The original investing premise for Microvision: Everyone wants a smaller device and a bigger screen

STILL HOLDS TRUE.

Just add some LiDAR into the mix.

The video (I'm about 4 minutes in so far, is a great explanation of AR, and how MicroVision can create more screen real estate.)

AUGMENTED reality Near Eye Displays are worth at least what LiDAR will be worth.

I think a LOT more. 

We are likely in my opinion to get more value in the near term from LiDAR.

What's it worth? 

My recent price target was Minimum of LAZR X 2 Market cap. 

I stand by all my valuation estimates still and I'm happily holding.

APPLE, GOOGLE, AMAZON & MICROSOFT are ALL WORKING ON AUGMENTED REALITY AND SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES....

 Four Companies are all working on two things as "the next big things" Augmented Reality and Self driving vehicles.

Combined they are worth 6.921 Trillion
Together they have 340 billion in cash

If they have a bidding competition for key technology that will give them an edge against the others, how much would they be willing to pay? 

Is 20 Billion too much? (That's about $130/share)

I am holding and will continue to hold

Some have called, texted, and emailed to ask about it.... so: I am holding and will continue to hold. 

There is some broader market uncertainty, and there should be... I think MVIS should be either largely unscathed by this or benefit from it. (Finding an issue with real growth potential in a market of shrinking issues could benefit us.)

 

The basic benchmark (for the time being) is LAZR.

Microvision's LiDAR is better than theirs, so for the LiDAR vertical we should equal or exceed their price.

12,000,000,000 / 155,000 = $77/share for Microvision. (For LIDAR)

I believe Microvision's near eye display is worth at LEAST what the LiDAR is worth.

$77 * 2 = $154 -- that's my target right now. { This isn't including the interactive laser display, display only, or other cool things MicroVision has in their bag of tricks. }

Eventually the LAZR comparison will break down - not sure what the trigger will be (yet)

Once AR gets renewed attention I believe it will effect MVIS at least as much as the attention that LiDAR has received.

This is all my opinion... I'm doing me. You do you.

To simplify even further...

 Four Companies are all working on two things as "the next big things" Augmented Reality and Self driving vehicles.

Combined they are worth 6.921 Trillion
Together they have 340 billion in cash

If they have a bidding competition for key technology that will give them an edge against the others, how much would they be willing to pay? is 20 Billion too much?

The Value Question: Part 1 -- Interactive Display.

I have stuff to do so I need to break this one up.

If MicroVision is for sale, it's a pretty good idea for the shareholders to get an idea of what it's worth. (This is all MY opinion, and I'm not making any recommendations.)

Interactive Display:

This was DELAYED, not destroyed.

From the November 6 Conference Call:

"Our activities related to our Interactive Display solutions resulted in a major step forward during the past few months as customer due diligence work has now led to negotiations for component purchase agreement that we aim to complete this quarter fora targeted launch of our interactive display module in 2020. As customer products come to market, we expect our company revenues could reach $100 million over a 12-month period, following product launches that we expect to start in the second half of 2020"
I have my reasons for believing that this customer is AMAZON. ($AMZN)

The Value question:

Company sale criteria (5x IBITDA)  If it's the only income and is expected to continue at this rate, then this vertical would be worth $500,000,000 (or $3.75/Share)

Or.....

100 million per year / # shares * PE ratio

100,000,000 / 140,000,000 = $0.71/share in earnings. (Yes, I know there are expenses that will have an effect.)

PE 20 (20*.71) = $14.20/share
PE 30 (30*.71) = $21.30/share

We don't need to take that higher.... whatever the case I think for this vertical the range is huge... something possibly less than $3.75 to somewhere north of $21.

Where it ends up, depends on the anticipated size of the market.

Given the amazing potential of "The Internet of Things" this could be significantly bigger than many of us believe. (I doubt it will be smaller.) My own theory is that everything that uses a powerful computer benefits from its own screen. (Doom on Thermostat)

The company knows a LOT more than I do.

Remember this is for one vertical, and probably the smallest one.

Barring significant interruptions, I'll be working through the rest of the verticals this week.
Hat tip to KYinvestor.
 

Video from CES

Thanks for the heads up Mike!

Great review and discussion of the Interactive display at CES

Amazon Breadcrumb

I've been fairly confident that Amazon is on board for some time.

