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Nano Dimension CEO Gives Company Update
July 19, 2019 | Nolan Johnson and Dan Feinberg, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 16 minutes
Dror: The company’s focus is on growth and sales. We have reached the point in which our technology has matured into a product that is accepted by the markets, and we are operating in a market that we see as sort of a blue ocean. Meanwhile, the adoption by customers takes time because the pricing points on the product, which is measured at hundreds of thousands of dollars for each customer, makes it a capital equipment expense. It’s not just a one-person decision. The growth curve takes time. We work on transforming our customers from prototyping into manufacturing. And because it’s difficult at this stage to say, “When the time comes they’re all going to make this move, and we’re going to start having customers buy instead of one, two, 10, or 20 of our systems.” That’s the inflection point when the technology makes this transformation from prototyping to production.
Feinberg: So, you’re seeing the increases in the prototyping and the improvement in the prototyping, and being able to develop and manufacture devices, such as the one you described for us. Now, are you moving toward the higher volume manufacturing for these other devices?
Dror: Yes. I would not call it mass high-volume production; it’s more high-mix, low-volume production. If you think of additive manufacturing in the world of 3D printing, most of the other players that deal with different types of materials for the mechanical type of manufacturing are normally measuring their success in the weights or costs of materials. With our customers in the world of electronics, it’s not about how big the application is but about how complex it is. If you have a standard PCB with two layers, but it’s a large one—such as 6 x 6 inches—and then you take a 0.5 x 0.5 inch of an eight-layer PCB that has a couple of complex vias, the smaller one that’s more complex costs more.
And that’s what we’re targeting. The focus of Nano Dimension is on working with our strategic customers. We have different types of customers and partners, such as research institutes, that are great at developing applications. We have various defense agencies in the U.S. interested in prototyping. Then, we have Fortune 500 PCB manufacturers and other large corporates. We could differentiate the ones that are interested in finding those applications that could take them to production, and we consider them as strategic partners and customers. We have our own application engineers that work with our customers to help them to make that transition and take that extra step toward manufacturing.
If you review the enhancements we’ve made over the past few months, you’ll see how many are related to interesting applications that could be achieved almost by 3D printing. The key is to provide the customers with solid, tested, and benchmarked applications that provide them ROI. Our focus is on moving to high-mix, low-volume production of additive 3D-printed electronics.
Feinberg: DragonFly is the main product that you have. It’s clearly the dominant product. Are you working on other products?
Dror: Yes, within the DragonFly family, there are going to be some new announcements. I can’t share more details yet, but stay tuned.
Feinberg: On the financial side right now, globally, we’re in a little bit of a trade war. And there are a lot of tariffs being thrown up between the United States, China, and even Mexico. Are you finding the tariffs affecting you in any way?
Dror: No. The tariffs do not affect us right now. To remind you, we are an Israeli company. Another important perspective of things is that what we’re doing is providing a tool for people to create things. You could say that companies that provide tools, like Dell or Microsoft, provide tools worldwide. Nano Dimension sees itself in a similar way—as a company that provides this tool that happens to be a 3D printer that can 3D print whatever you wish to design. We’re not being affected, and I hope it stays that way.
Feinberg: Your company is growing, you’re approaching the break-even point, and you can’t talk about it in more detail, which I understand. Let me speak then as someone who follows your finances. I’m surprised that your stock has stayed where it is when there have been so many good announcements. As somebody who follows your stock, I view it from two sides: I look at all of the announcements and press releases, and then I look at the stock price, and I say, “What is going on here?” Can you comment about that at all?
Dror: While customers and the public are excited and interested in Nano Dimension’s technology, there is also a concern related to the operational expenses. On the one hand, you could consider the company as a startup with very innovative technology. On the other hand, it needs to deal with a variety of activities related to manufacturing, sales, nanomaterials, software, and machines, which require funding. The company is still building up its markets, and prior to a revenue level that proves it is in a financial break-even, there seems to be an impact on the stock. The company is focused on increasing its growth, and I believe that once it presents a ramp-up in sales, the growth will also be reflected by the trust of shareholders and the stock price.
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