I do not dislike this company so lets get that out in the open. However, I'll take your bait and play devil's advocate for the sake of academia and that of investors who might be on the fence.
"Take a closer look at the fundamentals, marketing expertise (outstanding), capital structure, latest reviews on Amazon."
Amazon
is marketing. Any bean counter for any company who has ever offloaded product on Amazon/ebay knows that the margins are sheet after those clearing houses take their cut. They work great for new mom and pop businesses or for offloading loss-leaders to reach their web traffic but its not a way to generate real revenue. What real marketing is this company doing? For example, in my second post on this message board I linked video where the company president hand delivered an R2 to a highly watched youtube reviewer obviously in the hopes of having the guy give the printer a good review. The reviewer then proceeds to equate the printer with a high schooler making a C average grade (A, B, C, D, & F from best to worst) and ended the vid by saying that machine was just not ready.
Watch the video again. That is not outstanding marketing. That is stupid and the guy in charge of marketing should be fired for that offense alone. They put the company president out on a limb and left him holding the bag.
"The filament market alone is exciting. Look at HP for example they earn most of there revenue on the ink not the printer. Our recent deal with colour fab was a big growth step in the right direction."
For one, robo is not HP. We're talking about a hell of a lot more zeros behind HP's budget to market ink correctly compared to robo. Second, if Mercedes uses a top-of-the-line Goodyear tire vs. a top-of-the-line Michelin tire does anyone really care? They are still going to like or hate Mercedes based on the merit of the car company. Good tires are the icing on the cake and are definitely important but no-one is busting out the silverware for just the icing. Focus on the printer first and then worry about deals with filament companies. Those deals are gimmicky marketing to distract from real issues.
"Robo has over 30 different materials it can print. I can not say that about Ultimaker and others unless you can prove me wrong?"
Name those 30 filaments. Please make sure to count all PLA-derivative materials as 1 because essentially there are hundreds of different filaments with different names but they all derive from PLA. Any printer that can't print any/all PLA-derivative filament might as well be a 1970's typewriter at this point. Even if the R2 could print that many different filaments not based off PLA it would only be because the extruder is a clone of
this. Where is the real R&D?
The management slapped together a machine that they thought investors would like with co-partners that have names that shareholders could easily look up on the internet and say "Hey, I've heard of foxconn. Hey, colorfabb is respected in 3d. Robo must be doing something right." But that is not how 3d printing works. You can not fool customers anymore with old marketing tactics because everything can be researched within a few clicks and comparisons can be made on the spot. You may fool a few customers/investors with that crap because they are new to 3d printing but you will not have happy or repeat buyers once the jig is up. The companies who are currently making waves in the industry are full of pros in 3d printing because they know the technology. If management doesn't know the technology then the truth will come out and faith in the company will tank (kind of like the current stock price).
