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

To: William Epstein who wrote (11545)	5/29/1999 3:41:00 PM
From: Tickertype	Respond to of 27311

Bill, Some of your conclusions are certainly on the mark, like the point you make about introducing the product in Korea being safer in case problems are encountered. The damage to Valence would no doubt be less. Also, I too believe that companies in the Far East will not hesitate to steal your technology right out from under you if they get the chance, so Lev has to be careful on that front also. But Hanil has only been given those steps (of the 20) that are less critical, namely the assembly process. The most valuable part of the process, from what I've heard, is the chemistry and the making of the film components which they shipped to Hanil. To make the batteries, Hanil of course needs all the details that go with the assembly process. Now if Lev was to license the entire process to the japanese for instance, as has been speculated, I would hope the agreement he makes will be really ironclad! But is he turning to the Koreans because he can't get contracts here? The jv with Hanil was set up several years ago, before Valence was close to testing the domestic waters, so I don't think they would have known what the resistance level would be by the time they finally got to the production phase. I also recall a conf. call two years ago when the CEO (Cal Reed at that time) said he was confident they could sell all they could produce. Since all their resources were being concentrated in NI, I would think he was referring to the batteries they would produce there. So I think the jury is still out on this question. If we don't see a real contract by the end of july, I'll probably be chewing my fingernails in a big way. - T -