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Technology Stocks : FCL - FuelCell Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert M. Winn who wrote (78)	12/4/1997 6:02:00 AM
From: Sid Turtlman	Respond to of 407

Robert: Beats me! Formosa Plastics (and its mainland buddies) now becomes, with Corning, the second major company that believes that ERC's battery technology has the potential to address multi-billion dollar markets. All I can guess is that in December you always get some tax loss selling, and maybe this stock was about to get dumped anyway. Although the mainland partners are talking about using the batteries for pure electric vehicle applications (a low priced "city car" that would have to be recharged at night) I think the real potential mass market is for gas/electric hybrids. Gasoline powered internal combustion engines are at their dirtiest and least efficient taking the car from zero to 25 mph. (My car has a mpg indicator and when starting up from a light I am always getting under 10 mpg, even though, on the highway, I get well over 20.) The concept of the hybrid is that the batteries take the car to 20 mph or so, then the gas engine kicks in powering the car from there and also recharging the batteries. This kiind of car is more complicated, obviously, but it has the potential of delivering huge mileage and very low emissions. It is a lot less complicated and costly than trying to put a fuel cell in a car, along with a small chemical factory in the trunk to extract pure hydrogen from gasoline or some other hydrocarbon fuel. Toyota is introducing a hybrid for sale in Japan in another week or two. It uses nickel metal hydride batteries, which ERC believes will cost Toyota several times what ERC's nickel zinc batteries would run. I know ERC has met with Toyota to discuss this. I wouldn't expect Toyota to change designs real soon, but eventually that may happen. The other thing I would add is to suggest people look at the public companies that are just working on advanced batteries. Most of them lose huge amounts of money, have nothing in the way of corporate partnerships to compare to ERC's with Corning and, assuming this deal goes through, Formosa Plastics, and have technology with much smaller market potential than ERC's does. Nevertheless, most of them have market caps as big or bigger than ERC, which never loses money. And none of them have anything like ERC's main business, fuel cells, in addition to their battery work. You could assume that the several hundred million dollars of work that has gone into ERC's fuel cells is completely worthless, and still say the stock is very cheap just on its battery potential.

To: Robert M. Winn who wrote (78)	12/8/1997 3:41:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 407

Robert: More good news on ERC today, so if form holds, it will go down a bit. :-( biz.yahoo.com The contract is a small one, but it only covers the design. Presumably, if the Coast Guard likes the design, a more substantial production contract will follow at some point. In terms of what the company has accomplished, it has been a very successful year for ERC. In terms of Wall St. recognition, once again a failure. The battery deal with the Chinese should have been worth a few points up on the stock, with another half dozen to follow when the deal gets signed early next year. I don't know what this Coast Guard thing will amount to, but it opens up another potential end market beyond stationary power for ERC's fuel cell technology. Sooner or later the market will figure all this out, and the stock will take off.