We’ve got two graphene-focused ads to look at today, one from George Gilder and the other from Alex Koyfman… first we take a gander at futurist George Gilder’s long-running “Trilion Dollar Takeover” pitch for Gilder’s Technology Report ($77 first year, renews at ?).
The promise of graphene has enticed investors almost since that substance was isolated through the super-scientific application of scotch tape and pencil lead 20 years ago, leading to the Nobel Prize in 2010… and there have been many ways we’ve been sold on the power and promise of this material.
I’ve gotten lots of questions about George Gilder’s recent graphene teases in recent months, which have generally been running without much variation, and I haven’t written about it because the primary company he hints at in his “27 countries will be fighting over this material” and “$11.5 trillion miracle sheet” pitches is still private, and not available for investors, that’s sort of a “bait and switch” tease.
But he does tease one actual public company, too, so we can at least hazard a guess on that front. First, some excerpts from his general pitch for graphene:
“… this miracle material is considered the most expensive material on the planet: It’s been priced at up to $450,000 per pound.
“And that’s why the pending patent I will share with you today is SO important if you want to become wealthy.
“It positions one company to monopolize the wealth created from this historic material, minting hordes of new millionaires in the process.
“And with one special investment, everyday folks can now tap into this entire megatrend….
“We Are at the Doorstep of a Real-Life ‘Vibranium’… A Breakthrough Miracle Material Just Like Something From Make-Believe….
“You just need to move fast because the breakout is coming very soon, perhaps as soon as this year.
“And it’s all thanks to…
“One Company’s ‘Secret’ Ontario Production Plant
“A production plant that’s about to mass-produce the world’s most valuable resource and tap into a trillion dollars in future wealth.
“It’s all happening at one private location in Ontario, Canada.”
Don’t get too excited, that’s the “bait” about a still-private company, we haven’t gotten to the “switch” yet.
“Forbes calls what is going on inside the plant ‘Modern-Day Alchemy.’
“I’ve personally confirmed that the scientific team heading up this plant contains some of the smartest people on the planet, with specific, deep experience in patenting new technologies.
“Among them, you’ll find one of the top 10 chemists in the world…
“A man who is one of the 50 most influential scientists…
“And another who’s been named ‘Scientist of the Year’ and inducted into the National Academy of Inventors.
“Not to mention this team has a combined 132 patents as well as over 180 research publications to its credit.”
And some more, just in case you’re not quaking with excitement yet…
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“The production plant is already built, and production is scheduled to start any day now.
“The moment that happens, it will be too late for any other company to catch up.
“This Company Is the ONLY Company That Can Spark Graphene’s Aluminum Moment….
“According to the head of the Ontario production plant, Ford is already grabbing “as much as it can get.”
“And Ford confirms that graphene is going into every single one of the 4.2 million vehicles it produces every year.
“That’s not even counting the major players like the U.S. Army that could use graphene in everything from body armor to personal water filters.”
Some more of the big picture hype about graphene:
“Even though this will shape the future of technology and be used for everything from car batteries to hoverboards…
“It’s been impossible to produce on any large scale.
“But now, thanks to the tech found at the secret Ontario production plant…
“One company will be able to create graphene out of one of the most common resources on the planet: garbage.
“I’m serious—its technology allows it to take food waste, old computer parts, and almost anything we throw away…
“And turn it into the most valuable material on Earth….
“What’s even crazier is that this patent-pending process speeds up graphene production by over 350,000%.”
And then we begin the “switch”
“This small private company is set to revolutionize multiple billion- and even trillion-dollar industries, totaling over $11.5 trillion.
“All while potentially saving and improving the lives of millions of Americans.
“Unfortunately for most people, the everyday American will be totally locked out….
“You’ll have the chance to use my special investment to claim your stake in the graphene Aluminum Moment before it even happens.
“But you need to act fast.
“Remember, this company’s secret Ontario plant is set to kick off production any day now.
