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[haz101] 26/9/2018 12:13

Excellent post Serratia

[woodpeckers] 26/9/2018 12:11

Spike, thanks for your notes. I think Neill actually did confirm that the third company is Z&G. My notes say that he said that we supply Gnanomat who supply Z&G. SuperG, are you able to comment?

[richie32] 26/9/2018 12:10

serratia I also think you make some very good points.

I would also add that some larger companies are like oil tankers when it comes to new processes.

The middle/senior management all have their personal objectives in place and these can be set for 1 to 5 years. To force a change in processes means an edict from the top and personnel having to change tack....some people don't don't like being nudged out of their groove until ordered to do so....which will come once the tests are proved to operational & finished product standards.

[spike_1] 26/9/2018 11:51

A huge thank you to all those posting, all very useful, including some particularly good and insightful posts.

Will add a little here from my notes - forgive me if it's stuff already posted.

Re 3 tonne capacity needed just for 'feeding' collab's: this was not because they needed to produce 3 tonnes as such, he actually said they needed the machinery capacity to be able to deal with peaks in demand (or in as many words).

I was ticked of by Neill for not paying attention when I asked for the name of the collaborator providing the 3rd side of the triangle. Like sg I am convinced it is not Zap & Go. I don't think Neill actually said it was, he said (to me) didn't you hear what was said earlier (not sure that is the same thing?).

As for Primary Bid and MM's etc not getting any, I'm pretty sure he said they would have been scaled right down to about 10k, not necessarily to nothing. (He may of said that during a one on one - don't remember).

Regarding using additional funds raised, he said that it would allow him to set up a new team to work on hexatene.

The mysterious 'Bruno' in China, his identity is being kept very private (I think he is a university scientist but not sure) - appears to be a very high value source 'since he came on board in January he has unearthed some remarkable opportunities - almost more than we can deal with'.

Marco (U.S. agent) he said that for Marco 'it was now time to step up our game' "big push".

Collab's taking a long time: David said that in some (many?) cases they had expanded the amount of testing (additional uses?)

Nanene machinery, VRS is working on a deal of some sort which - if concluded - will result the the manufacturer setting up a 'continuous production line', and at that point VRS will get 24 months exclusivity of machine production. (presumably they are now produced as 'one-offs').

Re Standards: Neill said that it was all so new that 'VRS can dictate best practice - it will be written by us'. In other words the amount of knowledge being gained by VRS (partly through feedback from collab's) is so far ahead of every one else, that we know what works best and why it works best.

Little wonder China wants in ;0)

And yes I was also disappointed that we did not get a proper read out on collab's progress. However I was sitting very near the front on the right side, and whenever I looked back, right at the back sitting on stools (standing?) were the two 'NOMADS', and as far as I could tell, they never took their eyes of Neill. It was certainly intimidating, and on half a dozen occasions Neill referenced them, or asked them for confirmation.

By the way, our very own superg was forced to stand and take an ovation ;0) He was very embarrassed - bless.

At the end Neill, David, Peter and Nigel all stayed behind (until there were just a handful of people) answering questions 'one on one'.

What an extraordinary company, and extraordinary team.

Best wishes - Spike

Edit: and I met Sonnyjim, and guess what - he doesn't have two heads, and was too shy to let anyone know who he was in case he got grief.

Well he's now part of 'family' so I doubt that will happen.

[sonsonnyjim] 26/9/2018 11:43

Super I'm glad we all are encouraged on china. At this point you'd have to be hopeful of a deal or jv within 12 months, would you agree?

[rogerbridge] 26/9/2018 11:42

My thoughts too Serratia. Just have to wait for events to unfold.

Interesting article on the German EV catch up, SG.
I wonder how Mr Dyson is getting on with the battery company that he purchased. I would not be surprised if he will, or probably has paid Neill a call.

[superg1] 26/9/2018 11:37

MJ10

I was there thinking 'stuff' close before the chat and came away thinking F China far closer and bigger than I ever imagined.

All you had to do was look at Peters face as he spoke. He said enough and as I said it seems Jinan was at the top, compare that to recent interviews when it seems Jinan had come over the top of what was 24 and is now 30 plus.

In other words there is a growing competition within China to get VRS to sign.

"They flew in from all over". "lot's of them"

I pay attention to the news and we spotted a clear changes with Axia and AECOM so if one or both of those suddenly appear higher up the food chain in news then I won't be falling off my chair.

Not testing "Will be used" etc.

When have I ever said buy here, I put out info. I have said sell many times but to jittery folk as I think they should not hold. Jittery indicates in too deep and can't afford to lose in some cases.

