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

To: John Curtis who wrote (2928)	5/20/1998 11:50:00 AM
From: Raven McCloud	Respond to of 27311

Yahooo...for sure John. Thanks for taking the time to post the synopsis. Sure do appreciate it. What a wonderful trading morning it's been with Valence. Michael

To: John Curtis who wrote (2928)	5/20/1998 11:54:00 AM
From: Jay Lowe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

Nice report, John ... reviewing the notes I took, you seem to have covered everything and captured a lot of accurate quotes. As I remember 4 of 7 analysts offered "Congratulations...", and comments such as "you seem to have made a lot of progress" So it looks like analyst sentiment is/will be favorable. Lev not grilled very much on burn-rate, cash, etc ... one analyst asked the obvious questions which Lev handled well. I'll go over my notes and add more details later but your report stands on it's own ... nice work! and thanks ...

To: John Curtis who wrote (2928)	5/20/1998 12:46:00 PM
From: Javelyn Bjoli	Respond to of 27311

Pretty exciting to hear VLNC ready to move to production. I heard a couple of things in the CC that bothered me a lot: 1) Only 2 large customers have heavily evaluated the batteries to date. I was expecting 10+. They did say they now have enough production capacity to send hundreds of samples to many more potential customers. But this is essentially a 3-6 month setback to adoption by multiple customers. 2) They declined to say how much cash they have left. They also stated that since Lev arrived, they have increased their production rate for R&D evaluation, which has increased their burn rate from the previous $1M/month. It seems likely that they cannot get to high volume production before they get some more money, which they stated they wish to do through debt. A few of the bigger positives (for me): * They actually said something. * They have substantially increased production of samples for internal R&D testing, which has taught them how to make a much more consistent product, and allowed them to see more clearly the results of changes to the design. Before, they said, their results were too inconsistent to clearly see improvements. A consistent product is key to winning large companies as customers. * They seem to know what size batteries they will make first, the 4x4" for CD-ROM bay notebook batteries. They do not have great enough differentiation against cell phone batteries, because the small size (ratio of goo to can & airspace in pack) does not give them as noticeable a gain in capacity. I suspect it is also because a cutting-edge Li-polymer notebook would be a low volume product at first, giving them time to ramp production. Their (?) machine can do up to 2x3" cells and the (?) machine can do up to 4x5" cells (didn't write down the equipment mfrs). The machine to do larger cells such as 8x10" has not been installed yet. This is as close to a rollout strategy as I've ever heard from them. I'd say the earliest we can expect an announcement of a customer by name is October. VLNC has to spend the next 6 months finding money, bringing up some real volume capacity, and waiting for customers to evaluate the cells. By December it should be clear whether this is a reasonable play for less speculative investors. I realize most contributors to this thread are very heavily invested already, but I'm waiting for the next round of good news before wading back in.