carried the responsibility for any product failure. Standard legal stuff, but important.

Working Demonstration:
They showed the product in a working demonstration. A folding pcb board about 35 x 25 mms had a photo voltaic panel on the outside of one half with an M250 battery on the back of it. On the inside other half was a pcb with four other components; a temp sensor, an ARM cpu, a Nordic Bluetooth chip and a TI battery management chip. It transmitted the temp data by Bluetooth to an app on a small tablet computer (which could be 20 meters away). Denis Pasero first cooled the device then heated it up. The temp readout was displayed on the tablet with a 10 second delay. So, voila, a working beacon pad which, wirelessly stuck on your living room wall would happily continue to feed temp data to a base unit for the next ten years without being touched again. The bat being charged by daylight or any artificial light falling on the pv panel.

They need to crack on and produce a multi layer, stacked chip. They say they have achieved this in the lab.

Overall I was highly impressed. True there are no licence deals yet and true its just a tiny chip of a battery. But it works and it's the start of great things imo.

I bought some more shares later.

End

[horneblower] 03/5/2016 08:29

toptrump1,
No, I'm not LB and I bought in the morning.

[toptrump1] 03/5/2016 08:16

Hb and LB (or are you same person?) you claim to have bought on Friday pm, but as far as I can see there were NO share trades at all
Odd

[loobrush] 30/4/2016 17:52

From LSE
Seems to me that IKA and ARM are working together on the new battery technology just launched.
This I think is quite significant to have Arm in your camp and adding input to it's possible uses.
ARM is a big successful outfit and they obviously have knowledge of what the future holds-so for them to have linked up with ARM is a huge vote of confidence of what they must see as a multi million dollar opportunity or they wouldn't bother. Bought some more yesterday as I think that share price has a long way to go and I expect licencing deals will out very shortly.

[horneblower] 30/4/2016 15:54

juleshoddy, re yr post 1652 on why IKA doesn't get snapped up if the product is that good; I don't know but here are some possibilities...

It is early days. Once it dawns on the industry that Ilika has produced a superior, cost effective, solid-state Li-ion battery that beats its current rivals in ALL important respects due to its patented technology then we may well see it in takeover talks.

The industry is highly suspicious of exaggerated claims from newbies saying that battery paradise is just around the corner. They will need strong proof that the technology actually works and there are no hidden downsides.

Many are hoping and assuming that Li-ion systems will be old hat in a few years. Have we not heard about Aluminium-Air, Carbon-Carbon, Graphene etc, etc? So, even a big advance in Li-ion tech may not be tempting.

On this point, I had a brief chat with Graeme Purdy (or it might have been Brian Hayden?) regarding Dyson's purchase of 'American solid-state battery manufacturer' Sakti3. The assumption was that Dyson was desperate to improve the battery power of his vacuum cleaners in order to make them bigger and more powerful and to move into other products. He may have bought a pup. He may have to come to Ilika for the solution.

[horneblower] 30/4/2016 15:21

As I understand it heat is less of a problem than I expected for a couple of reasons.
The Silicon anode is highly stable and this is why the battery can cope with 100degC.
The electrolyte layer is extremely thin so the electrons have less distance to travel generating less heat.
Don't quote me on this as I am way outside my technical knowledge boundaries.

Thanks for the links on evaporation.

[supernumerary] 30/4/2016 15:08

Incidentally, there are a couple of brief articles on Electron beam vapour deposition, which is the technique I believe Ilika uses, here:





Hard going for the non-specialist!

[supernumerary] 30/4/2016 14:57

I think just stacking them would result in heat problems, and probably a great deal else besides. I'm less worried about making bigger batteries than I am about making the little ones quickly! They could easily sell the tiny ones in the billions - there's no lack of market for them.

God save us from Dyson - does the world really need a £300 hand-held hairdryer? What a dreadful waste of brainpower ;¬(

[horneblower] 30/4/2016 14:53

diesel, they said their immediate goal was to miniaturise and increase the power of the current batteries.

I expect they have loads of plans but they were being cautiously conservative at the presentation.

[supernumerary] 30/4/2016 14:53

hb - thanks - at the limit of my knowledge too, but I think you're right, they're the same thing - at least related - you've got to evaporate it from one place in order to deposit it somewhere else!

[horneblower] 30/4/2016 14:50

Re scaling up the battery power, presumably this could be done now using the chips in both serial and parallel matrices. But to get an even better Power density they need to put multi layers inside the chip, ie multi-stacking.

Although they say they have achieved this in the lab I feel it is essential they get on with it.

If they could get say a three layer cell it should output 3 times 3.5volts ie 13.5v. if you created a stack of 1000 of these in a block all neatly wired up in parallel, would you not then have a 13.5volt battery with a capacity of 1,000 x 750 micro Amp hours = 750 amp hours? (I'm a chemical engineer, not an electrical engineer).

If this three stack chip were say 10mm x 10mm x 1.5mm (it would be thinner than three times the single chip) then a block of 1,000 of them could be 100mm x 100mm x 15mm (stacked 10x10x10). That is 2.5 inches square by 3/4 inches high, about the size of a laptop battery!

This would obviously take a little engineering but this is a billion dollar industry for God's sake. Mr Dyson and his 300 engineers might take a month to sort it out!

[diesel] 30/4/2016 14:17

It would be good to know what other battery versions they have in the pipeline, I know it's early days but for their credibility as a player in this field they need a range of products or a hint as to where licensees can go with this process.