Part of the story has been relayed here before.. I still won't name names, but I will say Amazon now.... (A Story That Can Now Be Told)

This is some new Sleuthing that's pretty good, how much weight you might give permissions, etc. (are they dropping a hint? I don't know.)

I know the reaction from an Amazon engineer when asking about an interactive display told me all I really needed to know.

I've also asked enough people who sell this thing that the addition of the screen is the number one requirement for the second speaker purchased.

Thank you Walt!


Microvision has a new Data Sheet

The Poached Salmon Platter seems pretty innocuous...

But it is the exact listing from The Whole Foods (wholly owned by Amazon) from Bellevue Washington... right down the street from MVIS HQ... 

Race to Replace Smart Phones

Got the heads up on this from a couple of different sources last night and this morning.

This is where we are.

Given that Microsoft is shipping... it will be happening sooner than CNBC thinks.

CNBC

Fox News

The video is from Fox news.... I've had trouble getting it to play.

****

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Most of the biggest names in Big Tech are racing to create smart glasses that we wear everywhere and that may replace our phones.

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Snap, Facebook Apple, Magic Leap and others are all working on some form of smart glasses or headset that will change how we view the world around us. Instead of pulling a phone out of our pockets to talk to people or interact with apps, we may do these things simply by speaking to, and looking through, a set of glasses.

There’s a race to be the first to make a set of glasses that everyone will wear, which means they have to be fashionable and sleek enough to wear all day and everywhere you go. Advocates of the technology hope that you’ll one day be able to replace every screen in your life with just one pair of smart glasses.

Conference Presentation....

MicroVision is Naming Names.  

MVIS Presentation

This is nearly as good in my mind as an out and out announcement.(IMHO)

• Amazon
• Google
• Facebook

Did NOT mention who is the BB partner (or what it is.... or did they?)

Did NOT mention who is the display only partner (or did they?)

Love this slide:

Links to two specific videos...  Check out the listing at WPG Holdings.... (BELOW)






Facebook F8 Announcement

"Facebook Announces Spaces, VR Hangout App, For Oculus Rift F8 Conference"

I think very interesting the missing "Portal Speaker."


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WPG Holdings Projection Smart Speaker Solution. (WPG Holdings is a distributor if you haven't already been following along. MicroVision is in very good company there.)

This engine, (the PSE-0403st) is a version of the INTERACTIVE engine -- not the Display only version. (See MicroVision Displayground for write up.)

Amazon Bezos' Letter

And we know they're going to be WAY more useful with BIG & interactive screens.

They are inviting anyone to create devices with "Alexa" inside. (I had a very nice chat at CES with an Amazon representative who is part of that program.)

Things are going to get interesting.

Full Letter Text


CNBC

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has released his latest annual shareholder letter.

In the letter, Bezos stressed the importance of having high standards in running a business. By setting high standards, companies are able to live up to "ever-rising customer expectations," he said.

"How do you stay ahead of ever-rising customer expectations? There's no single way to do it – it's a combination of many things. But high standards (widely deployed and at all levels of detail) are certainly a big part of it," Bezos wrote in the letter.

Bezos also disclosed for the first time that Prime now exceeds 100 million members worldwide. In 2017 alone, Amazon added more Prime members than any prior year, and shipped over five billion items through the paid membership service worldwide, he said.

Amazon also sold the most number of devices last year, with customers buying "tens of millions" of Echo devices, Bezos wrote in the letter.

With regards to Whole Foods, Bezos said the "technical work" is currently under way to bring Prime member benefits to the grocery chain.

Alexa – Customer embrace of Alexa continues, with Alexa-enabled devices among the best-selling items across all of Amazon. We’re seeing extremely strong adoption by other companies and developers that want to create their own experiences with Alexa. There are now more than 30,000 skills for Alexa from outside developers, and customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa. The foundations of Alexa continue to get smarter every day too. We’ve developed and implemented an on-device fingerprinting technique, which keeps your device from waking up when it hears an Alexa commercial on TV. (This technology ensured that our Alexa Super Bowl commercial didn’t wake up millions of devices.) Far-field speech recognition (already very good) has improved by 15% over the last year; and in the U.S., U.K., and Germany, we’ve improved Alexa’s spoken language understanding by more than 25% over the last 12 months through enhancements in Alexa’s machine learning components and the use of semi-supervised learning techniques. (These semi-supervised learning techniques reduced the amount of labeled data needed to achieve the same accuracy improvement by 40 times!) Finally, we’ve dramatically reduced the amount of time required to teach Alexa new languages by using machine translation and transfer learning techniques, which allows us to serve customers in more countries (like India and Japan).

