After reading one of Luker’s messages on the Agoracom Argex Message Hub, I learned that my comparison of Fancamp + SGS with Argex + Ortech contains a factual error. I have no problem with anyone pointing out my mistakes, least of all, with me doing so myself. For the most part, my mistakes are not, really, all that terrible. They demonstrate little more than two things: (1) I’m human; and (2) as such, I’m prone to human error.

In this case, correcting myself actually makes the Fancamp/Argex comparison easier to formulate, by removing one of the hard-to-quantify differences. I erroneously wrote (in my message), “Unlike Fancamp, Argex’s production plans—with outside financing—include picking up its own shovels and starting the very expensive work on its own.” Now read what Luker—our very own sleuth and intrepid fact-finder—posted on the Argex Message Hub (as early as!) last June:

http://agoracom.com/ir/ArgexTitanium/forums/discussion/topics/645465-howard-group-a-sober-perspective/messages/2025763#message

The way I read it, after all the guesswork and unsubstantiated arithmetic in the referenced article, the first sentence of point Number Five is the whole logic of the analyst’s argument: “Licencing potentially means a quicker route to revenue generation.” Sound familiar?

In other words, after Argex gave up on getting direct financing, they also gave up on their earlier idea of “picking up its own shovels and starting the very expensive work on its own,” as I said in my message (with my mistake). It took them as late as last June to come up with the brilliant idea that little tiny companies with no financing are better off “licencing,” rather than putting all the pieces together themselves. Sound familiar?

So, when you add it all up, what makes Argex (for example) worth more (and, potentially, way less) than Fancamp? Metallurgical technology (plus the money its stockbrokers raised promoting it). In computing the comparative values of Fancamp and Argex, in a very important sense, it all boils down to the comparative values of their respective metallurgical technologies, added on top of what other hard assets exist, in addition to their metallurgical technologies.