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“What is this building hiding?” Byron King’s teased “Miracle Material” stock

Sniffing out the graphene pick from Byron King's Energy and Scarcity Investor

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, September 25, 2012

“What is this Tiny Tech Company in Maryland Hiding?
“And why could it mean…

“The End of Silicon Valley as We Know It

“Much of what you are about to see remains unknown to those outside of scientific and industrial circles…

“Many researchers are hailing it as a ‘miracle material’ – and quite possibly the most important substance to be created in more than 100 years….

“Located only 30 miles from Washington D.C., the un-marked building … houses a laboratory dedicated to revolutionizing everything from aerospace engineering to tablet computers.

“We are talking about the end of computer chips and the internet as we know it…”

And yes, of course, they include a photo of this unremarkable laboratory building — just to reassure you that yes, there’s a real company in a real industrial park. The building that he’s talking about is 8306 Patuxent Range Rd in Jessup, MD, which is in one of the many industrial parks near BWI Airport between Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC. You can look it up and get the same grainy picture of the outside of the building from Google Maps if you, too, would like to be a super secret stock spy.

That’s all about a little private company, one of many trying to revolutionize the production of next-generation materials by using Graphene, a still-in-its-industrial-infancy material — if you haven’t yet heard any of the spiels about graphene, and there have been many over the past year and a half, it’s a highly-conductive, super-strong material made of a layer of graphite the thickness of a single atom, sometimes described as the only two-dimensional crystal. Demonstrating a way to create and isolate this layer (by using Scotch Tape, of all things) won the Nobel Prize for two UK researchers in 2010, though their initial publication was six years earlier.

King goes into some of the hyperbole over graphene to help whet your appetite — here’s just a small taste of the ad:

“Not only is it the strongest material researchers have ever tested – it’s also the best conductor man has ever found.

“IBM has already created a graphene-based processor capable of executing 100 billion cycles per second. And many researchers believe that in the future, a graphene credit card could store as much information as today’s computers.

“This one material alone could prove more revolutionary than – and soon replace – plastic, Kevlar and the silicon chip.”

And though King implies that this particular Maryland company is going to be leading the charge in harnessing the power of graphene (the company believes so too, of course — here’s a Baltimore Sun article about them if you’re curious), he does say that there are other companies trying to turn this discovery and this remarkable material into real products. But, as you might expect for a commodities, mining and energy focused guy … he thinks the material itself will be where the money is made.

“That’s okay though because, when it comes to this miracle material and the birth of a new ‘Silicon Valley’, they’re not the only game in town…

“I’m going to show you how you can bypass this company and tap into an even bigger, far more promising moneymaking opportunity.

“How? By going straight to the resource that feeds it.

“You see, this cutting-edge company – and a dozen others just like it – relies on one crucial, raw material to make the groundbreaking products you’ve just seen – as well as several more I’ve yet to show you. (Many of which you probably won’t believe even when you see them…)

“Keep reading because in the next few minutes I’m going to show you what this crucial new material is.”

OK, well we’ve already let the cat out of the bag that it’s graphene that we’re dealing with. So which company is going to supply the crucial raw material? Will it be one of the several that have been teased by Frank Curzio, Michael Robinson, Nick Hodge or, indeed, by Byron King himself about a year and a half ago? There are three fairly advanced “junior” graphite stocks that are have all been touted heavily by at least one newsletter over the past year — that’s Focus Graphite, Northern Graphite, and Flinders Resources. King’s initial pick was Focus Graphite, back when it was called Focus Metals well over a year ago … so is that what he’s still touting today?

Well, his big timing push is for his October 28 conference call that discusses this super-material … and which is just a replay of the conference call they held back in the Spring … and the real urgency of it appears to be that he thinks Samsung will be releasing flexible-screen gadgets using these supermaterials for the coming holiday season …

“Samsung has already announced plans to have its first flexible screens out before the end of this year – and expects to have a dozen more graphene-based products on the market within the next five years.

“And IBM, Nokia and, rumor has it, even Apple are right behind them.

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“Soon – and I mean very soon – the touch screens… processor chips… casings… and batteries in everything from PCs and HD TVs to tablets, mobile phones and hybrids could be all be made with graphene.