“Everything you need to know is inside my brand-new special report: Your Way In: Graphene’s Trillion-Dollar Takeover”
This ad is not about buying stock in the specific company that’s trying to build this “garbage to graphene plant in Canada… it’s about buying a publicly traded company that will benefit from the greater supply of high quality graphene that arrives someday.
That private company is, as many folks have already guessed, a firm called Universal Matter, which produces what they call “turobostratic graphene” using their “flash graphene” technology (essentially, hitting something that has carbon in it with a massive jolt of electricity”. And they’ve been getting a fair amount of attention for that “garbage to graphene” process for many years now — some of the quotes Gilder pulled are from this 2020 Forbes article.
The chatter is that Universal Matter would like to go public within the next year or two, though one never really knows when these things might happen — usually an IPO happens when a company either has been around long enough that employees want to sell some shares, or they have exciting news and a big growth plan to fund that they think will inspire investors… or, as is often the case with junior companies that are far from commercialization, they really need the money and nobody will lend it to them, so going public is the remaining path. No idea where Universal Matter stands on the funding front, and they haven’t done any publicly available private placements or venture funding rounds that I’m aware of (according to most of the funding websites like Pitchbook, they’ve gotten mostly grant funding and a few seed/accelerator investments).
I don’t know what the current state is of their pilot plant in Burlington, Ontario, they said it was being built last year and was supposed to be operational in the third quarter of 2023, but they did recently acquire Applied Graphene, a UK company which focuses on graphene-based industrial coatings and lubricants (for $1.3 million, so it’s not exactly a big commercial operation just yet). That seems to be the planned entry path for a lot of graphene-focused companies, various lubricants and coatings where graphite may have previously been an ingredient but graphene improves on their effectiveness.
Gilder has talked up various nano-scale companies for years, some of which are at least tangentially involved with graphene, which is a nanomaterial (graphene is just a one-atom-thick sheet of graphite), so firms he and others have mentioned in this space include Weebit Nano, Dotz Nano, Nanorobotics, NanoXplore and Nanozymes… is he teasing one of those, or something else?
Here are the limited clues we get…
“… the one company about to kick off a trillion-dollar graphene surge is currently unavailable to the everyday investor.
“Luckily, the investment I reveal in this special report is the ONLY way right now for everyday folks to profit from this graphene megatrend through an investment in a public company.
“And with this special investment, anyone can get started today with as little as a few dollars….
“Because this company has used graphene’s miracle properties to develop state-of-the-art graphene nanobots.
“These incredibly small, incredibly versatile pieces of technology are 100 times smaller than a human hair and have an almost endless variety of applications.
“From tracing and detecting cancer cells in your body with pinpoint accuracy…
“To detecting fraud in the oil industry…
“And even preventing counterfeiting…
“On top of hundreds of other potential applications.”
A few more specifics…
“The company has already signed a major deal with a major medical company AND a major oil company….
“In fact, the company just signed a multimillion-dollar deal to track cancer cells in medical patients.
“And it is already on the cusp of signing more deals with the $7.2 billion gene therapy industry…
“The $25.9 billion bioprocessing industry…
“AND the $818 billion diagnostics industry.
“But what’s most exciting…
“It has a massive competitive moat, locking in its value for investors who get in right away.
“There isn’t a single company on Earth that can replicate its unique graphene nanobot technology….
“And with the mass production of graphene being just around the corner…
“This small company is moments away from being able to mass-produce its world-changing graphene nanobots.”
Given those limited clues, he’s almost certainly recommending Dotz Nano (DTZ.AX in Australia, DTZZF OTC in the US)… here’s the Ycharts description of the business:
“Dotz Nano Ltd is involved in developing, manufacturing and commercializing innovate solutions addressing world-wide environmental and industrial challenges, utilizing its carbon-based nano technologies. The Group two areas of focus are: In-product tagging solutions for anticounterfeiting and monitoring for the oil & gas and chemicals sectors; and Carbon-based sorbent technology for industrial decarbonization and sustainability.”
