Commercialising any complex new technology entails a constant process of testing and refinement, and delays are the norm, not the exception. For this reason, I think Ambri’s management made a significant error in giving specific dates (originally May 04) for the CVT milestone. The dates should have been kept internal (non-public) as milestones for Ambri’s scientific staff to work towards. But making the milestone dates public has given shareholders (and traders) unrealistically firm expectations. Even if excellent progress on the track to commercialisation is being made (which it obviously is), when these milestone dates are not unambiguously met, small shareholders panic and dump the stock. This is what has happened today and yesterday. What management should have said in the business plan delivered last year was simply that the company is progressing well towards CVT and market release and that it would provide shareholders with monthly (or two-monthly) updates of this progress. With each update, management could have given rough, ball-park estimations as to when CVT may be achieved, but done so without committing themselves to a specific date. This way, small shareholders would have felt informed and would have known that the technical risk was been reduced as each month passed. In short, small shareholders who are unfamiliar with the complexities of new product development would have had realistic expectations. If this had been done, I’m confident that the SP would be trading well above 40c at present.
All of Ambri’s commercialisation objectives have a high likelihood of being met in a reasonable time frame. This is what is important. But management has not clearly conveyed this fact to small shareholders.
ABI Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
