MVIS?

[JoeInVirginia]

Got lucky

I purchased 3000 shares of MVIS at .20 and just looked up what they are at today. 2500%! If only I had put the entire nest egg into MVIS...


I actually own one of their products. A laser projector based upon the micro mirror technology. That's how I originally became familiar with them.

In the past they had licensing deals with Sony, but at present they are focusing on industrial and automotive applications.

 

[Groovy]

Go back and look at the advice I got about not putting all my eggs in this basket. 999 times out of 1000, that advice is right. I got the Celluon projector for a family member a few years back. He didn't think it was bright enough. :/ They pretty much punted on the Display-Only market. I think they'll do OK in the Augmented Reality/Near-Eye Display space and probably some consumer and automotive LIDAR applications in the coming year, and will probably get bought within the next year. The question is, at what price. Even with a dip down below $5 this morning, I think there's more room for it to retrace further. I *might* put a small amount of money back in if it gets into the $3s. I think double-digits is possible, but I'm not as bullish as some of their fanboys on Reddit.

They have a cult following on Reddit (/r/mvis). Some of the information that people post there is substantive. A lot of it is fluff/noise.

I purchased 3000 shares of MVIS at .20 and just looked up what they are at today. 2500%! If only I had put the entire nest egg into MVIS...


I actually own one of their products. A laser projector based upon the micro mirror technology. That's how I originally became familiar with them.

In the past they had licensing deals with Sony, but at present they are focusing on industrial and automotive applications.

 

[Groovy]

Just to close out this thread, the stock took off recently. Just like I got in too early, i got out too early -- albeit with some gains. The folks who timed it right made almost 150x on their investment. ($0.15 to about $22 in a year) No mass-selling product on the market yet, so I think the valuation is a bit crazy right now, but that's how the market goes, I guess.

Time to look for the next 1-armed french prostitute stock...

 

[Groovy]

> I purchased 3000 shares of MVIS at .20

Congrats. If you held on, you've made sick returns, as it hit $23 today.

 

[JoeInVirginia]

I haven't been paying attention to MVIS stock, so pretty cool to see a 11000% return on the stock when I checked it today.

Given the size of the initial investment, I'm not going to retire just yet.

Investing in individual stocks is pretty much just straight up gambling, and as a younger man I would spend time in Vegas with college buddies giving money to the house. Having a stock give 11000% return is just like having a long shot horse with a broken leg win the Derby. For my next investment, I'll buy some lottery ticktes.

The stock I hold is in a tax advantaged account, so maybe today is the day to dump it....

 

[SecondCor521]

Just to close out this thread, the stock took off recently. Just like I got in too early, i got out too early -- albeit with some gains. The folks who timed it right made almost 150x on their investment. ($0.15 to about $22 in a year) No mass-selling product on the market yet, so I think the valuation is a bit crazy right now, but that's how the market goes, I guess.

Time to look for the next 1-armed french prostitute stock...

If you make that much money, wouldn't you want a prostitute with two arms?

The whole thing that most of the analysis on this thread missed to me is: Where are the end customers? All the cool technology and deals and prices mean nothing without actual, you know, sales.

I saw some R&D products in this space a decade ago. Sorta cool, but I wouldn't want to buy one. Too dim and low image quality. Probably no way to get it bright enough without the liability risk of blinding someone. Tabletop projectors are already done more cheaply with higher volume and no lasers I suspect. Waaaay too expensive COGS to get into any cell phone.

I didn't look at the stock, maybe the VR stuff makes sense as a market. But if so I'd only price it on those sales, not anything else, if I were an individual stock buyer, which I'm not anyways, so nevermind.

 

[Sunset]

My experience with MVIS was a number of years ago. All the wonderful exciting news about their upcoming deals, their great projector, yadda yadda yadda.

I'm totally fine with investing in penny stocks, high risk stocks, speculative ventures, and have done it more than once.

My earlier comment was about MVIS, and its exciting news.... just like last time..

So I bought some options, dreamed of a small warm island..... and lost some money

Maybe this time it will be different, but if they were so smart, they would have been a success long ago, and I'd be sitting on the beach !

Well, guess I should have kept buying options.

As it was, the small loss I took on the MVIS options long ago, seared into my brain and made me more careful and profitable with options.
So in one way I profited from MVIS

 

[Groovy]

I mean...wouldn't the second arm just kinda get in the way?

Right. There are minimal sales and minimal customers so far, and that's why, IMO, the current valuation is crazy. But, they are in the Microsoft Hololens 2. Not a high volume product, but it is Microsoft. And, they're working on long-range lidar product (which, IMO is a big reason for the current crazy valuation). I think LIDAR is "hot" right now, and that drew a lot of investors to take a look at MVIS. I'm not sure about the COGS, but with $1000 cell phones, I'm not sure that the tech is too expensive. Pocket-sized projectors aren't as feature-rich, and might not be as bright -- dunno -- there might be some debate about that. Those verticals haven't really taken off.

