Ann: AML3D to Establish USA Facility following Capital Raise, page-58

BAE is finally doing something with this prototyping contract that 'could' turn into something more material, but I think Austal is looking for a handout and signed contracts before doing any further investing in Henderson or Australia in general. Austal has committed to the new printer being made in the US but remains to be seen whether there will be any other machines or manufacturing contracts. Austal seems to still be in a pretty bad place right now, so I doubt she has much free capital for investing or acquiring businesses anytime soon, only thing holding her up is Andrew Forrest buying in, the Hanwha offer and expectations for general purpose frigates in AU, submarine work that seems to have been contracted out to ASC and BAE or further submarine work in the US.

To be fair costs are still low, Erbert seems like he's being paid too much but the extra recent costs are for expanding the software team and investing in the tech and software suite. We just haven't seen the 12odd million in contract flow into the quarterlies yet, it will be coming in the next one and the following. If those quarterlies aren't looking great though then we might have a problem. All in all though the US Navy would not even be talking to a company with nothing to offer let alone contracting work to them and justifying a domestic facility. There is value here somewhere.

The 3D printing industry in general is just doing trash right now. First movers on the US market moved to quick and got inflated through covid and now it seems like 3D printers are going bankrupt on a quarterly basis, even the bigger US ones are struggling. The private ones are still doing amazing work behind the scenes in the aerospace industry like with Hypersonix out of Queensland now working with the US government on their hypersonic program. They blew up too quick with hype through covid then we entered a recession with high rates and confidence in the industry has plummeted with the failures of successive companies. Can't tell the treasure from the trash, hopefully this one isn't trash.

Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report - POLITICO - US shipbuilding looking worse and worse by the day. Time is ripe for AML, it was a good decision to hasten the move to the US. These big monopolistic companies we rely on for defense have become too concerned with profit margins in peace time and are now filled to the brim with inefficiencies after underinvesting in infrastructure and capacity for years.