•

Amazon devices – 2017 was our best year yet for hardware sales. Customers bought tens of millions of Echo devices, and Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick with Alexa were the best-selling products across all of Amazon – across all categories and all manufacturers. Customers bought twice as many Fire TV Sticks and Kids Edition Fire Tablets this holiday season versus last year. 2017 marked the release of our all-new Echo with an improved design, better sound, and a lower price; Echo Plus with a built-in smart home hub; and Echo Spot, which is compact and beautiful with a circular screen. We released our next generation Fire TV, featuring 4K Ultra HD and HDR; and the Fire HD 10 Tablet, with 1080p Full HD display. And we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Kindle by releasing the all-new Kindle Oasis, our most advanced reader ever. It’s waterproof – take it in the bathtub – with a bigger 7” high-resolution 300 ppi display and has built-in audio so you can also listen to your books with Audible.

Race for the smart Home

Alexa more likely than Apple.... 

SouthChinaMorningPost

For the smart home, the key developer partners are the makers of household devices ranging from lighting systems to refrigerators. There are currently about 250 devices that are certified to work with Alexa, and Amazon has encouraged rapid development of third-party applications with its open-systems approach and even financial incentives for some partners.

Apple’s Homekit, by contrast, has about 100 certified devices. And the reasons behind that gap show both the risks and the potential rewards of Apple’s approach.

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The devices have to be made in special factories that are certified by Apple. A confidential Apple document obtained by Reuters lists more than 800 of these factories, but only a few specialise in home automation products.

Developers can ask Apple to certify an unlisted factory they want to use. But the limited selection means that device makers can’t always get the best prices or work with their preferred factories.

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Alexa, by contrast, only requires smart home companies to write software code and submit it to Amazon for review. There are no special chips. To earn the “Works with Alexa” label -which isn’t required to function with Alexa but does help promote products on Amazon’s website - startups must have their products physically tested. Amazon does allow that to happen in a third-party lab, however.

Once those certifications are in hand, Amazon says it will decide whether or not a device gets the “Works with Alexa” label within 10 days.

Interesting stuff from NVIDIA

At one point, you just wonder if the guy slipped just a bit.

To go straight to what we think is the good stuff, start at 34:00....

Thanks Joe!


At Source

So, check out the LibraTone, another interesting company and device to watch. This wouldn't have caught my attention much, except that it claims streaming of YouTube, Amazon, and Particularly Netflix.

I can see streaming YouTube on a speaker for some music, but I see little reason at all to stream Netflix without images coming along too. 

Given the recently released Microvision video (below) this may be another place to watch.

LibraTone

Back to Basics

Sure, we're all wondering what the future is going to bring with this little company. We're getting swept up in a whole lot of market turmoil. Aggressive (and ill-advised) shorting of the stock hasn't helped either.

For those of us who were at the ASM in 2013 and saw the PicoP equipped Samsung phone and the PicoP equipped Kindle Fire tablet -- that was absolutely awesome. I wasn't the only person there wondering out loud where and when I could get one of those devices.

Just in case you're curious, here's what it looked like (the PicoP projected image is on the ceiling -- a powerful plug-in model is projecting on the wall.)



This capability is due to be available world-wide in the coming month. It's not a fantasy. 

It took longer than we expected - but that's common when dealing with completely new technologies. When we first see it, we hope that it will be available immediately, or "next year" -- but prototyping is a different animal than mass production. Creating mass production for a new item is as laden with peril as getting the first prototype from the concept. I think that the MicroVision / Sony team has done an incredible job making that happen.

In a couple of weeks the MP-CL1 will be available in the US.

I'm pretty sure that we'll benefit as well from the massive investments made in mobile streaming video -- which is arriving in the same time-frame with an 80 million dollar promotional budget from Verizon.

Are we nervous? Sure, we're a small company being jostled around by a volatile market.

Am I confident? Yes. Everyone who I've showed this technology to has been wowed by it.... millions of potential investors, all looking for the next big thing -- will start seeing this in action from a big company in the next couple of weeks.

Everyone wants a bigger screen on their cellphone. This is a six foot screen you can put in your pocket.