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Technology Stocks : VALENCE TECHNOLOGY (VLNC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Tenzel who wrote (24191)	5/9/2001 12:14:21 AM
From: P. Ramamoorthy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

Jacques Tenzel, Re.: "....Where did you hear that the agreement with Samsung includes the phosphate technology?..." I did not read or hear about this from anywhere. This is a conclusion I derived form conf calls - subject to errors. According to Lev from Korea, cobalt was now obsolete, manganese obsolete by the end of this year, leaving the phosphate for the future battery production with a target production cost of 20 cents/whr. The NI plant is supposed to be sampling phosphate cells for commercial testing, starting March-April. If this is true, why would Samsung get a license for a technology that will soon be outdated? Getting a license agreement blessed by lawyers is a critical step prior to large capital investment. Samsung is about to commit a large amount of capital for li poly battery production. Would they make a commitment with VLNC for a technology that is to be outdated in a year? The VLNC phosphate patent news is expected in June or so. They could have agreed an arrangement in which the phosphate royalty could be different from the current rate when it is available. Ram

To: Jacques Tenzel who wrote (24191)	5/9/2001 10:20:20 AM
From: rli123	Respond to of 27311

The first big licensing agreement is the toughest for at least two reasons --- first, the "pioneers" probably have some trepidation about being the first (so the deal is harder to land), and second, the first licensing agreement is likely to be a pattern for subsequent agreements, so it's important for VLNC to take the time to "get it right". There's a certain amount of original design work in that first agreement which takes more time than simply saying "this is the agreement that all of our licensees have with us --- we're willing to tweak it, but not make wholesale changes". Subsequent deals can be patterned after the first deal. So, maybe we'll see more new licensees soon. rli