Axion is a small--and getting smaller--battery company that has replaced the negative lead electrode in the lead-acid battery with a carbon electrode (called a "PbC" battery). During charge and discharge, the positive electrode undergoes the same chemical reaction that occurs in a conventional lead acid battery, i.e. lead dioxide reacts with acid and sulphate ions to form lead sulphate and water. The main difference in the PbC battery is that the replacement activated carbon electrode does not undergo a chemical reaction at all. Instead, the very high surface area activated carbon electrode stores the protons (H+) from the acid in a layer on the surface of the electrode and the protons move to the positive electrode during discharge where they are neutralized to form water. The result is reduced acid concentration swings from the charged to discharged state. This results in considerable less sulfate corrosion and a longer battery life.
Faraday is spinning.
The battery has other characteristics: significantly faster recharge rates and greater charge acceptance, significantly longer cycle lives in deep discharge applications, and minimal required maintenance.
The company has been suffering. They have gone to great lengths to keep up their financing as they continue their march from research and development to commercialization.
This is my take on the annual Axion meeting, a take riddled with my bad science, financial bias and fatigue:
The meeting seemed smaller than last year, less hands-on guys. Mr. Peterson was there and, true to his guru status, wore sandals.
77% of shares voted on the motions.
Mr. Granville, a man with a sleepy, Walter Matthau look, stuck to his guns and reiterated the company would have significant orders by the next earnings call. He said some of the urgency in signing the PIPE financing was anxiety of the financial condition of the company by some potential customers. The discussion with potential manufacturing partners (two) was clarified a bit--at least to me--when he said one manufacturer was itself interested in the technology, another manufacturer had a customer who was. The first patent to expire is in 2022; the plate patent expires in 2027. He feels the technology is difficult to reverse engineer. In Class 8 trucks, much of the advantage of battery replacement comes from allowing the downsizing of the engine (which Ecosystem does not allow.)
Uniform string behavior where the PbC batteries self regulate in a series was a prominent, and to me new, theme.
Subjectively, I felt the technology, which has been worked on so long, had more to yield and this uncertainty might hurt the company with potential customers. Nonetheless, much of the advantages and disadvantages of the technology have been learned and further elaboration is probably the province of small back room labs. The next step here is whether the management can take this company from R and D to commercial.
As complicated as their technology is, their current business problem is no more, or less, complicated than that.
From an investment view, the PIPE financing has pit a few investors against the price of the stock and created a disjunction between the company value and the stock price behavior. However temporary--and it could be permanent--this disjunction seems to beg for exploitation.
Faraday is spinning.
The battery has other characteristics: significantly faster recharge rates and greater charge acceptance, significantly longer cycle lives in deep discharge applications, and minimal required maintenance.
The company has been suffering. They have gone to great lengths to keep up their financing as they continue their march from research and development to commercialization.
This is my take on the annual Axion meeting, a take riddled with my bad science, financial bias and fatigue:
The meeting seemed smaller than last year, less hands-on guys. Mr. Peterson was there and, true to his guru status, wore sandals.
77% of shares voted on the motions.
Mr. Granville, a man with a sleepy, Walter Matthau look, stuck to his guns and reiterated the company would have significant orders by the next earnings call. He said some of the urgency in signing the PIPE financing was anxiety of the financial condition of the company by some potential customers. The discussion with potential manufacturing partners (two) was clarified a bit--at least to me--when he said one manufacturer was itself interested in the technology, another manufacturer had a customer who was. The first patent to expire is in 2022; the plate patent expires in 2027. He feels the technology is difficult to reverse engineer. In Class 8 trucks, much of the advantage of battery replacement comes from allowing the downsizing of the engine (which Ecosystem does not allow.)
Uniform string behavior where the PbC batteries self regulate in a series was a prominent, and to me new, theme.
Subjectively, I felt the technology, which has been worked on so long, had more to yield and this uncertainty might hurt the company with potential customers. Nonetheless, much of the advantages and disadvantages of the technology have been learned and further elaboration is probably the province of small back room labs. The next step here is whether the management can take this company from R and D to commercial.
As complicated as their technology is, their current business problem is no more, or less, complicated than that.
From an investment view, the PIPE financing has pit a few investors against the price of the stock and created a disjunction between the company value and the stock price behavior. However temporary--and it could be permanent--this disjunction seems to beg for exploitation.
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