But, there's a lot of opportunity in Near-Eye Display, LIDAR and interactive projection. I think it's mostly the potential that has caused these new investors to stick around, but if you look at what the technical leaders are saying about AR, they're saying that the leading technologies are either laser beam scanning (MVIS) or iLED, so if you're talking about revenue, then yes - there's not much there yet, in terms of customers/sales. But, if you wait to buy the stock AFTER the revenue is announced, you're usually too late.

This Forum used to be called "Stock Picking (Individual Security Analysis)" back when I posted this thread. It has since been changed to "Stock Picking and Market Strategy". Most of the advice I've received regarding this thread was "Don't buy individual securities." That's generally fine advice - especially for people thinking about retirement, but I think it missed the "stock picking" point of this forum. I don't think it's a bad idea for young people or old people to do a ton of research on a stock they find interesting, and buy an individual stock with a small portion of their savings.

 

[Groovy]

Yeah. I've learned a thing or two myself while following MVIS. I went to my first Shareholder meeting. Learned how a company can get financing, and picked up some other tips from other folks who have been following this company. So, the gains have been nice, but, like you, I also profited in other ways from following MVIS.

Here's hoping your beach dreams come true soon. May you be blessed with more one-armed french prostitutes than one could ever dream of.

Well, guess I should have kept buying options.

As it was, the small loss I took on the MVIS options long ago, seared into my brain and made me more careful and profitable with options.
So in one way I profited from MVIS

 

[JoeInVirginia]

I've looked at their patents in a past and the MEMS technology MVIS developed has applications in many different areas. The micro-mirror display is one application has the potential to be a big money maker. The Texas Instruments DLP technology has been pretty successful and the MVIS micro-mirror technology has has the potential for capturing some of that market.

Directly scanning the lasers using the micro-mirror approach has a lot of advantages. Always in focus, greater light efficiency, ultra high contrast. Some disadvantages are laser speckle and higher optical energy density limiting total optical output due to heat dissipation.

Given the advantages and constraints of the micro-mirror system pico-projectors was/is a good application of their technology.

With the patents held by MVIS there is a good chance that there are some commercial applications that will end up generating a healthy revenue streams OR the IP will be / has been infringed.

It would be smart for MVIS to focus on the technology and once perfected license the technology as broadly as possible. The PicoP projector engine was a case of "if you build it, they will come". Doing all the work to build the entire light engine and then manufacture the projector didn't quite achieve what MVIS intended, but it does show that their technology is 100% real and the company can turn patents into products.

 

[Groovy]

They did license their display-only technology, but there haven't been any products coming to market from that license agreement, so for whatever reason, that side of the business hasn't done well. Maybe that will change, as component prices come down further, with interactive and/or LiDAR products being produced in large quantities. I think they've (mostly?) solved the speckle problem, and I don't think heat dissipation is an issue. There's still a lot of potential with LiDAR, Near-Eye Display (AR, SmartGlasses, maybe VR), and interactive display -- think Amazon Echo with an interactive table-top projection system, which would be great for kitchens. The current PPS makes the company's market cap about $3 billion, and I think it would be hard to find a buyer to pay much more for the company than that (IMO). But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the share price can run higher. I'm out at this point, and won't be buying in at this level.

I've looked at their patents in a past and the MEMS technology MVIS developed has applications in many different areas. The micro-mirror display is one application has the potential to be a big money maker. The Texas Instruments DLP technology has been pretty successful and the MVIS micro-mirror technology has has the potential for capturing some of that market.

Directly scanning the lasers using the micro-mirror approach has a lot of advantages. Always in focus, greater light efficiency, ultra high contrast. Some disadvantages are laser speckle and higher optical energy density limiting total optical output due to heat dissipation.

Given the advantages and constraints of the micro-mirror system pico-projectors was/is a good application of their technology.

With the patents held by MVIS there is a good chance that there are some commercial applications that will end up generating a healthy revenue streams OR the IP will be / has been infringed.

It would be smart for MVIS to focus on the technology and once perfected license the technology as broadly as possible. The PicoP projector engine was a case of "if you build it, they will come". Doing all the work to build the entire light engine and then manufacture the projector didn't quite achieve what MVIS intended, but it does show that their technology is 100% real and the company can turn patents into products.

