mid year review (Market cap ~ $0.09B)
INTRO Here's my semi-annual exercise to see if I remember why I own the stocks I own, and so I can check back and see if their stories have changed. I post in case it helps others too.
Lumera is still the hardest company to describe to my friends, and for the most part I don't try. They make bio-array chips, high bandwidth switches, high bandwidth antennas, and the potential for a large array of other products based on their organic electro-optical materials technology. As was said last year, if they succeed at any one of them, the company will be successful and able to use the money to grow the other products.
The cautionary note with them has changed somewhat for me. Originally the concern was that the culture of Lumera would be like the early culture of Microvision: hard to distinguish the hype from the reality. I don't think that is as much as problem as another aspect of the company's culture. They are producing products without fully understanding the customers' needs. The bio-array product is gaining acceptance slower than they expected because there are no accepted standards across the research and industry sites. Lumera is in the position to significantly raise and establish those standards, but found it out by consequence, not by advance research. If this is true across the entire product line then it poorly reflects on management and suggests that the company will succeed more on luck than planning.
Despite that, I continue to hold and even bought some more this year. Why? Partly because I believed management when they said significant things were about to happen. Bad boy (me, not them).
DISCLAIMER LTBH since 2004 and feeling quite sheepish for buying more. (Unless of course they succeed, in which case I will feel brilliant.) |