This is a teensy weensy company, with a market cap of about $50 million, and they’ve been around for almost 20 years, with a variety of goals and projects in the nanotechnology space… but for the past ten years or so, their income statements have looked like they’ve been mostly treading water, with no real revenue and a steady burn of admin. spending, along with a tiny amount of R&D spending. That puts them in the same category as a lot of other tiny, hopeful tech companies, in that they’ve ballooned their shares outstanding from 25 million in 2016 to 480 million now, selling stock each year to cover the $5-6 million they seem to need to keep the lights on.
The focus of Dotz is on decarbonization and carbon capture now, since that’s an area of heavy interest, but most of their work in the past has been on monitoring and authentication, selling taggants that can be mixed in to materials and later detected with special scanners — which is essentially a way to avoid counterfeit products and monitor source materials. You can check out their Investor Presentation for more background — they do a good job of telling the story, but don’t mention anything about the company’s own financials… which tends to be a red flag for me.
That doesn’t mean it won’t work out… it just means that they’re probably still a long way from being “ready for prime time” in terms of large contracts or meaningful revenue. If that stuff was coming, and it was more than just the early days of a thematic story that they’re trying to ride, they’d be talking about the deals they’ve signed and the revenue they expect. Who knows, maybe Universal Matter will actually get their pilot plant operating, and produce cheap graphene that excites the world, and then some large factories will be built out to actually manufacture meaningful amounts of the stuff, and that would help Dotz get some carbon capture business… it sounds cool, and it’s probably possible, but guessing as to whether that’s five years away or twenty years away is the realm of futurists like George Gilder, it’s not an area where I’m likely to invest. I’ve got plenty of other very speculative ideas that actually have operating businesses, so going down the food chain to pre-commercial R&D ideas isn’t terribly appealing. That’s just me, though, and you are allowed to be you.
But I promised two graphene stories today… so let’s get to our second one — this is from an Alex Koyfman ad for his Microcap Insider ($1,999 first year, renews at ??, 90-day refund period)…
“Companies in the energy, defense, electronics, medicine, electric vehicles, and mining industries…
“They are about to spend billions on this material.
“In other words, there’s a ton of money up for grabs.
“Once this material reaches the mainstream, there will be millionaires created literally overnight.
“That’s Why This Is a Once-in-a-Lifetime Situation…
“This substance is called graphene and it’s unlike any other element ever discovered…
“Like I said, it’s the thinnest material in the known universe and at the same time the strongest material ever measured.
“It’s 200x stronger than steel…
“Harder than diamond…
“And conducts electricity 150x better than silicon.
“On top of all that, it’s so light that a roll of it can easily sit on a delicate flower.”
Yadda yadda yadda, more about how graphene is the solution to all the world’s problems… then this, which tells us that he’s teasing a company that can supply graphene. A reminder, at least, that Universal Matter is far from being the only company with a graphene production process…
“Until recently, this material was extremely expensive.
“A single pound cost as much as $43,500. That’s almost twice as much as gold.
“But one tiny company owns the patent-protected technology to create an abundance of it.
“All it takes is natural gas and a little bit of electricity.
“So as this ‘miracle material’ changes the world…
“The sub-$1 stock making it all possible is set to go parabolic.
“Get in now and I can almost guarantee you’ll thank me 1,000 times by October 18.”
And yes, it’s another teensy one, so that’s the warning…
“Shares are trading for only a few cents….
“This investment won’t be appropriate for everyone. If you can’t manage risk or handle the volatile nature of investing in a newly public company, you may want to pass on this….
“Of course, there are no guarantees in the market. And with small companies like this, it’s important you understand this is a highly speculative bet. Never risk more money than you can afford to lose.”
But it’s also the sales pitch…
“If you were going to put money in one speculative play in the next decade — this company would be it….
