While their products are technological enhancements for the production of semiconductors, Atomera’s stock is more akin to that of a biotech company. For, while a biotech awaits trial results that will either make or break their company, Atomera awaits the first signing by a customer of a licensing agreement. This is an event that, when it occurs, will likely make the Company wildly profitable and simultaneously propel ATOM shares significantly higher.
Fortunately for investors in ATOM, there is one significant difference between Atomera’s customer trials ongoing with their MST deposition product and a blinded biotech trial: Atomera’s investors can see the progress, while biotech investors are truly in the dark and can only hope and pray for a positive outcome.
As the following slide from their earnings’ call demonstrates, they continue to gain traction in getting customers to test their products.
This slide is significant in two ways. First, it shows that more customers are moving into Phase 3. For this to happen, customers must dedicate time and resources to testing the product, along with opening up their checkbooks. Moving into Phase 3 is not insignificant and wouldn’t be happening without the strong likelihood that the product is showing major benefits to the customers.
The second important data point is that the number of engagements is growing faster than the number of customers. This means one or more customers is testing Atomera’s product over several of their product lines. Again, a demonstration of major importance to seeing a path to a licensing deal.
For the reasons cited above, we believe that Atomera is definitely close to signing a customer. However, what got me even more excited on the earnings call, and why I bought aggressively on Friday morning, was the apparent growing of the target market for MST.
In the past, Atomera had discussed the ending of Moore’s Law and how their products improved performance in legacy chips. It certainly does this.
On Thursday’s call, however, the Company never once discussed Moore’s Law. Instead, they focused on how their development team has found improvements that are applicable to all chip manufacturing, including the latest 5nm finfet designs.
My concerns around ATOM, historically, related to just how excited chip manufacturers would be to invest in an upgrade to a legacy product line. It was a question for me, that I thought they could answer, but lingered in my mind. Now, however, I see that Atomera’s product can help even the next generation of fabs.
This is the area 85% of engineers and investment dollars are focused. Atomera, by addressing this market, is going to garner significant attention from the design teams. This will help them across the board, in terms of customer traction and speed to deployment. My major concern has been alleviated.
I’m now highly confident that Atomera will be landing a number of customers. It is truly a matter of when, not if. The timing of this remains undefined. However, for patient investors, ATOM represents a biotech like upside with much less product risk.
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