Ann: BluGlass to host Meet the Management shareholder session, page-31

The problems in the past (under Giles Osborne) was:

1. They were spun off from Macquarie university too early and ran into contamination issues which bogged them down for a number of years to around 2012
2. They then got bogged down in LED's and in particular attempting to licence their RPCVD technology to a major player. This turned out to be naive since all those players wanted was to overstretch BLG with more expenditure on research thus exposing BLG to going broke and then attempting to "pull the rug" and buy them out from an administrator for a song - thankfully it didn't work and BLG survived; IMO it was a gutsy move to get out from under but we should not have put ourselves in that position in the first place - you (hopefully) live and learn and realize it's a "dog eat dog" world
3. James Walker then took over and the company realized that it needed a high margin product where RPCVD had an "edge" - this was lasers (as opposed to mass market LED's and photovoltaics) - this was a massive change of direction and thankfully they then got Jim Haden on board to push it
4. Lasers production involves many more steps than the RPCVD process - they didn't have a fab to undertake these tasks - they have now done that but this increases their fixed cost base but sets them up for larger scale production where marginal costs should be lower - another gutsy move.
5. They adopted a conservative approach of attempting to match competitors products (using MOCVD); their is a learning curve and thus product to date have not matched the reliability (and life) of competitive (and well established) products - but their getting there. It's difficult to get OEM's to change suppliers unless the competitive product has compelling "unique selling points" - in this market price is usually not the differentiator and there is a low incentive to change from "the devil you know" - this makes your product "sticky" once it's established but is a barrier to entry.
6. BLG now appear to be moving on to demonstrate unique (or rare) products in terms of wavelength and further to higher efficiencies (using their tunnel junction lasers and now DFB lasers - these new products will no doubt have a gestation period and also need to be integrated into OEM products (which takes time).

At the end of the day it's a leap of faith on their new product offerings. If they fit a "niche" and they have sufficient money to see them through the wilderness then hopefully they will make it. What I am impressed by is that the highly qualified technical staff appear to have sufficient faith when their skills and earning capacity with competitors is in high demand - be interesting to see what they say at tomorrows webinar but currently I'm inclined to back them but to not bet my shirt but then I'm a gluten for technology, innovation and supporting the underdog who could disrupt established players.