A few brief Energous updates. There was a new article from Rhodri Marsden covering the technology area, and it was reasonably skeptical. The most interesting part for me was this quote from the Energous CEO:
Steve Rizzone, chief executive of Energous, responds by alluding to the lifestyle change mentioned by Bladen of Chargifi. “Mobile distance charging will not, for the foreseeable future, have charging power comparable to a wall socket,” he says. “But if you are continually topping off your mobile devices, you do not need to enable the same amount of power because charging happens continuously.”
So main points from here are 1) an admission they will not hit the multi-Watt charging rates and 2) that they are moving their public position to the "trickle charge" model where you don't charge the phone up, just try to halt or slow down the rate of battery decline. That's a pretty significant admission from a $500m market cap company - that everything they built the company on won't be happening "for the foreseeable future". A rational market would have seen a major price decline for their shares but for WATT, nothing. It's another indication this company's value is irrational - though that's not to say there won't be a lot of ups and downs, and money to be made and lost, before it finally hits zero.
Taking a look at the trickle charging claim - the FCC Part 18 data shows that maximum charge rate for a phone is around 100 mW at 50 cm from the transmitter, down to 30 mW at 90 cm. Ignoring RF to DC conversion loss, if you held your phone at exactly 50 cm away, square on to the transmitter, and didn't move it, you would extend the battery life from about 10 hours to 12 hours. At 90 centimeters you may add around 30 minutes if you are lucky. Don't hold it with your hand at the back of the phone though, or at an angle, you'll lose charging. This is me being nice to them with the numbers, realistically it makes no noticeable difference at all. Alternatively you could plug it in or place on a Qi charge pad and get back to 100% in an hour or so.
10Q
On the finances front, the 10Q was out for Energous, and it's not looking pretty for them. They had about $45m in the bank as of the end of March this year, with about $13.5m in per-quarter run rate. If that holds, they're out of cash in January, and by their own admission there are no significant products or revenue in that timeframe. Let's see how they either cut their expenses or persuade people to buy a few more tens of millions of dollars "worth" of stock.
Ajit Pai - Again
Once again the Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, promoted Energous using the official FCC account. A reminder to everyone, this is a disgusting abuse of a public position for the private gain of his personal friends, and that's what we know about.
Thanks to the @Energous team for taking the time to show me the demo! Look forward to seeing the future of wireless charging unfold. (And always a bonus to see the one and only @MartyMobile.) @McDowellTweet https://t.co/OixmfxJzPn— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) April 13, 2018
I took a little time to browse through Ajit Pai's Twitter feed and didn't see any other companies that got the benefit of his promotion.Did I miss any? I wonder what makes them so special to warrant this attention?
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