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CFU - Ceramic Fuel Cells

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This managed to get it's head above the SPP today, closing at 6.2 cents. Will it be enough to have a lot of last minute acceptances of the offer?? That is afterall the plan. I stated this a while ago...

there had better be some good news near application close time or the company is in serious trouble.
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So yes, good news was engineered near the end of the second extension period, but the news is not that good. A whole lot of orders would have been good news, along with the furnaces being fixed, but alas no.

Where is the company now at? As the company has been burning ~$15m per half year (according to final report), and as there have been no announcements of further sales this half year, something they always crow about, then we can assume sales have not been occurring so far this quarter.

With a cash balance of $8.8m at 30th June, the $6m from CCTC will be desperately needed by 28th Sept when the approvals are meant to be received by. Hopefully the actual money turns up shortly after. If there is a 50% take up of the new share offer, that translates to ~$8m (unlikely IMHO). This gives the company a total of ~$23m, enough to last until March without sales.
Even with sales growth of 80% like the last 2 years, revenue would only go to $12m, bringing total cash for the year to ~$35m. If the cash spend per annum stays at ~$30m (and that has been rising at 25% pa) this leaves only ~$5m, so another capital raising will be needed then. The company states such.

I also find the companies maths interesting. There are 1,366,298,863 shares on issue currently. The offer is 1-4 which you would think was 341,574,715 shares, yet the maximum number according to the prospectus is only 278,517,500. Nowhere in the prospectus does it state what would happen if there was too many subscriptions at the 1-4 rate, only what would happen if people applied for excess shares. I think this sums up the management, they can't count. The actual total number of shares on offer is closer to 1-5.
 
Yes Drty, death spiral dilution.

They promised the ovens would be working August, that was moved from June.
I suspect something intractable.

Maybe they will live through it and come out the other side but it won't be pretty.
 
What a debacle this stock is turning into. We have had a classic pump and dump, just like the previous cap raisings, yet there were many shareholders that fell for it. IMHO it is about time for the regulators to have a good look into this.

The directors managed to take for themselves an increase in total remuneration of just over 25% from the 2011 financial year to the 2012 financial year (p31-32 annual report), yet managed to pony up a whopping $33,182 between the lot of them for the capital raising :rolleyes:. None of the directors applied for more shares than entitled, yet encouraged shareholders to do so.

Finding out what has happened in terms of orders and deliveries of Bluegen units since the start of this financial year is like extracting teeth. On July 6th 30 Bluegen units had been delivered to Sanevo out of the order of 100. By August 30, 8 weeks later, 39 units had been delivered. Then there were also the 9 delivered to Gastera in August, makes 18 in total since July 6 update. Nowhere is there a clear indication of what has happened recently. If those 18 units are all there is, then the September cashflow report is going to look very sick and the share price is likely to act accordingly.

At over 1.5 billion shares on issue, a share consolidation has to be on the cards before any further thoughts of capital raisings, assuming the company lasts that long.
 
So they have onsold capacity of the powder plant.
Good short term news but why have they got the option to sell the total plant?? Have they given up and am now going to sell off the business bit by bit? I want to hear a good explanation at the AGM, though I am not eligable as I have sold my holdings. Still no news, and we are now in October, with solving the furnace problem. I suspect disastrous implications.
 
Brendan Dow was appointed on Jan 11 2007 as CEO when the share price was 95c.
By Jan 2009 it was 5c.
In October that year it was announced that the manufacturing plant in Heinsberg was fully commissioned and up and running and the share price rose to 30c.
Three years later its still hovering under the 10c mark.
The AGM is on the 29th of this month.
What justification does Brendan Dow give for the hefty payrises and bonuses he awards himself and management?
 
brty said:
What a debacle this stock is turning into. We have had a classic pump and dump, just like the previous cap raisings, yet there were many shareholders that fell for it. IMHO it is about time for the regulators to have a good look into this.

