Dan B: Without a lot of cutting and pasting, arguing over individual sentences, I'll cover a few things in yours and trader's posts.
When I say that Antaeus did not exist in a "meaningful" way on Feb. 17th, when DCHT put out its press release, I am allowing for the possibility that it did exist on paper. I can form a corporation, register it with the various authorities, and it will exist. But if it has no money, no assets, no address, no independent employees, etc., then the company is just a name on some pieces of paper. I suspect Antaeus did exist on Feb. 17th in that respect, but that is irrelevant to the issue.
I am not saying that MTEY and SIMS (the private company interested in working with MTEY on Antaeus) may not have a perfectly good idea for monitoring bridge corrosion, and it may well be that hydrogen sensors from DCHT would be the ideal product to include as a component of the bridge monitoring system. Moreover, it is likely that DCHT discussed the matter with MTEY, and MTEY indicated to DCHT that someday, if all goes well, perhaps tens of thousands of bridges around the country will be fitted with the Antaeus smart bridge monitoring system, and that this would result in many orders for DCHT gas sensors.
If DCHT had talked about this potential application on its website or on other venues, no one could have the slightest complaint about it. Technology companies regularly describe future applications of their technology. That is fine, and, I would argue, even necessary so that investors understand that a company's potential may exceed just the products that it is selling today.
Moreover, I wouldn't even have a problem with DCHT issuing a press release talking about its potential in the bridge monitoring field. It may well have a great potential there.
But that isn't what the Feb.17 press release looked like, to the investor or potential investor who uses the English language in a normal fashion. Nowhere on the press release is there any indication that Antaeus is as yet nothing more than an idea, not a real company with a real address and real employees and a real bank account, and that at the moment it lacks the funds to buy a cup of coffee, let alone buy millions of dollars of DCHT's sensors.
Moreover, the process of turning the Antaeus idea into a real company, according to MTEY's 10-K, involves first getting a government grant, which doesn't yet appear to have happened. Then that money will be used to create some prototypes of a product, which then will be tested.
Remember, we are talking about bridge corrosion, aka "rust". How fast do you think things rust? I am not a chemist, but my sense is, not very fast. So the smart bridge monitoring system will be placed on some bridges, and then we will wait around some number of years for them to rust, then we will see how well the monitoring system detected that process. Let us suppose that the system does a wonderful job.
Then Antaeus will have to turn the prototype into a commercial system, hire sales people, and start marketing it to owners of bridges. Who owns bridges? Governments. How fast do governments make decisions to employ new technologies, even ones of widely recognized value? Not very.
If I had to guess, and your guess may differ, if everything went perfect I could see the first commercial sales occurring maybe five years from now. I can't even guess how many years after that before sales of the bridge monitoring systems were strong enough that DCHT might actually have annual sales to Antaeus in the million dollar range.
If the scenario I have just outlined seems too conservative, please suggest another one. But I have trouble seeing how any reasonable person can come up with a scenario that resembles the impression that someone reading DCHT's press release would get - that within a year or two DCHT would be getting large orders from Antaeus.
Let me ask you, Dan B., trader, and Steve: How much business do you honestly think DCHT will get from Antaeus in 1999, 2000, or 2001? Do you really think it will be millions of dollars worth? If so, could you please explain, based on what we know about Antaeus from MTEY's documents, a scenario that will result in that outcome.
If you, like me, think that DCHT will get at most token orders for sensors, until such time as there are large sales of the bridge monitoring systems, then how can you call the Feb. 17th press release honest? |