Fund raise run in it wasn't a buy imo and I explained the way a Nomad would work re that. Friday caught me stone cold and the build to a fund raise has gone.

What we have imo now is possible;e flippers but that has been heavily retracted in the way shares were given out in the PB process.

So an interesting 2 weeks imo for the flip side and then roll on the news some are waiting/hoping for. That assumes no toiler news drops in between.

Don't forget some that are short they are guaranteed buyers they are waiting for the exact same circs as buyers I know. Any dip and I suspect buys will come in and shorts will try to close.

[twatcher] 26/9/2018 11:36

ridicule, you said in your AGM report (and thank you for it):-

"Three conclusions can be drawn from the 24 month comment: that VRS expect to have made a significant penetration into the market place within 24 months; the equipment provider refused to give exclusivity for longer than 24 months; VRS intend to have bought the equipment manufacturer within 24 months. I accept this is deductive logic, but to my mind these are not unreasonable deductions."

but you earlier said "Neill went on to say that once full production orders arrive, the collaboration with the equipment provider will be for a permanent, continuous production facility with a ‘lockout’;"

So your conclusions regarding the 24 month timeframe need to be tempered with that the clock only starts to tick when full production orders arrive.

[rogerbridge] 26/9/2018 11:34

Feeling pretty chilled after reading reports of the AGM. I did not get up this morning waiting for 7am to see if there was another collaboration!

Neill and the very imptessive team are working as fast as they can. China will appear before year end and then America here we come.

I am very excited about the new purchase and the battery side of the business. Get this right and we cold become a billion £ company in a couple of years time.
AECOM could turn out to be very large indeed and again, get this right and away we go.

So much to enthuse over here and I have not mentioned the other collaborations and inks. Looking forward to Neill turning the collaborations into revenue.

[club sandwich] 26/9/2018 11:33

Super - that news article is very interesting, thank you.

[rafboy] 26/9/2018 11:33

Serratia, thanks for that, as someone who has only been employed by HMG that was a very useful post.

[tini5] 26/9/2018 11:33

The lure of new materials: ASU welcomes new physics faculty (Arizona State University)

[rheumking] 26/9/2018 11:26

Thanks for that ridicule- I was starting to get a bit worried by the undercurrent from other attendees at the AGM that the collaborations had not been positive and not being negative doesn't really impress me. However you have put my mind at rest that things are moving on.
I suspect that like with the collaborations we will hear no news for a few weeks get nervous and then have an explosion of news one after the other and then the share price will follow ever upwards

[serratia] 26/9/2018 11:26

There are a few shareholders who are nervous about the wait for large orders to be announced. Perhaps this helps.
Following a NDA company X buys a small sample say 100 to 500 gms. This will be given to the techies who will make a lab sample of say a plastic or rubber sheet etc composite. The results will be analysed for the desired properties. The next step if promising is to order a larger sample to make a sample of the finished product this could be a plastic bottle or a tyre or whatever. These products will now be tested to destruction. Tyre performance, bottle resistance to heating/cooling/ UV degradation, impact damage, colour retention, permeability to gases etc.
Next up the blend would need to be run through the production process to see if there are any challenges to be overcome. A simple question might be does the viscosity change which would effect the injection of the liquid polymer into say the tire mould or the mould for 'blow moulding' a bottle. Do they have to adjust the temperature of the moulds when Nanene is present, does the moulds setting time shorten as Nanene conducts the heat away faster etc etc.
Only after all those tests and probably more will the company risk a full production run. Then it's a go/no go decision time to switch to the new formulation.
In large companies different parts of the process will be carried out by different departments which all have different priorities but in time they all get together for a meeting to compare results. One question/unknown, and off they go again to wait whilst group x fits a new the test into their schedule. (I've been there in both large and small companies).
With a young/small company they just work quicker. For example if the bottle forming group is 6 or 7 people on one site all the decision makers talk to each other all day every day. In a large company different test departments can be in different sites or even countries. A small company also has the incentive to innovate quickly to help compete with the large companies.

Neill has said the companies we're working with have carried out the research phase, moved on to the second phase and all's well so far. Neill's excitement implies that they're close to finishing phase two/three. That's the point at which production contracts come into play. Nothing can be said prior to the customer actually signing the final supply contract for obvious reasons.
I also noted the comment that companies want to see a strong balance sheet. That also implies things are close. As a large company if they decide to press the go for it button they need to know that the small company has the finances in place to buy the kit needed to supply their demand and the large increase in working capital to buy raw materials and build up stocks of finished product etc. No point saying go and then have the small company say hang on we've now got to raise cash before we can start.
So an RNS cannot be issued until all the above is complete and the go button pressed. An RNS has I think to be issued if an order impacts on sales by 10% or something akin to that in terms of a financial impact. VRS had sales of just under £10m last year so any development order from company X up to £1m would not necessarily trigger an RNS. That would mean they could be selling quite a lot of Nanene for development purposes without having to issue an RNS.
I have quite a large holding and I'm relaxed about progress and the timing of final contracts. A large contract will come from one or more of the NDA's as Neill said no problems have emerged from any of the NDA's. It can come this month, next month or in the new year. I haven't heard anything negative in the journey so far so happy to sit and wait.