“I take it you’re beginning to see just how huge and important this is. How much graphene could change our industry… our economy… and our lives. And how valuable it’s about to become…

“As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago, one of my industry contacts informed me that graphene is already selling for FOUR TIMES the price of gold.”

Well, as a true two dimensional material (meaning it’s only one atom thick), you can bet that cost per ounce won’t really be the key concern for graphene like it is for gold — it’s an attention-getting statement, but lots of things cost more than gold, particularly processed nanomaterials that are expensive to produce and engineer but don’t weigh much. In terms of the raw material, graphite, that’s still mostly used in batteries and in steelmaking, and the most expensive high-purity stuff that’s commonly used is in the neighborhood of $2,000-3,000/ton … with the ultra-high-purity large flake stuff maybe getting two to three times that much.

So if even the best graphite is going for a maximum of $5/pound (that’s $10,000/ton, roughly), you can see that obviously the value-add to get it to graphene is immense. If graphene costs four times as much as gold, let’s call it $6,000 per ounce, then the raw material costs roughly 30 cents and the graphene production process adds $5,999.70 of value. Not that this is reflective of how the market will work in the end, when there might be lots of products using graphene in large quantities, but it’s illustrative when we’re talking about mining companies: The silicon revolution was not particularly dominated by the cost of the raw material (silicon — even though high quality polysilicon was a value added product using high-quality silica), but by the cost of turning that into a semiconductor chip. The raw material impacted the price of a silicon wafer to some degree, but by the time it got down to making 20 or 30 semiconductor chips on a single wafer, and the exacting and expensive process to create those perfect wafers and make those chips with nanoscale or near-nanoscale processing, the cost of the original raw material lost much of its impact. Polysilicon producers have made good investments at times over the years, largely because of the waxing and waning supply, but these commodity producers have also often run into supply gluts that crushed their margins. With no one producing graphene on an industrial scale at the moment, there’s no way to know how much of it will be produced or what the dynamics of that particular product will be — but graphite prices have been fairly economically sensitive, driven by demand from steelmakers and Lithium-Ion battery makers who consume most of the world’s graphite.

Here’s a bit more from the ad:

“… therein lies the key to our first huge moneymaking opportunity…

“You see, it takes a very pure, rare form of graphite – called ‘highly ordered pyrolytic graphite’ – to affordably and ‘easily’ produce high-quality graphene.

“And up until now, almost all the graphene that’s ever been produced has been made using a very difficult, very unpredictable chemical process (called chemical vapor deposition).

“All of that is about to change, though…

“I’ve found a little-known mining outfit sitting on some of the purest raw graphite on the planet…

“Their chemist has found a safe, environmentally sustainable, low-cost process for refining it into graphene…

“AND they’re located right here in North America!

“Better yet, at the moment, you can pick up shares for less than a $1 (although I can assure you, they won’t remain such a bargain for long!)…

“And independent tests conducted this past April confirm the purity of their deposits and places them in a very strong position over any potential competitors.

“In other words, the risk is minimal while growth and upside potential is virtually unlimited.

“Bottom line: This one graphite miner alone could alter the course of history – and make you an absolute fortune in the process.”

So … I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether listening to a “re-broadcast” of a conference call means you’re “attending” that call — but yes, it looks like for the graphene portion of his hypstering Byron King is still teasing Focus Graphite (FMS in Canada, FCSMF on the pink sheets). The April “independent tests” were the metallurgical results they publicized here, and they have a well-known high-purity deposit at Lac Knife in Quebec that they’re continuing to explore.

Focus Graphite is the junior graphite miner that has most aggressively pushed the technological/graphene story, including investing in graphene research through their joint venture with Grafoid (that’s where the “their chemist” stuff comes from) — which doesn’t mean that they would benefit disproportionately, necessarily, but they do focus on that value added end of the spectrum, and on quality of deposit over the quantity. I haven’t seen specifics about their process and I probably wouldn’t understand them if I did, but Grafoid’s process, which is designed to use the high-concentration graphite from Lac Knife to produce graphene, is claimed to be “greener” — this is how Grafoid’s scientist explains it:

“Environmentally low impact (by eliminating strong acids, toxic oxidizing and reducing agents, the capital clean up costs to neutralize these harsh chemicals is completely avoided)”

So that sounds like it’s probably good, right? Like Northern Graphite, the other fairly advanced up-and-coming Canadian graphite mine that we hear about a lot, Focus Graphite is planning to start production at their flagship graphite mine in 2014, a date that has trickled backward a bit over the last year and will probably continue trickling backward, as mining construction always does.

