Graphene Company Haydale Debuts IPO on AIM
In past articles, we discussed the first graphene IPO, Applied Graphene Materials, in particular, their strong share price performance and need for revenues in the face of strong competition from privately held graphene producers such as Angstron and Vorbeck. One other graphene company, Haydale, debuted an IPO this week on AIM.
About Haydale Graphene Industries
Haydale Graphene Industries (LON:HAYD) was formed in April 2010 when they acquire Haydale Limited, an R&D business, which was established in 2003 specializing in the novel use of plasma in the treatment of nanoparticles, in particular, graphene and carbon nanotubes. Since establishment, Haydale has raised approximately $7.4 million in equity and loan investments. Haydale raised an additional $11 million in gross proceeds (before expenses) of additional capital through their IPO which debuted this week offering 3.5 million shares at $3.53 per share. At today's latest share price of $3.12, the shares are down -12% giving Haydale a market cap of about $35 million. For the year ended June 2013, Haydale had revenues of $153,000 and an operating loss of $1.8 million.
Haydale's Business Model
Haydale does not specialize in manufacturing bulk graphene but rather has developed a process for the controlled chemical tailoring of nanomaterials which is referred to as functionalization. Haydale uses an environmentally friendly, patent-pending plasma process to functionalize nanomaterials as opposed to the widely used "wet" treatment or acid treatment. Haydale's functionalization process can remove impurities from emerging nanoparticles such as organic or synthetic graphene with minimal damage to the base materials in a one-stage, cost-effective and controllable process.
Haydale plans to commercialize its functionalization process by providing value-added solutions to both raw material producers and industrial corporations. It is likely that commercial agreements will take the form of collaboration and licensing agreements. Haydale is an ISO9001 accredited company with a 5,000 sq ft. facility in which they operate a number of plasma reactors that are used in the functionalization process. The theoretical production capacity of their larger HD100 reactor is approximately 1,000 kgs per annum. Haydale also offers a variety of products including the HDPlas™ range of functionalized graphene nano-platelets to R&D customers via the Graphene Supermarket website, initially in quantities of up to 1kg.
Haydale (LON:HAYD) has an interesting business model in that they do not compete with graphene producers such as AGM, Vorbeck, or Angstron. Instead, they provide a value-added process improvement that can potentially be utilized by all producers of nanomaterials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. It would be nice to see some collaboration or licensing agreements in the near future to help validate the "value add" of Haydale's novel functionalization process.
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