Thank you @FoolishJeff for raising this company on the board! I’ve been following them for a few quarters and trying to understand their business more.
The revenue growth of their PyroThin product are incredible. I’m trying to understand what the competitive advantage is and why the market has adopted the product so quickly.
My understanding is this is a product which coats a EV battery to protect against “thermal runaway” or the battery catching on fire. Sounds like Toyota and GM are adopting this product rapidly. I’m curious though why not Telsa, or if they have their own gel or don’t have any pyrogel.
The company also has Pyrogel which is more for refineries, chemical plants, and power generation stations which protects against fire hazards. It handles temperatures from -40F to 1200F.
Then there is Cryogel which is for protecting against cooling and handles temperatures from -460F to 257F, and is used in LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) and other petrochemicals.
It sounds like PyroThin is by far the fastest growing over Pyrogel and Cryogel.
I’ve only been able to find two competitors who are public but basically have incremental or negative growth and P/E ratios in the 10-15 range,
Cabot Corporation (CBT) - 5B market cap, P/E 13, flat growth
Saint-Gobain (SGO.PA) - Paris based, 40B market cap, P/E 15, -10% growth
Then some other competitors,
IBIH (China)
Guangdong Alison Hi-Tech (China)
Nanotech (China)
Armacell
Johns Manville
JIOS Aerogel - Singaporean series B startup, very small
I am trying to figure out why PyroThin is growing but these industry standard gels are not. From what I gather PyroThin design allows “breathing” of daily expansion and contraction of lithium-ion batteries. It protects at the cell level, is ultra-thin, lightweight thermal insulation.
It sounds like the company is ramping production at their Rhode Island facility to convert to PyroThin primarily.
I was also wondering if you know about their Department of Energy deal and what this entails? They say they are “deeply engaged” with the DOE on becoming a candidate partner in some program. I cannot tell the value or scope of this deal.
Ultimately while I like the growth in financials here, I’m still struggling to understand the competitive advantage and bit concerned all the growth relies on a single product of PyroThin. While it seems to be taking the market by storm, I’d like more assurances on the durability of this competitive advantage for the product. I’m fascinated though how they’ve been able to convince Toyota and GM to adopt it so fast.
Is their product just that vastly superior to the competition that word of mouth has spread like wildfire, and every EV maker is looking to coat their batteries in PyroThin?