I liked the complete honesty today. (As far as they can be)
There is recognition, at last, that the company was rudderless in terms of commercialisation previously. I think if you have been invested a long time and don't have rose tinted glasses that was obvious.
I am convinced by Antonio, I am not entirely convinced by Sean. He seems much more comfortable talking about the technology and ecosystems but the rest of the CEO's role, not so much.
Both Antonio and Sean clearly expressed their frustration at the current state of affairs. Both must have had their eyes opened leading upto last years AGM, but could not say it. It is also clear that whilst Akida 1.0 is good, we had not really engaged with prospective customers to see if that is what they wanted - hence another 6-9 month delay to a major uptake of the technology. Having said that, without Akida 1.0 we would not have known what we now know, so a small silver lining.
My thoughts are that if Megachips was in on the back end design, then they have customers who want the technology as designed, so once testing is complete, we may see some adoption from their customers, BUT, we wont know about it until revenue comes in.
The good news is that portability and scalability has been proven, so hopefully the timeline of 2 - 4 years to adopt the technology is now reduced and we should see more IP licences in the next 12 - 24 months.
I would love to hear our Director of Sales speak about the technology and what he is finding in the market place - it is his job to close the deal so to speak.
Overall, the company is a hold for me, for another 18 months, but with the expectation of more positive momentum, which will include more partnerships and some IP licences, with significant revenue to follow.
Clearly just my opinion. You should form your own.
Hi Doc, I agree with most of what you have commented on.
I thought Antonio was excellent, great speaker, very clear, very precise, balanced views with integrity, he come across as very genuine, very knowledgeable, honest and really painted a picture of exactly where we are positioned, he certainly didn't sugarcoat anything, no fluff.
His 30+ years in this industry shone through, spoke with confidence, Sean on the other hand is a lot less comfortable, or appears to be, but behind the scenes I believe that he has done an excellent job in basically restructuring the company, the word talent was mentioned numerous times, hiring talent in this field (neuromorphic) is clearly extremely hard, stopping just short of saying "poaching" talent from other big players in the tech industry.
As I have harped on a little, it's the IP Licenses we need to secure, that change in direction when Sean came onboard was done for a reason, but it was reassuring to hear that the company has acknowledged the IP runway is a lot longer than many within the company initially thought.
Close on 40% voting against Motion 8 may not seem important, but the message it sent was the whole point of voting No, my gut feeling was
correct that something wasn't quite right, you only had to listen to Ken and watch his body language, the words, argument, put it behind us, we basically got out of it cheaply, could have been a lot worse, basically making the best out of a bad situation.
Interestingly, Steve Liebeskind got up and spoke on the motion, Steve was obviously on the Board before Antonio and Sean and knows exactly
how things played out when "Chief 3 Hats" was running the show, a lot of "mates" where brought onboard at the time from memory, and paid
and rewarded handsomely, despite the opposition of many shareholders at the time.
Neil Rinaldi was other to speak up on Motion 8 having also been an Non-Executive Board member.
What I didn't personally like was the comment from the floor that I'll see you guys later (Sean/Antonio/Ken) and explain it a bit more for you, as in the background of Manny's arrangement with Lou....purely my opinion not anyone elses.
AKD 3 to be documented before AKD 2 is made publicly available, which we have been told would be around the September/October time frame, please correct me if I mis heard that comment from Sean.
Overall, not super exciting, but it's steady as she goes, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
On your point about hearing from Chris Stevens, about 3 weeks ago I contacted both Peter and Rob together politely asking that Chris be interviewed by Rob on his podcast series, so we could actually hear from the man himself at the coalface so to speak, maybe they will consider it moving forward.
Cheers from Perth.........Tech