The directors managed to take for themselves an increase in total remuneration of just over 25% from the 2011 financial year to the 2012 financial year (p31-32 annual report), yet managed to pony up a whopping $33,182 between the lot of them for the capital raising :rolleyes:. None of the directors applied for more shares than entitled, yet encouraged shareholders to do so.

Finding out what has happened in terms of orders and deliveries of Bluegen units since the start of this financial year is like extracting teeth. On July 6th 30 Bluegen units had been delivered to Sanevo out of the order of 100. By August 30, 8 weeks later, 39 units had been delivered. Then there were also the 9 delivered to Gastera in August, makes 18 in total since July 6 update. Nowhere is there a clear indication of what has happened recently. If those 18 units are all there is, then the September cashflow report is going to look very sick and the share price is likely to act accordingly.

At over 1.5 billion shares on issue, a share consolidation has to be on the cards before any further thoughts of capital raisings, assuming the company lasts that long.
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Brty, You've made some very good observations however have understated the amount management have skimmed from this company. I am referring to what I call the Frank Boyd factor.
Sherman set the wayback machine for May 2009. Brendan Dow brings in his buddy and sets him up as his No 2. Then pays him an outrageous salary for what he provides the company. In return Frank sets up a company in Malaysia and begins the administration of company funds. You can't tell me it's a strategic move for taxation purposes because the company doesn't pay any, and it's market focus is in Europe. It's impossible to identify from the annual statement how much has been siphoned off but we can assume it won't be insignificant. The management of this company couldn't lie straight in bed.
 
Folks, we have good reason to believe that the accounts "deprecate" and "trendz" are being operated by the same individual. Both of these ASF accounts have now been permanently suspended.
 
So good to see some movement in this stock at last.

Gone from .045 8/03/13 to .084 today.

It is something to with subsidies given to a German Shire with prospects of a 600 unit sale.
 
dagrizzbear said:
I've bought in and am thinking this has got to be a pretty good climber in the long run. It's still below the initial offer price and hasn't begun the climb.

I mean Oil is in the 70's, market will spotlight alternative energy related shares like this one sooner or later. Has got impressive patented technology on the globally hot topic of fuel cells and some commercial steps already progressing with sales talk to NZ and Germany. So the market frenzy of when the transition from a CSIRO venture to a commercially operating business takes place is just around the corner. Long term supporters like Energex are at the shareholder list. Even BHP Billiton and Mitsui & Co. are holders.

Any comments?
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Replying to your 2005 post, it has halved in value, in hindsight, probably not a good pick.
We know our current fuel sources (petrochemicals) are running out in the next few decades and extremely expensive. Why isn't there enough emphasise on alternative energies at the moment?
 
pattypoo said:
We know our current fuel sources (petrochemicals) are running out in the next few decades and extremely expensive. Why isn't there enough emphasise on alternative energies at the moment?
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Fuel cells in a stationary (non-transport) application produce electricity as the primary output, with heat (useful as hot water or for heating buildings etc) as a by-product which may or may not actually be put to use depending on circumstance (eg a household would likely use the heat for hot water whereas at a large centralised power station the heat would go to waste typically).

That is very similar to any other fuel burning power station. You have electricity as the primary product, and heat as a significant by-product. Typically the heat is simply dumped as waste, that's what those large cooling towers commonly seen at power stations are for - they're just turning the waste heat into water vapour and dumping it into the atmosphere. In other situations, eg open cycle gas turbines, the heat is simply released as hot air. At others it's dumped into a river or ocean as hot water. In a few situations that heat is put to use, eg in industry or for heating buildings etc (New York City is notable as having a large centralised city heating system as are various places in the EU and Russia) but they are in the minority.

Fuel cells? Well a fuel cell is really just another means of turning natural gas into electricity. It has the same input (gas) and the same outputs (electricity and heat) as a steam turbine, gas turbine or even an internal combustion engine. The only real advantages of a fuel cell are higher efficiency - the output is skewed more in favour of electricity with less heat. But that's it.

