Post
Topic
Board Securities
Re: [HAVELOCK] AlcheMiner Scrypt ASIC IPO Friday April 11
by
Korbman
on 11/04/2014, 13:03:11 UTC
Valuations aside it is nice they benchmark another company Silver Fish when trying to get that number rather than just something in:

Funding for IC fabrication and miner manufacturing:
 Approximately $3,600,000
– R&D Cost & other costs: USD$400,000

Funding needed specifically for large scale manufacturing of proven chips at least that is what I get from the demo and prospectus.

I had initially missed this while skimming last night, but I had a chance to read it all this morning, and unfortunately I have a concern about the overall offer itself.

As far as I've read, Alcheminer is solely a manufacturer, focusing on R&D and equipment / IP sales. This is all well and good, but it means everything they do / earn will be based in fiat. Let's think about this from a USD point of view:
Initial offering per share is (roughly) equal to ~$56 (ignoring fluctuations at this point).
Overall company valuation is $11.2M:
-- IPO - $4.48M (40%)
-- Angel Funding - $3.36M (30%)
-- Founders - $3.36M (30%)

In this case, I'm assuming (it was never specified) that monthly net income is dispersed as a dividend. If their projections hold true, 2014 dividends (total) for Investors should amount to about $45 per share (40% of the projected $9M net income / 80,000 shares). 2015 dividends (total) would then amount to a nice $96 per share, again based on their projections.

As it stands right now, the projections seem fairly reasonable (2014 revenues only require selling a few thousand units).

The problem with all this is the BTC/USD volatility. The share price is 0.14BTC, and 2014 dividends would amount to 0.1125BTC (assuming a rate of $400 per coin). But what happens if we see a spike to $600, $800, $1000 again? Suddenly those dividends are only worth 0.075BTC, 0.056BTC, 0.045BTC.
What about in 2015? Anyone know what the price per BTC will be then?

What made ASICMiner a good investment wasn't just that they dealt in development and equipment sales, but that they were miners as well (and the first large ASIC farm). This meant that anything they earned could be distributed as a dividend without having to be converted first, leaving shareholders largely unaffected during the price spikes / drops between January - May 2013.

Even if Alcheminer went this route, they'd still have to contend with fluctuating altcoin exchange rates, which can be even more volatile than BTC/USD.