“If this company captures 3% of the U.S. battery market, it could grow by as much as 6,908%, according to my calculations.
“Of course, that’s a very conservative projection.
“In fact, a return of 100 times your investment in the next two–three years is not unrealistic.
“I’m required to temper my enthusiasm for legal reasons, of course. The reality is that I believe even that 100x projection is conservative.
“Get in now and you could rake in stunning gains as early as October 18.”
That’s a common tactic — putting something out there which seems completely reasonable, like capturing just 3% of the market, and implying that it’s very conservative. So let’s just be clear: No, it’s not “conservative” to project that a company which hasn’t yet “rolled out” its batteries will take 3% of the largest consumer market in the world. It’s possible, but it’s not conservative.
More of the Koyfman pitch:
“… as soon as this story makes the mainstream media, this profit opportunity will be gone for good.
“And this isn’t the only reason it’s vital you act now…
“Because as this company is about to roll out its revolutionary batteries… commercial partnerships with a giant such as Apple or Tesla could be around the corner.
“Of course, nothing is confirmed yet…
“But if you wait for the official announcement, this ship will have sailed and the chance for life-changing four- or even five-digit gains will have passed.”
Much of the pitch here is about how this company can make graphene batteries which don’t require any lithium…
“Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, says this dependency on minerals like lithium will create ‘the next global energy security threat.’
“Because the U.S. is not able to produce all the lithium we’ll need.
“You see, the U.S. has just one operating lithium mine…
“And accounts for only 10% of the world’s total reserves.
“As mining expert Lewis Black puts it, ‘There is no way there’s enough raw materials being produced right now to start replacing millions of gasoline-powered motor vehicles with EVs.'”
And that means they’ll be the key provider in the future…
“Everyone in charge understands that we can’t wait for a lithium crisis to happen.
“And the sub-$1 stock I discovered holds the key to avert this disaster.
“Because this company figured out how to make batteries with NO lithium whatsoever.
“Its batteries rely on the $11.5 trillion miracle material I showed you earlier.
“And not only does this kind of battery solve our risky dependency on lithium…
“It’s also highly superior to lithium batteries.”
How is it superior? Here’s Koyfman’s spiel…
“This battery charges extremely fast… around 60–70 times faster than lithium batteries. An iPhone could be charged in mere seconds…
“It’s a lot more powerful. Your phone battery would last for three days instead of one…
“And this type of battery is safer because it doesn’t have lithium batteries’ overheating issues.”
OK, sounds impressive. But you said this company can also make graphene, right?
“… the off-the-radar firm I discovered makes this “miracle material” out of nothing but natural gas and a little bit of electricity.
“It’s using a patent-protected plasma process to achieve this feat….
“A lot of attempts have been made to mass-produce graphene in a pure form…
“As American Scientist explains, ‘It may be easy to isolate little flakes of this one-atom-thick carbon material, but it’s surprisingly difficult to produce large sheets for commercial use.’
“However, this little-known company found a way that’s considered to be superior to all the other methods.
“You apply highly concentrated heat to natural gas…
“The heat breaks the gas down into its components…
“And one of these components is a single layer of carbon atoms that forms pure graphene….
“As one chemical engineering professor puts it, ‘this is a real game-changing technology.'”
I would be laughed out of a chemical engineering class as soon as I opened my mouth, so we’ll just take their word on that. What else are we told about this little company? He says that it has a market cap under $50 million, and drops some hints about the people involved…
“… their chief scientific officer…
“He has been researching graphene for energy storage and biomedical applications for over 20 years…
“The company’s CEO has over 20 years of experience in the energy sector working for Shell…
“And their chief technology officer has over 35 years of experience in industrializing hydrocarbon reactions.
“With this concentrated expertise, I expect this company to soon dominate the exploding graphene market.”
And talks up the batteries some more…
“This company doesn’t just produce graphene as a raw material…
“It’s rolling out its own patented graphene batteries in cooperation with the University of Queensland as we speak.
