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Friday, August 10, 2018

Energous Raising $75 Million?

In addition to their standard 10-QEnergous submitted a Form S-3 today, indicating that they are looking to sell up to $75 million of equity in the company, coming barely 6 months after their earlier $40 million raise (from a 2015 S-3 and then an amendment in January 2018). With $37m in the bank as of last month, and a burn rate of near $13m a quarter and statements they will increase R&D spend, I had guessed they'd be raising soon but thought it might be nearer the end of the year. It seems they think now's the right time, perhaps before negative press catches up with them and sours the public. They do not have to raise all this at once, it can be done over time, but given they've set the price at $14.05 I expect much will be done soon.

This likely gives the company another 5 to 6 quarters of operation, which in conjunction with cash in the bank will keep them going until mid 2020. Given that around $4m of equity based compensation goes to the team per quarter, that's another $32m or so of extra cash in their pockets.

Interestingly this comes just after I heard reports of the CFO presenting at Oppenheimer, and apparently he was awful - weak, unenthusiastic, and got ripped to pieces by multiple tough questions after his talk. At least Rizzone is enthusiastic about what he's doing!

A few days ago the company indicated it had revenues of $200,000 per quarter and its major product release was still 18 months out. The 10-Q shows they have debts of just short of $200m to get to this point. Hardly compelling for a company with a $350m market cap.

Last time Raymond James acted as distibutor and made $1,000,000 from the sale (2.5%). Who's making the money this time around? The gravy train keeps rolling for at least another two years...


2 comments:

  1. $14.05 was just a previous closing price. The way will probably do this is having brokers call large customers offering shares at a discounted price, the next day announcing completion of a sale.

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    1. You're right, I read that too quickly. Updated accordingly.

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