A company to add to your watch list

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
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I recently introduced IONQ to the board. The stock price has gone up about 40% in the 4 days since I first purchase stock in this company. This is a very small company that went public not long ago. Any position in this company should be considered high risk.

But, that’s not why I’m posting. I’ve come across a different company that is worthy of a watch list entry, in other words, I’m not buying any stock at this time. The company is Graphene Manufacturing Group. They are based in Australia and trade on the Toronto exchange under the ticker GMGMF. The name implies what this company does. What makes it exciting (to me anyway) is that they have developed the technology for manufacturing graphene-aluminum batteries at scale. They are currently in the construction phase of a manufacturing plant.

Graphene-aluminum batteries are cheaper, safer and provide better performance than lithium ion batteries.They can be made to power everything from mobile phones to automobiles.

For more information please go to the GMG website: www.graphenemg.com

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Thank you, brittlerock!

I have long believed that a company that can come up with a better battery solution would eat the world, so I checked it out. In doing that, I asked myself, “Okay, what the heck is graphene?” And now I’m down a rabbit hole.

“Groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene” won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010. Batteries (from phones to cars) are one application for graphene, but so are solar cells, touch screens, air filters, and potentially semiconductors. And more.

These are both a few years old, but:

Graphene: The Next S-Curve for Semiconductors? (McKinsey, 2018)

40 Ways Graphene Is about to Change Your Life (Techradar, 2019)

As an investor, graphene looks like a potential disrupter to many, many, many companies that manufacture things. So my question is now, “What public companies are producing graphene to supply to all those industries?”

It sounds like GMG produces graphene but (at least so far) for their own use, which right now is focused on battery solutions. That could, of course, scale to other products. But their mission is products.

Is there a graphene pure play out there? I’m keeping an eye on GMG, but am also hunting for who might be preparing to supply everyone who wants to use graphene without making their own. Watch this space!

JabbokRiver

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Did you check out the GMG site? You can see that they have a few other irons in the fire, heat shields and lubricants - but yeah, they can only focus on one thing at a time and batteries seems to be it. That would be my choice as well. There’s yet another high performance battery chemistry of which I am aware. Aluminum-sulfur appears to offer similar benefits as graphene-aluminum and it is even more cost effective. But, it’s still a lab rat. The GMG technology is pretty close to going to market.

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I did look at the GMG website and watched their investor presentation. I was a bit disheartened that the voice narrating the presentation doesn’t sound like a real human, but it got the point across.

In hunting for videos, I did find this one from Nanalyze on a number of graphene-related companies, including GMG. The video is from a year ago, and it seems like no one is really off to the races with the technology yet, and they were especially hard on GMG.

I’m going to go through each of the companies mentioned, though; a lot can happen in a year with new tech. And it’s fun to learn about a new thing in the world. I didn’t get a lot of quantum physics in seminary.

JR

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That’s quite a video you linked. It highlights exactly why I said GMG is something to put on a watchlist but not put any money into it. Obviously, I had not done any real due diligence on them. The stock dilution is pretty eye-popping.

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@JabbokRiver42 I had a discussion about graphene on a different format. I mentioned that I’ve been hearing of this miracle material for about 15 years now, but somehow no one has been able to actually manufacture a product at scale. I did a little more research and found that the main obstacle is the graphene. Apparently, it’s very, very hard to make the stuff in sufficient quantity of a high enough level of purity to make anything from it. So, a small quantity of more or less pure graphene can be rendered and applied to lab level experimentation, but so far anyway, the process of making the graphene appears to be the primary obstacle. So companies like GMG can tout all the wonderful products that they are on the brink of going to market with, but never quite get a marketable product made.

I’m on the sidelines with this one.

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@brittlerock Thanks. I found the video I linked above by looking for information on a different company in the space, G6 Materials. The video I posted earlier also was harsh with them for having changed their name, but that’s the company I’m watching for a breakthrough in the current obstacles.

I’m watching G6 Materials because the co-founders, a young husband and wife team, have strong backgrounds in the field, having each co-authored papers with Nobel winners.

The couple (Daniel Stolyarov and Elena Polyakova), know their stuff and believe in the potential, both for use cases and for finding a way around the current obstacles as only those deep in the science can.

G6 Materials is struggling as a company, with a share consolidation set for tomorrow. Not a great sign, and this isn’t a suggestion to invest. But if another company in the space were to acquire them and put these two in charge of R&D, I think, in time, they would figure out the issues that are currently keeping graphene applications from being able to scale. What G6 Materials has been able to do says to me that the breakthrough to that is close. You can follow their trajectory on their News page.

In 2021 G6 Materials acquired GX Technologies, which gave them access to work with the US Army Corp of Engineers and a project site in Mississippi. There’s more about the benefits of the acquisition here. So Fall of 2021 got them interviews at a number of conferences, and I’ve watched a couple. One with Daniel Stolyarov is here.

To your point, he talks about the difficulty of producing graphene at scale, with the biggest obstacle being the cost. And no doubt the cost issue is what you mentioned–it’s hard to extract from the graphite.

Daniel’s wife, Elena, appears to be the one who can envision the many, many potential commercial uses for graphene. They have an air purifier with a graphene filter on the retail market; and they have some other products more targeted for industrial use in their own store,

In any case, the graphene story appears to be currently snagged at cost-effective scaling. G6 Materials may go under before that can be solved, but Daniel and Elena have the background to be candidates for solving it. So that’s where I’m watching.

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Quite the investment, currently trading at $0.02, but hey, the stock was up to a nickel not too long ago. Get int now and you can more than double your money if the stock returns to those lofty heights . . . however, liquidity might be a problem

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