“Like I said, these batteries charge up to 70x faster…
“They last 3x longer than current leading lithium batteries…
“And they’re rechargeable for at least twice the number of cycles lithium batteries are capable of… without a decline in performance.
“These batteries don’t require ANY raw materials that we might run short of, such as nickel, cobalt, or copper…
“Because they’re made out of nothing but graphene and aluminum….
“The company’s CEO recently revealed that more than 100 very large companies reached out to them after their announcement to kick off mass manufacturing…”
So while Kofyman says that “big brand partnerships haven’t been officially announced yet,” he does imply that they’re right around the corner. And it’s doing some other stuff, too…
“… it’s selling a special graphene lubricant that radically reduces friction in engines and therefore helps save energy…
“And right now it’s developing so-called graphene supercapacitors in cooperation with the Centre for Biomedical Technologies in Queensland.”
And why does Koyfman use October 18 as his “you gotta buy now” deadline? His explanation:
“That’s when the Graphene Week 2024 takes place in Prague.
“It’s the leading and longest-running event on graphene, where over 500 international experts meet.
“This year’s event has a special focus on energy. And it’s where this company could announce a battery partnership with a key player such as Apple or Tesla.
“Once that happens, the cat will be out of the bag. And I fully expect an investing frenzy to follow.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath on a Tesla announcement in October, but this is yet another tease from Alex Koyfman about the Australian company Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG.V, GMGMF on the OTCQX).
So yes, if you’re paying attention, that’s the third year in a row in which Alex Koyfman has promoted this stock as an “urgent buy” because of its graphene battery. Through 2022 and 2023, the headlines were along the lines of, “This Sub-$5 Stock Is Destined to Win the ‘Battery Arms Race” — and yes, the “special report” they were peddling back then carried the same title, “Graphene: An Exclusive Guide to the Next Millionaire-Maker.”
The first time we saw and covered a similar ad from Koyfman was in February of 2022, so here’s what the stock has looked like since then…
The company developed their graphene production process back in 2017, and it focused on developing “clean technology” applications for that graphene. It has some revenue, from their paint and lubricant products, mostly Thermal-XR, but it’s very limited, and nowhere near enough to cover their expenses (revenue about $35,000/quarter, expenses around $2 million/quarter), so they’re still a very small graphene producer, and they don’t sell much of it yet. They have the potential to scale up production equipment to make more graphene, they say, but they’re still focusing on maximizing the graphene quality, and then integrating that with their Thermal XR and battery products.
What’s the “time to market” for the pouch battery, which is their real growth focus right now? (The pouch is the basic battery design that might one day be feasibly tested in an EV battery pack, or for a laptop or something similar). They now say they’ll have samples this summer (“end of June” was the last date I saw), which will let them begin real testing of the battery, and experimenting with different materials to make it better and more efficient. They are expecting to begin investing in building their pilot manufacturing plant for automated battery manufacture this year, with production possible next year, so that’s when they might have the pilot plant ready, then begin optimizing production, then maybe commercial production after that.
As of March 31, they were down to only about $1.5 million in cash, but they have an at-the-market distribution agreement (a shelf offering) to sell up to $20 million more in shares as needed… and they will need dramatically more than that over the coming years if they’re going to actually build their pilot plant or scale up production, though the hope is that they might get more partnership funding from large companies along the way. It looks like they have already issued eight million shares (and warrants) in May, at C$0.42, so they should have a couple million more dollars to tide them over so far.
The existing Thermal-XR product is in early use from some customers who are testing it, mostly because of either the corrosion-resistance potential of this graphene paint or, more interestingly, because it can make cooling systems more efficient, which has appeal for data centers and LNG plants and other places where a small increase in cooling efficiency makes a big difference. They haven’t applied for EPA approval in the US yet, but hope to do so soon, and they say interest is growing.