Will what is possibly emerging as a graphite bull market, despite the downturn this year, be a bubble that bursts like we’ve seen before for rare earths companies and for uranium companies? Has it already burst and now we’re looking at somewhat more reasonable prices? Honestly, I have no idea — graphite is clearly in rising demand if the world economy continues growing — industrial demand will continue to determine the success of new graphite mines, not least because I’d bet graphene production isn’t going to be ready to consume thousands of tons of graphite in the next several years. So they need lithium ion battery markets to continue growing, and they need steel production to be at least steady, and they need all the other wide demands for graphite to continue to be there, stuff like lubricants and heat sinks and other applications that, together, probably move pretty sympathetically with global industrial growth. The graphite stocks did spike this past Spring, largely due to heavy attention from several wide-distribution newsletters, I’d wager, but they are generally back to where they were a year or so ago, before most investors had ever heard of graphene.

So after all that … I bet we’ll continue to see plenty more graphite and graphene teasers, and if this is anything like the rare earths or lithium markets (and it probably will be, at least when it comes to investment touting) there will be more ephemeral junior companies than just those top three that I mentioned that will trickle up with large new discoveries or re-discoveries that will never be developed or mined in the lifetime of most investment newsletters.

And yes, Byron King is also teasing his Vanadium and Beryllium picks as the two other next-generation materials plays — and I reckon we’ve probably talked about both of those in the past as well, but we’ll take another look tomorrow to see if he’s still riding those same horses. In the meantime, I know we’ve got a good number of graphite fans out there in Gumshoedom, so if you have a favorite graphite or graphene play, well, I’m sure we’d be delighted to hear about it … just use the friendly little comment box below.

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Ron Schumacher
Irregular
September 25, 2012 6:37 pm

Based on work I have done in the area, John Lettow and Vorbeck are the real deal. I had the pleasure of meeting John and talking with him at length almost three years ago now. DARPA does not hand out 50 million $ research grants to just anyone. Vorbeck ‘s research into graphene-lithium batteries will be ground breaking. Not only will the charge carried be greatly increased but re-charge time will be measured in minutes. Again, based on government research, the money will be in application companies like Vorbeck and not necessarily in mining graphite. Too bad Vorbeck is still family- owned!

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sam
Member
sam
September 25, 2012 6:38 pm

Please follow this link:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/management-cease-trade-order-123000074.html

Would appreciate comments from Gumshoe.
Please……….

Jeff Williams
Jeff Williams
September 25, 2012 7:00 pm
Reply to  sam

My preferred graphite prospect is Energizer Resources (ENZR).

They have discovered strikes of 321 kilometers (if my memory serves) of high quality graphite. They will be digging it out fifty years from now. Production has been “fast
tracked” for 2013 I believe.

And that doesn’t even count their world class Vanadium deposit.

Check it out!

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John
Guest
John
February 14, 2013 9:37 pm
Reply to  Jeff Williams

Yes it is a great resource but they don’t have the financing to undertake this on their own according to Byron King. Their website states and expected production start in 2015, so that is a long way from now and no guarantees that the stock price will stay static or head in only one direction between now and then.

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IAN NICHOLLS
Guest
IAN NICHOLLS
September 25, 2012 8:24 pm

Look at SYR and TON on the ASX

TonyM
Guest
TonyM
September 25, 2012 8:24 pm

Graphene is being touted in scientific journals like Scientific American as a material that will have as dramatic an impact on civilization as plastic. It will be used as ubiquitouly as plastic in just aboiut every area of life, science, and engineering. It is the real deal. For investors the question is “what stock do you pick and when do you pick it?”. I would guess that product developers rather than miners would be the way to go. Spreading the investment around a few companies is also a good idea. Anybody have a list of publicly traded graphene product developers?

