I'll do my best to share the mood in the meeting, the informal discussions and how questions from shareholders were answered.
Attending in person were Coby, Fred Bart, and the Co. Secretary (name ??). Joining by phone were Dadi Perlmutter and Ashley Krongold. There were various others re corporate lawyers and from the share registry...
I would say there were about 9 shareholders in in the room as well as Mark from TMT Analytics.
Coby was acting chairman and opened the meeting. Essentially he ran through the presentation that has now been released and he pretty much got through the whole deck before we got in to the questions.
Highlights from the presentation were:
TECHNOLOGY
- essentially Q1 19 target of optimisation has been achieved. He said that the optimisation process is never really over but they have done what they wanted.
- very happy with endurance figures of 100,000 cycles and they are looking to get to over 1 million
- addressed the issue of 10 years at room temperature and over room temperature but wouldn't give more specific data. He suggested more detail would be forthcoming about this in the future but that it was definitely in line with industry standards and expectations.
- he discussed the progress with 300mm wafers at 28nm and was very positive in this regard. Essentially you need to get in the que for production fabs and that just takes time but he was very confident that this was progressing as well as could be expected.
BUSINESS MODEL
- the priority is to drive revenue in the embedded memory market. This was made very clear.
- his aim is to secure potential customers now, with royalties flowing in about 18 months, which accords with the 2021 revenue target
- if possible NRE revenues could be achieved much earlier which compensates WBT for the tweaking and customising the product to a specific customers requirements.
- the AI / neuromorphic processing opportunity was very much the longer terms play. The reason for all the institute agreements was the WBT do not have the resources to do this research in house.
- he explained how excited they were with The Technion announcement because it was a step further than PIM (processing in memory) in that they were investigating creating logic gates with the actual reram memory cells. very advanced and exciting.
- Finally re-emphasised that embedded memory is the immediate commercial focus for driving revenues.
SHARE CONSOLIDATION
- There were a number of questions from attendees about the rationale / risks / timing of this decision.
- The reason is about being able to secure the "right type of international investors) who understand the semi conductor market and can understand the potential in this space the WBT represents
- Fred Bart got pretty animated at this stage. Saying if they had the right investors, with the right technical progress then the share price would go up. I liked that! I want to see these guys getting passionate and defending their decisions.
- They were challenged about why the consolidation was not done prior to the last CR and we were given reasons around market conditions, decision timeframes etc. Not overly happy with response in this regard.
- Ashley spike up a few times around this issue defending research around consolidations and it not necessarily resulting in DP decline - cited Bid Energy as an example although was at pains to clarify we are different businesses at different stages.
- Discussed seed selling and clearly they were all frustrated but outside of their control. It was asked whether the consolidation might facilitate an easier off market sale to the "right type of investor" and whilst no concrete answer was given I would see whether this might be one positive out of the consolidation.
After the meeting Coby was very approachable and forthright. I for one appreciated his answers to my questions. They are definitely aiming to create a world-class company and I am happy to keep my hard earned in WBT to see this thing through...
Hope this helps.
WBT Price at posting:
2.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)