The list of risks is a long one, as you would expect from a tiny R&D company that’s trying to develop a commercial product while also being very careful with costs… but here’s a little excerpt from the prospectus, just to outline one of the risks that all “next battery design” companies are facing:
“… there is a risk that the Company may or may not ultimately be able to produce a prototype, and may not be able to develop a scalable production process or seek a suitable licensee. For example, the groundwork done on the G+AI Batteries in partnership with the University of Queensland (“UQ”) has potentially identified superior performance results such as high energy density in early coin cell pre- prototypes. Despite these results and the research project that has commenced with UQ, GMG may be unable to develop this into a viable G+AI Battery pouch cell prototype at commercial scale. Thus, even if a high-performance technology is developed, there may be challenges associated with electrochemical development, the material sourcing and component production process and the scaling production of cathodes or cathode material and commercialising the product. Even if GMG develops a high-quality product, which can be produced on a large scale, the Company may not be able to satisfy the specification requirements of prospective customers. For example, if GMG successfully develops a G+AI battery, or cathode or cell which is a component of such a battery, it may not satisfy certain requirements of the electric vehicle industry or other target industries. The occurrence of any of the foregoing circumstances could have a material adverse effect on its business, results of operations and financial condition.”
Remember, even the extremely well-funded Quantumscape (QS), with strong automotive partners (Volkswagen and Continental, among others), and fawning press coverage, along with a secretive process for developing their revolutionary solid(ish) state lithium metal battery to revolutionize electric vehicles, is still burning through hundreds of millions of dollars a year, fifteen years after the company was founded and four years after the SPAC merger that took them public, and will likely continue to do so for at least a couple more years… and it’s now been at least five years since Volkswagen tested their early-stage sample cells, a stage GMG (arguably) hasn’t really reached yet. (Volkswagen’s been a partner and funder of QS since 2012, their target was to establish a solid state battery production line by 2025… QS has had its batteries in testing with OEM auto companies since late 2022, and they’re currently testing a series of prototype designs.)
I say that not to imply that QuantumScape is better, or has it figured out, just to point out that the process of developing a new battery chemistry, figuring out how to produce it effectively, testing it with your potential customers to see if it meets their safety and performance requirements, and iterating to steadily improve the efficiency and develop systems for mass production, is a LONG process, with a lot of pitfalls. Lithium ion batteries have had several decades of head start, but it took a long time for that battery chemistry and mass production to be optimized and become commercial and standardized, too.
GMG is a tiny company, and can’t get that far on its own without a lot more capital, so it’s entirely possible that they’ll sign more or better partnerships along the way, or just keep selling lots of shares as they develop their technology, and it’s also possible that they will be the beneficiary of good news and investor lust if they happen to announce something cool, or catch the eye of battery-focused speculators or graphene enthusiasts, whether at that conference in October or some other time… but the actual business is going to take a long time to develop, so if you’re just betting on a future partnership announcement or some good headlines, be sure to be honest with yourself about what you’re betting on, and what you think the probability of success might be — and know when or if you’ll want to take your cards off the table.
So that’s what we’ve got for you today — two heavily-promoted graphene ideas, following on the past decade of graphene stories, and nobody has gotten to large scale commercial production of graphene sheets yet, or used them to revolutionize semiconductors or batteries on a commercial scale. It might well happen someday, but the engineering and economic challenges are still being faced head on by these tiny companies, and nobody is yet able to make giant sheets of graphene at rational at reasonable prices. And there are, of course, dozens of small private firms and much larger chemical companies who are also trying to develop graphene-based technology platforms and solutions, or systems for mass-producing graphene sheets at lower cost.
