We have established that there is a significant lag time between PIC events and the reporting of these events. My initial reaction to reading the financials and the equipment issues was disappointment, but of course one has to mentally reposition oneself in time to fully understand the meaning of a report that covers a period and start the dot joining game all over again.

Most importantly we know that the matter was resolved at the end of March. Clearly it has diverted resources but has it really put back the business timetable? The company is obliged by its own rules to report material facts, and one has to ask why they chose not to report at the time of the equipment problems and chose instead to mention them in the end of year financials. Were they burying bad news or had they judged the event was not materiel.

My theory is that annoying as equipment malfunctions are in terms of achieving the technical goals, the other financial and business goals, which are a matter of negotiation by the management, can still proceed at a pace. Personally, I view the untoward technical event as just a blip and that we can still expect news of significance as the blip was known about whilst other negotiations were proceeding and were deemed not material to the negotiations.

In the light of this I am now beginning to get a handle on the need for signing of a second collaborative effort with BAE. I simply could not fathom why we needed two. But here’s a suggestion, good management’s reaction to a blip would be to see how they were going to catch up with any lost technical development time? (flash of inspiration) I know, lets speak to our friends at BAE, we need 20 engineers to work on this, lets see if we can quickly set up a deal to get the transition to fab done more quickly, glitches at Stoors with the ageing kit or installation of new kit might cause more problems, getting into BAE fab early would make these problems irrelevant. We will of course still need to keep the Stoors facilities for secure development.

The other issue is one of the additional cost of the BAE deal, is this where we see PC’s CIC mention of keeping the financiers happy by playing a part or do we have a white knight.

My conclusion is that the equipment issue is just a little teenage acne on an otherwise athletic body.

sula