Whilst there is always a lot of optimism as shareholders I am happy as I hold shares in CFO, I also like to play the devils advocate. Lets look at the possible challenges ahead/current for CFO (
other than no contracts)
Firstly CFO is a materials supplier, and some of the worst deals get handed to these folks:
- Ie GT Advanced (Apples former exclusive sapphire glass manufacturer, now bankrupt)
This is could possibly already be true as you can see the abysmal profit margins from their actual sales in the previous quarter.
(Quarterly:
299K sales -235K material costs alone, not including staff costs or admin costs
-452K or new machinery costs
-303k, listed under investments)
They make 64K per 299K from
converting the coal material to foam, that means they need to
sell atleast 2100K (2.1million) per quarter to cover current staff wages alone [452k] if they hired no-one else to help with all the extra work making 7 times more stuff would entail.
So for a patented, and innovative product, why is the margin so thin? Why did they so quickly pursue PFOAM, if there was a lucrative market here?
One reason I can think of is because, they are selling CFOAM to the guy who invented it, developed the process for it and knows it better than they do. He KNOWS how much it costs to make he literally invented the product and patented it at his lab, now he's offloaded the business to some others so he can focus on turning the product into other stuff. So when he negotiates, he knows what the benchmark is, it's his benchmark after all. Right?
Not only that, he happens to be their biggest and currently only significant contract, which limits their potential margins and sets a very low market rate, let me reiterate it is horribly low
2.1million/quarter in sales to cover staff wages, but he's probably not the only problem. They could probably sell it to someone else who doesn't know right?
But lets remember the patent is for a specific PROCESS to make carbon foam, based on coal rather than a blanket Carbon Foam patent. Carbon Foam can be made in other ways:
Ie. Carbon Foam, made from bread.
That means that they are definitely also competing with other manufacturers and possibly other similar processes with end results that are Carbon Foam.
Want proof? Google '
Carbon Foam manufacturers' CFO is one, but there are many others, many are bigger fish with carbon foam as a secondary.
So this is possibly why they jumped the gun and went for a license for PFOAM as soon as they did despite the hype on this board about CFOAM.
Ok, from what I can see with PFOAM.
PFOAM is used in LED lighting as heatsinks by LED-NA, which seems like a horribly average company, and they have been doing it for several years now. CFO have bought the license to make it for them, more or less and also to market it to others, which is great but the product was invented at or before 2010 and ORNL have been marketing it to others for at least 7 years now.
Proof:
https://www.ornl.gov/news/ornl-graphite-foam-technology-licensed-led-north-america
There is no other user that has been published for the PFOAM in the last 7 years that I found.
Theres also more other important information in the recent TRL-CFO partnership announcement that they are more or less imply to without saying directly if you read carefully and between the lines. I'll leave it at this for now because I don't want to scare anyone.
I hold shares in this and would love for it to go up, but at the same time it needs to go up based on actual solid finances. I will probably regret this post, but it annoys me when people are so misconceived also correct me if anything I've said is wrong because that would be awesome.
My belief is hold for this stock and wait for new information.