Probably the most advanced “pure play” publicly traded producer of graphene products right now is NanoXplore (GRA.TO, NNXPF), and they’re also tiny ($300 million market cap) and not quite profitable, though they have at grown their revenue to a meaningful level, and have scaled up to the point that they can sell their products (graphene powder, mostly used to enhance plastic or composite materials, not the next-gen one-atom films we’d all like to see), for a little more than it costs to make them, so they’re no longer really burning cash. I’d be much more interested in that one as a speculative play on the growth of the graphene market, since at least they include financial projections and talk about profitability and margins in their investor presentation. They even have a five-year strategic plan that sounds a bit ambitious, given the need for capital investment to fund some new production lines, but has some goals against which we could measure their process. I won’t be investing in NanoXplore anytime soon, and it’s certainly very speculative as well, but I do think they may have more appeal for investors who want to invest in something that has moved beyond planning a pilot plant or doing battery chemistry R&D.
This is also an area where we could see the huge chemical and semiconductor supply companies swoop in pretty quickly and acquire or co-opt the leading technologies for graphene production someday, since some of the technologies are likely to be similar to existing production lines for other thin films or semiconductor components, and since many of them likely have labs or smaller teams working behind the scenes on this stuff — they just aren’t incentivized to talk about it, or buy up technologies or build production, before there’s really a market and a commercial application. The talk of graphene’s potential is intoxicating, and the impact on society could be huge over the coming decades, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a clear investment case to be made for any specific company right now.
That’s just what I’m thinking about graphene right now, and some of the stocks that are being teased by pundits… and what matters to your wallet and your portfolio is what you think, so please chime in if you’ve got graphene thoughts — see any great opportunities to buy into the still-young graphene industry? Think it will generate revolutionary returns in a year or two, or are you looking out to the 2030s? Let us know with a comment below.
Disclosure: I am not invested in any of the companies mentioned above, and I will not trade in any covered stock for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
Believe Gilder is flogging AVADAIN which was fundraising on NetCapital although the raise may now be closed
Could be, he likes many of the nano-scale and graphene-related companies, I could see him promoting a crowdfunding project — though it doesn’t match the clues in this particular ad. Looks like Avadain raised about $5 million last year, and had losses of just under $2 million that year, so if you are enticed by the story I wouldn’t worry too much about missing it, they’ll very likely be back to raise more cash before too long.
They stopped filing with the SEC once the offering was completed, but from PR activity it doesn’t appear that they’ve yet signed their first licensee. They have a partner doing all the actual work, and have only five employees, so they probably need licensees to pay up to pilot the technology.
Do you have any tease info HGCPF?
Haven’t ever seen that one pitched by a newsletter. Looks like another teensy hopeful with a graphene production technology/system and lots of talk about partnering and testing their product with potential customers, sounds impressive and their materials indicate they were ready for commercial production last year. But they also lost their CEO in January, and it doesn’t look like their sales and testing efforts for their graphene output have generated any material orders or real revenue yet.
Which makes it one of many “possibles” in my book, so I hope to remain cool-headed enough to convince myself that I don’t know enough about these various hopefuls to judge which one has the best odds of eventual commercial success. If there is a massive graphene boom, I probably won’t start to participate until we’ve got a multi-billion-dollar company that’s producing a lot of it and making a profit. Which is OK, you don’t have to be first and don’t have to be the “venture” level investor who follows the pre-commercial R&D… buying NVIDIA or Linde when they were established and profitable $10 billion companies (LIN 20 years ago, NVDA 10 years ago) would have led to spectacular returns. (No direct connection, those are just two dominant providers who have come to mind lately — NVIDIA in GPUs, Linde in industrial gases… NVDA has been an extreme winner, of course, there’s no comparison between those two, but LIN has roughly tripled the S&P 500’s total returns over the past 20 years).
Penny stocks in hot industries are always enticing, but the probability that such companies will survive long enough to become commercially viable, and to eventually become profitable and grow their profits, is very low. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t search for the lottery tickets, just means we should remember that the sidewalk in front of every convenience store is littered with losing tickets. We are all imperfect and fallible humans who often get too emotionally involved in the search for tiny winners — it’s a fun search, but the best way to reduce our risks when making bets in these areas is position sizing. With penny stocks and early stage R&D hopefuls, the idea that you should only invest what you can afford to lose is an actual warning, not just the boilerplate disclaimer that we so often overlook.
