I agree with your comments re Fred Bart on both counts.
- AKP gives inadequate and difficult to understand information compared with e.g. WBT.
- Bart's ongoing investment clearly demonstrates his personal confidence in the technology and progress to date. He undoubtedly does have a better understanding of the situation than ordinary holders do.
I think these both have to be considered
together whenever we are trying to fathom where we are at.
When you don't get told what is happening it is very difficult to interpolate or extrapolate to such situations. One can only resort to reading the tealeaves and entrails of what you have observed in the past.
Last time we were at a comparable stage there was an unexpected problem with the performance. The chip's arrival was declared 'imminent'. The communications at the time were confident and even ebullient until the problem revealed itself. What was then put out seemed to be as much about convincing the holders that there were solutions being implemented rapidly and that the delay would not take long, than they were about providing any technical insight into the actual technical problems. But the delay
was long, and in reality we are still waiting.
So I would also say that the company's recent announcements to date had indicated a genuine expectation of finished chips being provided in September. I don't think that whatever is happening was expected. Hence all the confidence and planning, and the brinkmanship of the 'going concern' issues.
The absence of an announcement indicates one or more problems
may have occurred. What the actual problem is we have no idea, but the absence of any follow up announcement indicates to me that there is likely to be lots of activity going on in the background, and probably frantically, that has been expected to resolve the problem in short order and allow them to comment, and presumably to comment favourably.
The dragging on of this is obviously worrisome but could be rapidly resolved by good news. I would expect that if the expected news was clearly bad they would have come out and said so by now. In fact I am quite surprised that the ASX has not already issued a 'please explain why your promises of finished and tested chips ready to be shown to the market have not been kept' at this point.
- There could be a number of problems with the chip itself, and not all necessarily serious. However if the chip is not up to standard I would not expect AP would have to pay anything to EM at this stage. That would undoubtedly include the 40,000 finished chip run, but it would surely also apply to the $9.6M production run. That has implications for the cash flow and the 'going concern' position.
- There could be issues with the business arrangements with EM, including EM's being permitted to buy/pay for AKP shares by Chinese govt.
- There could be issues with the IP protection. These could be pertinent given Bart's repeated comments that they want to keep all the IP and trade secrets under their hat until they have a product to show to the world.
- There could be good news to announce rather than bad, and they judge it worth waiting for before proceeding. e.g. Apple has ordered the entire production for the next 2 years so long as AP keeps the product under wraps for a bit. Fanciful yes, but stranger things happen.
Whatever it is we do not know
anything yet. But my guess - and it is a guess - is that the issues are not such that they are going to be
forced to declare anything major - i.e. nothing that prevents the company being able to be considered a going concern. A good and clear announcement would resolve the situation in short order. But they will certainly need to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat.
(20min delay)