Year End #14: Small positions - AMAVF (Arcam)

Ameritrade didn’t charge me extra for UURAF. My current one does, $50.00! Ouch!

Denny Schlesinger

I also got in a hassle on the XONE board when both XONE and Arcam were about $50 to $60. Same old song: “Why would you buy XONE which is losing lots of money when you can buy Arcam, doing the same thing (metal printing), which is making lots of money? Xone is still losing money, and has fallen to $16.50 now. Arcam is at $18.50, but it has split four for one, so pre-split it’s equivalent to $74.00!!!

I wrote the above just 2 days ago. Now, XONE has fallen from $16.50 where it was two days ago, to $14.97. Arcam has risen from $18.50 where it was two days ago, to $19.89 (equivalent pre-split to $79.50. Gee…

more on aircraft weight from that link

Every 25 pounds we remove, we save $440,000 a year," McGraw said.

that is $17,600 saved per year per pound for one smallish airline Northwestern. For a 10 year aircraft life (most are used longer) engineering in only one pound of weight savings in something as simple as a bracket saves $ 176,000 . Northwestern has 320 aircraft, American Airlines has 3 times as many…

That makes a big selling point for aircraft manufacturers. Because they can save thousands of pounds with 3DP of some parts, especially with titanium… It can save on part production cost too because of less material wastage . Jet aircraft design improvements are incremental and progressively more sophisticated and expensive as they stretch the design envelope. Weight of the airframe is a big part of that.In fact engine design and weight are the only two good prospects- aerodynamics has mostly been worked out.
In the next generation expect more 3DP titanium parts . Because that is the only way to substantially reduce the metal weight of load bearing items. Just things like brackets and landing gear components are huge opportunities.Probably more carbon fiber too but I don’t have a good investment for that , it seems non proprietary.

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Probably more carbon fiber too but I don’t have a good investment for that , it seems non proprietary.

Perhaps, but keep tuned …

http://discussion.fool.com/definite-acquisition-target-31579931…

Every 25 pounds we remove, we save $440,000 a year," McGraw said.

Is that 25 pounds or 25 pounds per plane to get the $440K in savings?

I believe you ca trade foreign stocks directly at both Schwab and Scottrade.

Yes, at Schwab you can open a Global Markets account and through that account trade directly on foreign exchanges. However, Sweden is not one of the exchanges that is accessible through the your individual Schwab global markets account. ($58 commission for me at Schwab for AMAVF trades.)

okapimoon

25 pounds - I took that to mean over the whole fleet. But maybe I misunderstood.

Whatever, weight is critical, because for every flight you have to lift that pound 5 or 6 mile up into the sky snd hold it there for hours. Since there is no regenerative braking you don’t get it back descending.

I had other figures for the exact savings but can’t find them now. Alas, the MF boards remain primitive with no editing after submission and no good search engine. In fact my annoyance over this keeps me from buying any more of the MF paid services.

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I worked for Boeing for 30 years. I was in IT, but I worked in support of Commercial Airplanes for the majority of my career. I learned more than a little about the airplane programs while working on mainline manufacturing applications.

The question about converting weight reduction to savings is very complicated, it depends on a bunch of variables like airplane type, miles traveled, cost of fuel, specific airports involved, etc., even the weather is a factor. But, there is no dispute that reduced weight always translates to savings.

The airlines have become hypersensitive to this. Used to be, they would top off the tanks before every flight. Then they realized they were carrying a lot of excess weight in unused fuel. Now every airline has an engineer calculate how many pounds of fuel are required for a given flight. The engineer makes a recommendation to the pilot who can over ride the decision and request additional fuel. If you’ve flown recently, you may have noticed that some airlines no longer serve food and drinks from a trolley, instead the flight attendants hand carry service items. Taking the trolleys off the plane saves a lot of weight. When Boeing develops a new plane, they guarantee a weight for the launch customers. If the delivered product is overweight, Boeing pays a significant penalty to the customer (I’m sure it’s no different for Airbus).

Boeing’s subsidiary, Jeppesen, has a virtual monopoly on maps, charts and flight information that every pilot (commercial as well as private) carries in the cockpit. Some years ago they developed a product called Electronic Flight Bag (EFB). In a nutshell, EFB replaced the paper product with a PC (which has since been replaced with iPads, I believe). One of the big selling points was weight reduction. They replaced 35 pounds of paper with about 3 pounds of electronic gear. My recollection is that the average, estimated annual savings was $1.2 million per aircraft.

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https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&…

not the chart showing increasing titanium use in aircraft . A clear trend I expect to accelerate as other options for reducing aircraft weight shrink.

http://m.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/17/3d-printing-s…

comparing 3DP stocks Arcam is expensive on a price / sales basis but less so on a P/E basis because it actually sells machines at a profit. Except for perception I think Arcam has little to do with the rest of the 3DP market

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Announced quarter and year end results:

Year-end report 2014

Strong growth and strategic acquisitions

Net sales increased by 70% to 339.0 (199.4) MSEK

Operating income increased to SEK 19.6 (14.5) MSEK
(including non-recurring costs of approximately 9.3 (5) MSEK)

Net income increased to 57.1 (15.4) MSEK
(including tax effects of approximately 15.8 MSEK)

Earnings per share increased to 3.10 (0.96) SEK

35 (25) EBM systems were delivered during the period

Order intake increased to 42 (27) systems

Acquisition of the metal powder manufacturer AP&C in Canada

Acquisition of the contract manufacturer DiSanto Technology Inc.

For the fourth quarter:

Sales increased by 105% to 137.1 (66.9) MSEK

Operating income increased to 13.2 (6.9) MSEK

Net income increased to 15.0 (7.6) MSEK

Order intake increased to 21 (10) systems

15 (9) EBM systems were delivered in the third quarter

Significant events after the end of the period:

Order for 5 new EBM systems in January 2015

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And, for this we get 5%?

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