KTG (ASX) History and valuation

Originally posted by Top Heavy: ↑

THESE ARE GOOD QUESTIONS AND INVESTORS NEED TO BE ABLE TO ANSWER THEM.

- Why haven't customers been lining up for these welding machines if the benefits are so significant?
- Are there other products out there that can achieve a similar result? Keep in mind that a lot of companies producing TIG Welding machines would have huge resources available to them to develop leading tech.
- Why hasn't another large welding machine manufacturer brought them out or taken a stake in their business. This would make the most sense as they would have amazing relationships with all the companies they need to sell too.
- If it is the only welding machine of its kind, how good are the patents world wide? Quite often small changes can be made to a product in order to avoid legal litigation. It's not like a pharmaceutical product, which needs trials taking years to gain an FDA or TGA listing. This is key, because if another company was selling a similar product outright, you would think that their customers would prefer to buy that and pay it off in just a few months, rather than paying a lifetime of WAAS fees. This would be the reason why this model has never been used in the past, not because KTG are the only ones ever to come up with the idea.
- Why haven't they sold hundreds of these units when the product has been available for years. Paying for the welder up front wouldn't be an issue for a billion dollar company, especially if it pays for itself in just a matter of months as stated in their presentation.
- Why if it has world wide potential to add value is there significant director selling in the first week?

One deceptive point is that they compare K-TIG to hand TIG, but much of the pipe stuff would be automated, so the benefits wouldn't be as great as they say. The investor presentation stated GE and the other had a 95% decrease in time however, so something must be good.

I assume the base machine is very expensive, and that's one reason for the slow take up.

K-TIG can only do to down welding (called 1G and 2G welding). It can't do welding where the liquid material will flow away (such as vertical or upside-down).

I also wonder if the machine is so good, that once it's sold there are no consumables to sell and therefore little ongoing profit.

Here's an alternate process. I don't know how many passes were made. It does seem slower than K-TIG, but not by much.
And Another

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Re: price of each machine, they were being sold for $125k each back around 7 years ago, according to this article:

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/sa-business-journal/welding-firm-k-tig-digs-into-overseas-market/news-story/98d50456e4cabdb8e5ab59046a106e90

Seems like it'd be quite expensive for a small firm, but not so much for larger companies.

Re: welding positions, the point that KTIG's machine only works in limited positions (1G and 2G) was also made by a stock critic on twitter ("StockSwami"). Anyone know how significant of an impediment is it for a welder not being able to weld vertically and in other positions, e.g. 3G/4G/5G? I'm not a welder so haven't been able to grasp the implications of this. The critic also claimed KTIG can't be used with certain materials like aluminium and carbon steel. Anyone know if this is true, and if so again how big of a deal is it?

(Still watching from the sidelines. Feel like there are still questions to be asked before one can be confident that KTG is a good investment.)