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francois
September 25, 2012 9:13 pm
Reply to  TonyM

Graphene super-qualities have been over-emphasized. The material has been around for some time now, and where do we see it? Apart from a mention as a generator in the tooth of terrorist ( NCIS ), nobody is has found how to use it.
LG did issue a graphene phone, but pulled it out of the market: graphene displays only in gray.
I agree with you, once somebody finds how to decently use that interesting material, mining it is irrelevant.

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SeagoatLeo
Guest
SeagoatLeo
December 9, 2015 10:16 pm
Reply to  francois

Graphene is being used in the woofer and mid-range cones of Magico’s Q7 II speaker priced at $229,000. It is said to be 300 times stronger and 4 times lighter than conventional cone drivers. Reviews have been highly favorable.

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Steve
Member
Steve
September 25, 2012 8:42 pm

Graphene? Old hat for computer development, the new thing is “silicene”. which apparently has significant advantage over graphene for chip development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicene

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IAN NICHOLLS
Guest
IAN NICHOLLS
September 25, 2012 10:08 pm

Repeat of a hot copper posting

The very high graphite grades reported included in this announcement are believed to be amongst the highest recorded globally. For example, the Lac Knife deposit in Canada is said to be the highest grade flake graphite deposit in the world. Lac Knife consists of an 8.1 million tonne resource (measured, indicated and inferred categories) at 16.1% carbon. In terms of vanadium, the largest producing vanadium deposit in the world is Rhovan (Xstrata) which has a measured and inferred resource of 72.29 million tonnes grading 0.52% V2O5.
These drill assays now confirm that there are two very high grade graphite and vanadium zones at or near surface at Balama West. The first is near the crest of Mount Nassilala where the original trenches were dug. The high grade graphite and vanadium mineralisation encountered in these trenches extends down dip and were also encountered in drill holes (BMDD0001, BMDD0003, BMDD0006, BMDD0007 and BMDD0008) previously announced. Based on both the trench assays and the drill core assays, this very high grade zone appears to average between 13-18% TGC and 0.35-0.40% V2O5, depending on the cut-off grade used.

The second extremely high grade zone is the one announced today. It is located about 200m to the north on the lower slopes of Mount Nassilala. This zone appears to be even higher grade than the zone to the south and averages over 20% TGC and 0.35-0.45% V2O5. This zone is open to the north, west and east. A further line of holes stepping 200m back to the north and west are planned to be drilled in the near future.
As noted, the Balama Graphite and Vanadium Project is very large with over 7km of strike distance and up to 2km of surface width of outcropping graphite and vanadium mineralisation. The deposit extends under cover to the north and possibly to the south. Only a very small part of the deposit has been explored to date.

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roy
September 26, 2012 1:27 am

as Over 90% of the Earth’s crust is composed of silicate materials and silicone is very easy to produce, then silicene should be much easier and cheaper to produce as opposed to graphene, all this supposing that it is comparable to graphene, if it is then its real advantage comes because it will more easily integrate into silicon devises and production processes

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blackjack
blackjack
September 26, 2012 4:54 am

well they didnt hand out the Nobel Prize for the inventors of graphene for nothing, did they?
the graphene stuff I have been reading about is like Star Trek on steroids
it will be a game changer
Graphite quality depends largely on the flake size – the bigger the better
Ford motor co just announced it will be using more lithium batteries in there cars – (need graphite as well)
TIP: Stay tuned for the MEGA company in Canada doing an IPO
SER on the ASX is an Australian company that will supply the quality graphite from its Uley mine in Australia – Mega has the customer base and SER supplies the graphite – plus SER has some University working on some other products for it

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SeagoatLeo
Guest
SeagoatLeo
December 9, 2015 10:23 pm

I fully agree, the raw material will probably not be very profitable for miners. The use of it could be a tremendous gain for many industries with consequent losses in others. Imagine low cost high powered, fast battery storage versus current batteries. Imagine coatings on all types of materials, medicinal use, building materials, etc. It could be revolutionary like plastic. I just don’t see the profitability in buying graphite mining stocks yet.

