Hi Jaime,
You note:
"Thanks for the commentary. Every clue seems to turn towards management and their inability to land a contract. We are looking at another 6months before any potential new "bites" on the ITS. Maybe the market feels that SMU will loose all control of ITS as it stands now. SMU has had every mayor player already infiltrated Simula through seats on the board or partnerships. They will ultimately say "thank you very much to SMU but we do not need you anymore, hey guys we do thank you for your research though".
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Nice to hear from you, Jaime.
Your concerns about the first tier's "stealing" the Simula research is unreasonable in my view. The ITS is heavily patented, and no one can use it without Simula at least getting a reasonable royalty.
The problem with Simula (at least as I see it) is that while the company has been successful building new markets for its technologies (either 16G, ITS, parachutes, etc.), it still hasn't proven that it can drop a portion of the revenue down to the bottom line. Once that concern is mitigated, the shares will move higher.
As for the ITS family being 6 months away from an order, I certainly hope you are incorrect. Management is planning to take its story to institutions some time in mid-June (it originally expected to do so some time in early May and at least one scheduling conflict led to the delay), but the company's story won't be "fresh" unless there is an order connected to it.
Perhaps it is very difficult to conduct business with the somnolent auto companies, and this certainly would account for at least a portion of the delay in getting to market. Moreover, I can easily accept that Autoliv, whose primary interest is selling "curtains" instead of the ITS, may well have inhibited our marketing success by a variety of "questionable" practices.
Having said that, however, my recent understanding is that Simula *continues* to discuss pricing issues with the various car companies and first tiers, with some of those parties now first becoming educated to the fact that the ITS is less expensive (and more effective) than any curtain under development. I am hard pressed to understand why relative price should still be an "issue," and this indicates to me that the process has moved more slowly than what was otherwise necessary.
I remain hopeful that we will have evidence of Simula's marketing success within the next couple of months. If it is delayed considerably beyond that time, the earliest that new ITS agreements could result in production revenue will be in the very late part of 1999. It would be a shame for such a substantial "delay" considering that it not only affects current stock market pricing, but it also deprives the general public of a life-saving technology of true importance.
Keep your fingers crossed. |
