6 Dec 2017: Audio Pixels Holdings Limited (ASX: AKP and OTC: APDXY), a leader in the digital transition of loudspeakers, informs its shareholders that its fabrication partner has revised its guidance on the delivery time of wafers meeting the required specifications for completion of the company’s final phase of its commercialization plan.
26 Feb 2018: The Company is pleased to announce that it received and tested, randomly selected production wafers that had reached a critical stage of the modified fabrication process. The resulting measurements indicate PRECISE adherence to specifications, including specifications pertaining to newly optimised dissipation layers and electrical interconnects.
3 Apr 2018: The company has begun the process of testing and validating the performance specifications of the wafers; an effort that will be accelerated immediately upon return of our full staff from Passover holiday vacation.
Nearly all AKP’s announcements make reference to checking against precise performance specifications. Now after years of AP checking against these specifications, they will let us in on the secret herbs and spices that are used as a baseline for determining a PASS/FAIL of a wafer.
I exchanged a few emails with AP over the past couple of years on this matter, and the response I always got was “we expect to be demonstrating before the end of the year”, but then a number of issues would always come up that were unexpected, or out of their control, or just part of R&D as if often excused on HC.
In one of my previous posts I made an observation that the headline of the announcements changed from “Integration Update” to “Digital Speaker Update” (a backwards step based on previous announcements). Now we have also gone back from integrating for a demonstration, to providing us with performance specifications.
AP is doing this intentionally, they have already lowered expectations of a demonstration, to providing shareholders with an update on specifications. I believe AP have adjusted their specifications in light of the chip’s measured performance (i.e. their R&D specifications may have been unachievable), and are now at a point where they have to provide something tangible.
The release of specifications does a few things:
It holds AP accountable for something technical;
It finally defines the performance specifications of the wafers;
For item (1), AP may intentionally lower the specifications of their first generation wafer and aim the chip to more lower end uses. It also sets lower expectations of shareholders, for when the chip is demonstrated the amount of disappointment can be responded to by saying “We told you how it would perform some time ago”.
For item (2), performance specifications are totally different from actuals, measured, or in-situ real world applications. Anyone can say that the specifications are for a sensitivity of 92.2 dB/1w/[email protected] but in reality that performance is often incorrect, it could be higher, or lower, but without some sampling, the specifications themselves are just another step in the R&D process.
I expect a fair bit of hype leading into some more delay tactics. We were at “almost demonstrable wafers” over a year ago, everyone is getting excited over a table of performance specifications that AP have been using as a guide for the past few years in their development.
But let’s look at the positive, at least AP are releasing something semi-technical. As this is a new tech I hope they dumb it down to the Thiele & Small characteristics (or equivalent) that the rest of the world can understand.
AKP Price at posting:
$19.15 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
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