Robert, I don't think this call contained any surprises
for the professional money that is long Valence now.
I think it's been quite clear that there simply have not
been any significant orders on the books.
As for potential lawsuits, the announced contracts did not
for the most part give any revenue amounts, except for the
Alcatel and G* contracts (as well as i can recall), so no
grounds to sue for misrepresentation or lying about the
business there. The lack of follow thru on Alcatel has
been addressed by Lev if not clear and aggressively,
at least well enough to let you know it was not
expected to contribute revenues. I'm sure that the
other contracts were real as announced. None had any $
tags attached: they were all clearly labeled as 'pilot'
or 'initial' orders as far as i can recall.
If the company could not actually produce
batteries yet continued to insist that they could, not
revealing serious mfg problems would be legal grounds,
but Stephan insists that mfg capacity is not the problem,
as we also heard from Lev and other execs. They just
never succeeded in any major design wins. The did claim
to be very close on many occasions, but do you really
think they can be sued for failing to close deals?
I think the investment community expects the Dell connection
to pay off. God now has a full management team most of
whom are really well known and obviously well respected at
Dell. I have to wonder if all these managers and engineers
would have left their jobs especially in this economic
climate without a firm view of the first major design win.
Senior management at Dell knows these people as their
"go to" guys. This kind of personal trust is what makes
or breaks many, many business deals.
After all the disappointments I would be the first to admit
this is still a risky proposition, but I'll be quite
surprised if that design win does not materialize and
I'll also be very surprised if it's not Dell. The
technology has never been a mirage, but winning the first
big contract that proves you can produce was beyond Lev,
probably beyond anybody who does not have the personal
connection that Stephan and his "Dell mafia" have.
The competition is vertically integrated, we aren't. We
would have been really screwed without Stephan, but now I'm
sticking with this bet and see a reasonable chance of
this ending up the big success story we've been expecting
for so long. |