Fuel cells are thus nothing more than a more efficient means of turning gas into electricity, that's it. They are not an "alternative" energy source as such, they still need gas.

For reference, typical efficiency of a gas-fired steam turbine is around 35% from gas to electricity with the rest being heat. Australian examples of such plants include Torrens Island (Adelaide) and Newport (Melbourne).

Typical efficiency of an open cycle gas turbine (which is a jet engine sitting on the ground at a power station) varies hugely with the age and size of the unit. Typically it's around 25% for an old one up to the high 30's for a new one but the range for plants in Australia is from about 16% to just over 40%. There are numerous such plants in operation in Australia, examples including Braemar (Qld), Jeeralang (Vic) and Hallett (SA).

The most efficient "conventional" technology is to combine a gas turbine with a steam turbine. Gas is burnt in the gas turbine, and waste heat from that is used to produce steam to run a steam turbine. We have a few of these in Australia, examples including Pelican Point (SA), part of the Channel Island plant (NT), Swanbank E (Qld), Tallawarra (NSW). Efficiency varies with age as considerable efficiency gains have been made in recent years, but for a new one it's typically in the mid 50's and some do approach 60% efficiency.

As for fuel cells, well we're looking at roughly 60% efficiency from gas to electricity so it's only a marginal improvement on a conventional combined cycle gas turbine power station. It's better if the heat is put to use, in that case we're looking at around 80%, but then that idea has to compete with heat pumps and solar energy too.

But the crux of it is this. It is an awful lot cheaper to maintain one 350,000kW combined cycle gas turbine at Swanbank E (Qld) than to maintain 175,000 x 2kW fuel cells scattered all over the place producing the same output. A LOT cheaper. It is also a lot easier to control the output of a few large machines rather than a whole lot of little ones. A big power station with direct control over its' output versus a miniature one in everyone's house reliant on some means of communication to control the output from a device (fuel cell) that is very inflexible in operation anyway. Fuel cells just don't have the ramp up / down ability that gas or steam turbines do at the present time.

For these reasons the market for stationary fuel cells is pretty much limited to demonstration projects not intended to return a financial profit. It's still much cheaper to generate bulk electricity with big turbines than it is with small fuel cells.

There is also a point about primary resources. Fuel cells rely on gas. But around 80% of conventional electricity production is from sources other than gas, with over 70% being from coal, hydro or nuclear and minor renewables (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass) - all of which are more plentiful than gas is. And much of the power that is produced from gas, is produced intermittently to meet peaks in demand - in this country that's primarily Summer afternoons when the heat by-product isn't much use.

Overall, fuel cells may have a role to play in power generation going forward but they are by no means a "silver bullet". Hence there isn't a rush to install huge numbers of them.

Using them to power cars etc does however offer much greater potential. The efficiency of a fuel cell leaves any diesel, petrol or gas engine for dead in something like a car. Even in a ship where large size increases efficiency there would still be some advantage with a fuel cell. And oil is, of course, the scarcest and most expensive of the conventional energy sources. That plus pollution from vehicle exhaust in cities is, in most countries, a far bigger problem than emissions from large, modern power stations. There are exceptions, but in most cases vehicles are the bigger issue.
 
One market for fuel cells (and one I believe CFU is aiming at) is as a replacement/supplement to the backup diesel generator.

Useful for datacentres, and other places that require constant power. If they have natural gas lines, they can have fuel cells ready to provide standby power, without requiring large tanks/constant diesel deliveries over extended outages.
 
There's certainly a potential market for backup power in various applications, but they still have to compete on cost in most (not all) applications.

For a mobile phone base station in a suburban area, a fuel cell is a clear winner due to lack of noise etc. But for a shopping centre or hospital etc an engine is a practical option so cost becomes a key factor.

For backup power, the "conventional" options are diesel engines, gas engines (either natural gas or LPG) or batteries. Petrol is occasionally used, but not normally since there's a lot of practical hassles that come with storing it - limited lifespan, extremely hazardous and so on.
 
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