If I understand the business model AP has clearly and frequently depicted itself using, the first production run of approved chips, i.e. the ones that are being prepared now, will be demonstrated and sampled out to prospective customers to evaluate. Here's your developers kit. Here's your specs. Here's how to use them. See what you can do with them and get back to us with your orders.
If the product is as good as we have been led to believe it will be, then there will be many interested parties from day zero, from the top global players down to the backstreet audio innovators.
The next stage would be probably for some early orders from faster-to-market manufacturers of fancy-pants leading-edge audio-anorak products going to Arab princes with gold plating and diamonds around the edges. These may only need a 6-8 month lead-time to market. This serves to establish a desirable market profile for the AP speakers.
The big players would be typically 18 months to market from sampling, so unless they buy an exclusive right to be the first to release an AP enabled product they will probably not be the first instance of AP products on the market.
The point is this: all of these markets come with a given lead time from the customer from when they order to when they take delivery, which also allows time for AP to order integration-ready MEMS from Tower SemiConductor and its partners and take delivery of finished chips. Lead times are simply a given. Finance works around such things.
I do not think Tower is going to be in the dark about the state of play either at AP or in the wider market. Tower will be very excited about AP MEMS, because it will put them further up on the map. When Tower knows that they have made, and can routinely make and deliver a working product to spec, they will be in on the planning for the product. They will then plan their production around the marketing plans from AP.
The whole point of AP's strategy is to use a major fab to produce the product for them, to their specs. The same with the ASIC and the packaging. AP basically writes an order and rapidly receives finished, packaged, boxed production-line-ready product that can be delivered direct to the customer if necessary. Then they get their cash on normal commercial terms.
If AP gets an order for X million chips, that is going to be good for their credibility with financial institutions. As #No_8 says above, an initial order from Apple or the like is hard to argue with if you are a banker eager to remain as the banking partner of the company that asks for a little more working capital.
That does not mean AP will never set up to do the less technical side including packaging. But you have to have a good case to do so that saves you money and risk.
So does AP need a CR? I think not. Certainly not to get to second base: a saleable working product.
Will Fred see a financial benefit of letting some of his substantially enhanced holding go for cash? Maybe, but only for many billions of dollars I expect.
However this is all my conjecture. What would I know that is not staring us all in the face. GLTAH!
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