To: nigel bates who wrote (13943 ) 5/19/1998 7:43:00 PM From: Donald Isenhower Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 17305
Nigel, Just a couple of comments in regards to high-temperature superconductor companies. Of the ones you listed in a previous message, AMSC is not tied into telecommunications like SCON and ISCO. Its work is with electric power applications such as HTC leads for superconducting magnets, HTC transformers, industrial motors, power conditioning, etc. Their most important backers are tied in with producing and distributing electricity and they are making good progress on moving towards production on several fronts. Their SMES devices are probably one of the most promising products, which for those who don't know what they are, they are basically a UPS with the potential of serving that purpose for a much larger current requirement than a UPS for a computer. The claim AMSC makes for a potential market is interesting, i.e., that short power outages cause significant losses in an industrial setting and HTC storage devices could allow companies to ride these out without any problem. If this makes anybody curious, you can go read the AMSC thread. There aren't all that many messages there and you may find it interesting who is investing in them. In regards to one other point on HTC products. It really isn't necessary for one to find a room-temperature superconductor for the area to take off. The SCON products are run with their own electronic cooler (which I believe SCON was/is selling to cool ICs), and seem to be near the point where they could take off in sales. For those who haven't thought about the filters used in cell phone networks, just work out the impact of improving the range of each cell station by 10-20%. Finally, I put all of these companies in the group of stocks that will either be worth 10 times what I paid for them or be bankrupt in 5-10 years. Since people here like shorter term plays it seems, be aware that these are far from companies with any type of long-term history to guess from as to what they will do next and trade very thinly, but if you look at a daily plot of AMSC you can see that you could have made some more car payments here recently! Truth in advertising: I own some AMSC and have been tempted by SCON. I decided to go with AMSC because they would give specific companies they were dealing with when they sold a SMES system or a transformer, whereas SCON apparently can only say "a major telecommunication firm is evaluating our ...." and I don't know enough about that field to feel comfortable not knowing for sure just who was testing their products. Donald