 

[JoeInVirginia]

I really didn't buy MVIS as an investment. They have just as much chance of going out of business as they do of hitting a home run and making a ton of money. The market is not rational and doesn't necessarily reward good ideas that may be ahead of the curve. It's a coin flip, but my educational background and professional experience tells me that MVIS has the technical side of the business nailed. Finding a market for their technology is the part that has held them back.

The first PicoP projectors Showwx and Showwx+ were designed and contract manufactured for Microvision. This first generation of the PicoP projectors may have been licensed, but I don't recall seeing any products which incorporated the first generation PicoP engine. Microvision building and selling the Showwx did a good job at generating buzz, but as far as I can tell it didn't generate a huge number of sells. This was the version of the projector that I bought back in the 2011/2012 time frame. I still have it, but the HDMI port stopped working and I haven't used it in a long time.

After seeing this thread I started looking for the Sony MP-CL1A and found one on E-Bay. I did end up buying it and there are a lot of improvements between the first gen and second gen PicoP light engines. Brightness in the Sony is about 3X what was in the Showwx. Resolution is much improved. Speckle is reduced but still noticeable to my eye. Speckle is a property of coherent light sources reflecting off a surface with constructive and destructive interference occurring in the reflected light. There are several techniques which can used to reduce speckle, but I don't know which technique the PicoP uses. MVIS patents from 2018 suggest that they are working on rotating polarization filters to eliminate speckle. Earlier patents from 2011 suggest that they were using beam angle diversity to reduce speckle.

While scanning the danger from the laser quickly scanning you eye is not that great, but if the micro-mirror failed while the lasers are on that could be pretty dangerous. I assume there are safety features built into the PicoP light engine to detect mirror failure and disable the lasers. Micovision does have patents in this area.

Before DLP light engines switched to LED and Laser light sources, the light engine had to deal with all of the optical energy that didn't get emitted. The color filtering and light dump elements of the projector were subject to heating and failure. The DMD array itself is fairly large area wise versus the PicoP micro-mirror and this is where energy density can be a problem for the PicoP design. The smallest DMD device is ~6.8mm per side for pico projector applications. ~46 mm squared mirror area.

For Microvision, even with a 99% efficient mirrors you can't pump 10s of watts of optical energy through the light engine without heating the tiny MEMS device past their failure point.

This image shows a 1mm mirror diameter. ~.785 mm squared mirror area.

Using a single fully steerable mirror is what allows the PicoP to scan the laser directly. The TI DMD just switches a single pixel on or off (really fast) and has a large number of mirrors (one for each pixel). Making the single mirror bigger to reduce optical energy density becomes problematic since the physical forces involved as the mirror grows start to make the MEMS structures supporting the mirror larger. MEMS devices work because they are small and making them bigger doesn't make then work any better and likely much worse. For example, the rotational inertia of the mirror grows rapidly as the mirror size increases. The rotational inertia is what the MEMS device has to overcome in order to actually steer the mirror. Less rotational inertia means a faster scanning mirror which can translate into greater image resolution.

Long story short, l like MVIS technology. I have no clue if the company will be successful.

 

[JoeInVirginia]

Microsoft news

Microsoft was just awarded a contract to develop augmented reality displays for DOD. The current Microsoft HoloLens system is build around an MVIS micro-mirror display.

MVIS is seeing a bounce today as a result.

 

[Groovy]

Microsoft was just awarded a contract to develop augmented reality displays for DOD. The current Microsoft HoloLens system is build around an MVIS micro-mirror display.

MVIS is seeing a bounce today as a result.

Thanks. Just saw that. 50% up, and still well below its previous high of $23.xx. I'm out of this stock at this point. I imagine it will get acquired at some point this year, but I'm not sure for how much. It had retraced from that high down to $12.xx before the MSFT news, and I had admittedly thought about how much lower the price was earlier today. Maybe if it gets back down there again, I'll take a small position. They have a LiDAR deliverable targeted for April, so that's a potential short-term catalyst. It might go back up to the $2x.xx range in the coming weeks in anticipation of that news, and then plunge on the news.

But, I've moved on to CBWTF as my new 'high-risk, low-armed-prostitute' stock to watch. I don't expect it to have the same type of returns that MVIS did, but I do think it'll be a multi-bagger in the next year or two. It just got uplist approval in Canada ($XLY), and will move from the TSX Venture exchange up to the main TSX exchange. They're targeting EBIDTA positive in 1H, 2021. Q4 Financials will be announced sometime between now and end of April, and Q1 by end of May. Not sure what to expect, but I think their 2021 numbers will be quite good, as their grow capacity has increased. I think they got lucky (compared to the bigger Canadian Cannabis names), because they were 'late to the party' in terms of having raw cannabis product, while the Canadian market didn't take off as well as people were expecting.