MNS threads on HC, page-316

my impression is the changing goals are " tells" wrt to what is occurring on the ground , there is a lot more chatter about MV manufacturers and utility customers , they are obviously progressing these discussions and nothing is finalised , so it's a general reflection of rising management optimism anchored in a reality that's opaque to us .

I remember briefing both Howard & Keating just before the election that Keating lost on the Telstra outsourcing deal to IBM . it was extremely tricky in that we hadn't closed the deal and both politicians wanted details & we simply hadn't finalised the deal so we didn't have all the details they were demanding . I was the lead negotiator and project leader and the project was at a really difficult stage & inconvenient to have an election so we either couldn't tell them stuff we didn't have know and both politicians were seeking to spin it in a way to their advantage .

I mention this because it reminds me of the fog we encountered then , trying to steer a big project through a political fog without getting to far ahead of yourself , knowing the path toward your goal but trying to nail down details as you go , trying to keep shareholders informed not being able to tell them much until it was all nailed legally .

we started with a $350 m project and ended up with a $2.8b contract , trying to keep plates spinning on poles is bamboozling .

this is where I imagine they are now , they are caught between government negotiations and customer negotiations without losing a plate .

I saw the site owner has committed to demolishing the massive IBM manufacturing plant at Endicott , the owner wouldn't have committed to this capital expense without some proof it was worth the investment

funding would come from boot strapping a large contract . The 1g plant is tiny , my expectation is they'll get funding help to scale a large expansion from the customer and they'll parlay that contract into some government funding , the large customer will likely help lobby the government to ensure the expansion occurs

if for instance a large utility or EV manufacturer comes on board with an order then the funding is much easier to secure because you can use that contract to secure the funding , the contract becoming an asset you can borrow against .

hence my spinning plate analogy , they are particularly hard deals to pull off because you've got multiple parties government , landlords , customers, capital providers with their own agendas and they need to be all bought together into a viable plan forward

This typical of the kind of deals in that large deals always involve multiple parties . the noise we are hearing is the optimism typical of these type of deals before they settle .

I'm very optimistic because success usually involves large incentives for each stakeholder to close a deal .

the incentives here are high for everyone involved , a customer needs to close to achieve supply of their inputs to produce end product , politicians want jobs for their constituency , vendor wants to expand drive & drive revenue which in turn drives momentum and incentive for the other stakeholders to close