My point exactly, even the bizarro KTEL did not go up 35 points in one day. Even waiting until day 4 (or day 12) of the runup, you could still have tripled your money.
A far more relevant example is ULBI. They went from 8 to 20 on rumors of production and the Mitsubishi announcement, over a 5 month period. They have gone basically downhill from there as they could not meet demand and had to dilute their shares to get the money to install capacity. VLNC is a much more speculative stock, having no real revenues from other products for ballast. So they will probably have the same issues but see larger swings in the stock price as a result.
VLNC supposedly has more capacity installed, but if so, why are they moving first production equipment to the R&D center? Here's a guess: because if they run out of cash, Henderson will be the last to go; maybe it's protected by Delco money. If they can't find any more cash quickly and they have to close or sell the Ireland facility, at least they don't have to start from zero on bringing up production equipment if/when they do get money.
I have seen a disturbing trend lately. Trade magazines that mention Li-polymer rarely mention VLNC. Ultralife & Valence used to get mentioned as if they were next door to each other; now, ULBI gets most of the copy. Check out the April issue of Portable Design, a well-written magazine for design engineers. (Subscribe at portabledesign.com.) In a 7-page story on batteries ranging from NiCd to Li-polymer, there is a picture of ULBI cells, and nearly all of the copy related to polymer is quotes from Bellcore and Ultralife. Valence is not mentioned anywhere. |
