Dennis,
I agree with your expectations for Deepak Swamy. I recall Lev talking about "design-in" programs with OEM's in 1999 that normally take 6 to 9 months. Lev was building hopes on Energy Power Systems (Ralston Purina?) that was sold in a hurry, setting back VLNC's clock by a few months. (It was bought out by Moltech and later went under.)
Lev's "design-in" mode of market development for products was a bit naive and dependent upon OEM's vagaries and constraints. With Deepak on board, VLNC will be able to take up more work on OEM product qualification as much as possible (design-in, testing, etc.). Stephan hopes to get more control over how VLNC cells are being "designed-in" into final products. This will make VLNC more customer-oriented and market-oriented company, rather than a technology-oriented company. Under this scenario, it is reasonable to expect Stephan to spend energy on the NI plant and commercial production of phosphate batteries. NI plant will be a focal point for the next conf call. I'm only guessing.
Other factors revealed in the last conf call - about Stephan and his plan.
(1) he was forthright about Hanil and Panasonic licensing revenue prospects. He sounded confident of achieving his revenue target of $50Million without Hanil or Panasonic.
(2) the revenue probably comes (as he emphasized) from the phosphate battery sales. He did not seem to bother about potential revenues from cobalt or manganese licensing or material sales.
(3) Although the jury is still out there on the phosphate battery, he talked about a "huge" market in energy solutions market - electric vehicles and UPS, etc. Did not mention PDA's and cellphones. Very intriguing but no details yet.
(4) he has people on his team to deal with corporate communications, investors, etc. Lev was trying to do all of these jobs with FRB! Remember the poor announcement about the layoff at the NI plant?
(5) Although Stephan did not reveal the market segments, he sounded as if he has something "in the bag". This guy signed the product recall of Dell notebook PC in May, 2001 and joined VLNC in the same month (?).
(6) he was confident of the strong patent position.
In summary, he sounded as if he had everything he needed (money, people, technology, patents, etc.) to make it happen. Is it going to happen? We'll see - in six to nine months! Ram |