Sorry, got a bit into lecturing there. First I’ve heard of HGCPF, though, so thanks for bringing it up. Lots of little hopefuls in this space.
I read this article with interest and was wondering why you failed to mention the Rio Tinto investement in
GMGMF about 2 years ago. Or is that misinformation or irrevelent to the subject.?
Not intentional, but that partnership has not as of yet led to any real progress. It might someday.
I’ve watched and read his teasers for at least two years and the stock always goes down.
Can’t wait for the day we can send our garbage to Canada. I think Staten Island has all they can handle.
Since I nearly did my dissertation research on making fault-free graphene nanotubes under microgravity conditions in low Earth orbit, let me clarify some of the terminology that has George Gilder thoroughly confused.
Graphite is NOT a less advanced material than graphene. All graphite in existence is 99+% graphene, bonded together by van der Waals attraction in layers of tens or hundreds of millions at a time.
Using trash to make graphite is not difficult. Edison’s first light bulb filament was a length of cotton thread heated to form a random mixture of graphene sheets and graphene nanotubes, with occasional lumps of amorphous carbon that is partly graphene and partly diamond, enough of which was graphene of suitable quality to pass an electrical current, but of bad enough quality to heat up red-hot from the passage of current. That red-hotness, sealed in a glass bulb from which air had been pumped out, caused the Edison light bulb to give off useful amounts of light, at least until the filament broke.
So yes, any fool with a match can turn garbage into graphene. It’s the graphene that makes smoke black. (White smoke is mostly other minerals that do not burn).
So the play on words here is that the Ford Motor Company’s very first crank-start Model T comtained graphene, as one graphite electrode of the disposable Leclanche battery that make the initial sparks in the spark plugs to fire the engine as the operator muscled the crank. (Once started, a magneto produced the sparks and the battery was disconnected). After Kettering pioneered the self-starter and the lead batteries of submarines became the zero-carbon battery in common use today. Graphite continued to be used for electrical contacts, particularly brushes, and huge blocks of graphite 10 feet tall and 4 feet by six feet in cross section, are used in mini-mills to create the electric arc from grid power, to melt steel scrap into recycled steel.
So that’s where millions of pounds of low-grade graphene are used.
Does anybody use a form of graphene costing millions of dollars per pound?
Absolutely, but those users make it from natural gas because they need 100% purity. I speak here of microchip foundries like the new ones near Phoenix being built by Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor. Graphene conductive layers can be deposited on the surface of a chip, overlain with a mask to protect the intended graphene circuit elements, and the rest of the graphene burned away with hot oxygen.
The major problem with a garbage-to-carbon business is producing carbon of adequate purity for any use. Most food waste, for example, contains phosphates, an essential substance for food metabolism and energy transfer in all known life forms. But adding phosphorus to metal or to concrete makes the product weaker and more brittle, thus less useful. So using carbon made from garbage, would work best in a factory that turns phophate ore into phosphorus for chemical use. In theory it can be used to smelt iron, but only if an air oxidation is immediate done to the melt, to burn away the phosphorus.
I’m quite certain that gullible Green activists will pour money into these stocks, because the concept sounds very impressive on first impression. When they loose their shoes on the shares, I tried to warn them.
Thanks, always glad to hear from someone who understands the science!
Thank you Bob for that piece of condensed education! And thank you, Travis, for providing the platform that seems to attract so many folks willing to share their expertise.
Ever since I’ve become active in trading around 2019, I have seen so many Graphene teasers that are TOTAL WASTES. Is there ONE Graphene company that’s head n shoulders above the rest??
Batteries may be nice but medical and structural usage are just as important, as investigated by ZTEK. When it’s CEO left the company it became more than a miner and more like a usage research company.