There was a great deal of good news in the conference call today.
While there was an absence of specific product announcements, there's plenty there to let us know that it will be soon, and some good hints about what at least one of the products will be.
I have taken the liberty of adjusting the words for flow (If anyone thinks I've inadvertently changed the meaning, please comment and I will adjust it as required.)
Conference call highlights.
Annual goal progress:
- First, we announced in September that we completed the display module development phase with our partner.
- Second, we began supporting them with the display module commercialization efforts in the third quarter under the $1.5 million support agreement that we announced in October.
- And finally, we received purchase orders in September for MicroVision-specific components totaling approximately $1.9 million. And in fact, we commenced shipments of these components this quarter. .....The multiyear commercial agreement negotiations are in progress and we are targeting completion later this year.
Multiyear commercial agreement negotiations?! -- this should be good news for stockholders!!
******
OEMS and Retailers interested in Multiple PicoP Products
Now what about additional opportunities? As we stated in our past quarterly calls, our business development efforts are focused on 4 main go-to-market coalitions that involve all the necessary stakeholders to enable a new market. In our case, this coalition includes display engine manufacturers, consumer-electronic OEMs and major retailers.
In Q3, we made significant strides on several go-to market paths in this area involving OEMs and major retailers that are interested in a variety of consumer electronic products that use PicoP display technology.
*******
Orders Shipping
In the third quarter, we began qualification cycle of production processes of MicroVision-specific components and our engineering quality and operations teams have been focused on production readiness activities to establish the baseline production capabilities. These activities are continuing in the fourth quarter as we ship and fulfill in customer orders.
*******
Multiple supply chains
These products will be built by OEMs, who make private label, or brand these products for retailers. Then the engine will come from one of our partners to go inside these products. Right now, we have multiple paths in works and they're at different stages........
The most important part from our side is to be ready with our MicroVision-specific component and enable the engine manufacturers, one of them who you already know and we announced, to be ready to provide their solutions to the product guys so they can basically start populating the retail channels.
Stable cash burn -- even during ramp up.
This is excellent news! one of the worries of company followers is that the company might have to raise money to increase production. This appears to indicate that this will NOT be necessary.
Q: (Uerkwitz).... should we expect OpEx to stay about where it's at or will we start to see that ramp up a little bit?
A...(Holt) The operating expenses are in a place where we expect to be able to ramp the business for a while with them. We're using contract manufacturers so as things ramp up, the investments that we have to make are not that large.
Contract in place with FG100 customer
Smaller scale because we are contributing less -- this does NOT mean that it is a small deal and that it will not lead to significant licensing and royalty revenue.
Q (Fitzgerald) ... is there a contract in place for that opportunity?
A (Tokman) .. That's correct. We have agreement in place. It's a smaller scale agreement than what we've done with Fortune Global 100 customer because we are contributing less.
Market Launch with Global 100 this year?
Q: (Fitzgerald) Do you see -- foresee a market launch this year with that customer? (F100 company)
A: these are our partners, we are restricted from what we can say. But our goal, remember, was to be ready with our components to be shipped to them in the fourth quarter and we are on track. And hopefully, more communication will come out. But at this point, we cannot comment on their product introduction time lines.
A number of Products
Q: (Szulist)...are we talking about how many different products, potentially, will have retail debuts in 2015?
A: (Tokman) ...we believe it's going to be a number of products. ..... We're going to be ready with what we need to provide to everybody to be successful. ...we collected and commissioned some direct consumer data that we, in fact, we have been using with them to educate them how to more effectively sell these products in these markets.
Rapid Ramp up not a problem
Q: (Szulist) ...Let's say you got a $5 million order, can you reach that? And how long will it take you?
A: (Tokman) ... if somebody comes into us and says, "Look, can you get to $5 million per year rate?" We would give them a date and say, "Look, we can get to this rate by this date to this rate, but yes, we can eventually get to $5 million. No problem."
No Bottlnecks
Q: (Szulist) ...So you really don't have any bottlenecks and you're very scalable in your current business model?
A: (Tokman) ...We don't see it at this point in time. You can never be absolutely sure. But at this point in time, we feel comfortable about setting up baseline to enable the initial launches and also ramping this capacity to enable higher volumes.
Questioner apparently worried about meeting demand
What I read from this is that the questioner has seen the product, anticipates significant demand and is concerned about any impediments to production. I'm worried (and pretty excited about ) crazy demand for this product once it hits the public as well. I've also seen it, and I know.
(Szulist) "my only view is that I'm concerned that if we are successful with what we've been waiting for throughout these years is that we don't have any kind of bottlenecks that'll just let us flow because I've seen the products so I know."
Green Lasers Not a problem
(Tokman) If we had green laser situation in 2010 than we have today, we would all be smiling. Everyone would be smiling right now.... we're feeling pretty good about the green laser situation.
Environment for PicoP excellent
... A long very upbeat discussion about it -- too long to copy, check
Seeking Alpha Here
(Tokman)
Basically, just all you need to know is that there is a list of automotive and consumer companies we are working on. They're all recognizable names
.... there is more. All the questioners were very upbeat. The tone of the whole call was positive. Progress isn't as fast as any of us would like, but it's steady, and it appears we're getting very close to product announcements.