[tini5] 26/9/2018 11:24

Some collabs also placing secondary orders as they had expanded the scope of their testing.

Took that as a positive as they had presumably had favourable results from the first rounds of testing.

[sonsonnyjim] 26/9/2018 11:21

Mj10 that was my exact interpretation too

[mj10] 26/9/2018 11:19

super/ridicule
funny how people interpret the same words differently
I came away thinking china closer than I thought but collabs not close to order and not in their hands anyway
however you know the board better than me little hidden clues,body language etc so we shall see.
glad I went for the first time

[luckyorange] 26/9/2018 10:59

ash, not a cup and handle to me , they need to form over a longer time period in my opinion. I think it's just a bit of sideways trading as very often with VRS you can get into a can't buy situation at the moment although it's only ever short term.

If mm's do try a drop I have the feeling that there are buyers waiting for the opportunity!

[superg1] 26/9/2018 10:59

Hmm
Interesting news. :-)

[superg1] 26/9/2018 10:45

Cheek

I did ask but not in great detail.

I believe the PB dishing out of shares was done with a fine tooth comb. While the system doesn't allow slow time bids the slow time after allows the picking out of listed shareholders that may have applied. I suspect they will have got all they asked for, 'others' may not have got any at all.

Now I'm aware of that random tweet and random short positions taken Friday afternoon I'd love to know what bids came into PB.

[ridicule] 26/9/2018 10:41

Further reflections on the AGM for those that were unable to attend.

IS0 - I got the impression the delays in iso-certification were not foreseen by Neill. He had underestimated the politics and the manoeuvers of those who could not meet a tightly defined standard. Moreover, from my own experience of ISO, individual companies, particularly those who are likely to benefit from the outcome, never have the influence that their expertise deserves. The whole process is managed through consensus. I do not know how much experience Neill had of iso before this exercise, but I suspect he has learned from the experience and I certainly do not think he was misleading us when he thought the process would’ve been much quicker. This said, he emphasised that iso was not an issue when it came to the collaborations. The partners were not particularly interested! I suspect this was because VRS had won all four tenders for the CPI contract and the partners also have access to the universities to verify the VRS claims.

Collaborations- The definitive statements on these were much stronger than perhaps those not attending realise.

- pricing models. These had to be agreed at the outset to avoid wasting partners time. This posed a challenge for the VRS team who wanted to protect their margin model. Nonetheless pricing models have been agreed from the outset and deemed to be affordable by the partners.

- There were no instances to date where the partner has had to change their manufacturing machinery or processes to accommodate the Nanene, Graphinks element of the collaboration.

- All collaborations remain positive with a number of material (Nanene) reordering to move them forward.

- Some have reached the point where they are tangible and positive outcomes can be predicted.

- The confidence of the responses by management indicated to me that there were no hidden poo traps or doublespeak at work and absolutely no BS.

I accept these deductions do not amount to the information that would have been provided by an RNS, but the discussions around the collaborations certainly satisfied me that my money was invested in the right place.

[superg1] 26/9/2018 10:31

Sonny

I think he is correct on one point but I'm not so sure next week.

You could tell at the AGM that many would like news that amounts to material orders or news of that type to set a foundation under current circs.

I think they will get what they want quicker and with more impact than they think. So where does it go from then.

Then you have potential China news on top.

It was pretty clear yesterday, China doesn't have anything like Nanene and they WANT Nanene.

I picture Peter in China as if he has become their new graphene god. Mr Rickets I imagine will need a boxing ring entry heavies team next time he visits to keep them off.

[cheek212] 26/9/2018 10:12

I don't think we will see much flipping - most of the people on here and at the AGM yesterday will have bought to hold, and the three IIs were presumably allowed to buy assuming they weren't going to flip either. I'm just gutted I had no spare cash on Friday! Instead I have bought a few more in my ISA today with cash now available, a bit lower but not as good as 145 - I'm not jealous though!!!!!

[squire007] 26/9/2018 10:05

Off golfing in Selby, what will I miss out on today?? ... GL everyone. SMILE.