Just some more speculation and thoughts as to how the future may...

Just some more speculation and thoughts as to how the future may transpire...

Currently all eyes are on commercializing the embedded NVM IP. They may score a Dept. Defence contract with Skywater, and maybe Skywater have some other well respected customer that will give the market some confidence, but generally speaking, the first Skywater customer, nor Skywater only customers, will not give the market confidence that WBT embedded NVM IP will be broadly adopted by the electronics industry. Signing an IDM such as Intel, or subsequent customers through a bigger foundry is necessary, in my opinion, for the market to have confidence that the WBT embedded NVM IP will be widely adopted by the electronics industry, which will be the catalyst for sustained share price appreciation.

That in turn will put short sellers under pressure to cover.

The other side of the business that there has been little news of lately, albeit with initial development progress being disclosed some time back is discrete products. This business has far greater commercial potential for WBT than the embedded NVM IP (even as big as that is). I wonder if this side of the business has gone into stealth mode? That is, all development progress is kept on the down low until such time as its ready to launch.

The reason for this theory is that I think the potential for a takeover offer for the embedded NVM IP business (IE. before the discrete product is ready for market) seems unlikely to me. It would take a very long time, even for huge business (say a Samsung, etc) to get a return on acquiring this IP for say $1b, unless they were to license it to others, which then prevents the strategic advantage. Alternatively they can simply licence the IP from WBT, pass on the cost to the customer.

However, when (or if) development of the discrete product gets to a point where there is certainty it will be able to be manufactured and sold, the potential return on a multi $b buyout would make sense to a number of businesses, especially one of only the few businesses who currently manufacturer storage memory. Their future survival may depend on either licensing the product from WBT, or owning it.

Disclosing development details/milestones along the way seems to risk one of these businesses taking a chance on being able to buy WBT cheap before it is ready to fully launch, but knowing the technical details enough to know that all the heavy lifting has been done on developing the discrete product.

I expect there's a broad range of thoughts and opinions on this... if only one of us knew what the future held!

Interested in hearing other thoughts and opinions in the interests of broadening the conversation and thought bubble.