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John F
Irregular
September 26, 2012 10:21 am

A very credible source with extentive experience in the global Metals and Mining idustry has told me that Standtard Graphite, SGH/DARDF for US$, is at least as promising as Focus Graphite. He also believes that the real money is in the process technology, don’t know of a public pure play there. Because this guy has made us more money than Byron King so far, we recently bought a little of each. The 12 month charts are similarly BAD. Might see some tax loss selling between now and year end. Hard to know.

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stockinup
Irregular
December 22, 2013 7:51 pm
Reply to  John F

Hi, John F, I bought some DARDF last year and have added to my position as a wait-and-see spec. What have you heard about this company recently from your source in the metals/mining industry? Not much news from DARDF since last spring. Heard anything new about graphite demand / industry these days? Thanks in advance!

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Vic
Guest
Vic
September 26, 2012 10:52 am

I agree but said another way, all the graphene in the world can sit there and rot until a commercial or military product is developed enabling a cost effective demand. A twist on an old saying is we have the beef (or nanotech center) soooo what do we do with it now? Maybe this and maybe that does not translate into high real investment, demand and earnings.

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Gary
Gary
September 26, 2012 11:24 am

BEWARE:
OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Sept. 25, 2012) – Focus Graphite Inc. (“Focus” or the “Company”) (TSX VENTURE:FMS)(FCSMF)(FKC.F) announces that the Ontario Securities Commission has (the “OSC”), in accordance with its guidelines, issued a Management Cease Trade Order (“MCTO”) that prohibits, effective immediately, all trading of the securities of the Company by the Chief Executive Officer and the Chief Financial Officer. The MCTO is being issued following a review by the OSC of the Company’s disclosure on the Lac Knife Project (the “Project”).
The OSC had advised the Company that it was of the view that Focus had disclosed, in numerous documents, the outcomes on a study that includes the economic analysis of the potential viability of mineral resources on the Project that is not supported by a technical report as required by National Instrument in 43-101 – Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (“NI 43-101”). The Company subsequently issued a news release announcing that it had clarified the disclosure on the Project (see press release dated September 10, 2012). The management cease trade order will remain in place until lifted by the OSC upon application by the Company following the filing of a current NI 43-101 compliant technical report on the Project.

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sam
Member
T.L.Walker
Member
T.L.Walker
September 27, 2012 1:42 pm

I wanted to ask about the graphite/graphene stocks; Is anyone making any money out of those substances at all? If so then whom?

shredder
Guest
shredder
September 28, 2012 6:48 am

Funny that the pumpers at Agora Financial issued this at the same time the OSC slapped a Managment Cease Trade Order on FMS. When Byron first started touting FMS, the CEO was spending $10,000 a month on social media and SFA on drilling in the field. The 8M tons Byron touted turned into just 4M NI 43-101. Belatedly FMS started drilling up the tonnage they have been touting at the same time they have been making economic claims that are not supported by a PEA

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Myron Martin
Irregular
September 29, 2012 10:56 am

Some healthy scepticism is certainly called for when reading companies self promotions, not all company websites can be relied upon to be both factual and up to date. On the other hand, I have some sympathy for mining companies who are basically trying hard to create a viable company and shareholder value but get tripped up by some bureaucrats rules that may or may not be easily understandable or justified. The problem is sorting out “honest mistakes” from “deliberate deception” and I can understand given the myriads of regulations companies are forced to operate under how executives can get tripped up in oversight of all employee’s they may rely on to execute their responsibilities in a competent fashion.

That being said, the market or retail investors are easily spooked and usually over react because they themselves do not have the expertise to decide which is the case. It is just one more of the “risks” that exist for an investor. I am confident this is a bit of a “tempest in a teapot that will blow over and i will not be selling my shares. For the record I own stock in all 3 companies mentioned as well as a second dip into Energizer whose original appeal was their Vanadium deposit. My general observation is simply that these markets for new and exotic materials have lots of ups and downs and it requires good timing and nimble trading and a lot of patience to extract the profits, but they are there. Based on readers comments and reading between the lines I think some “invest too much” in thinly traded volatile stocks and/or may not do sufficient “due diligence” to get the timing right.

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Dan
Member
Dan
October 9, 2012 2:57 pm
Reply to  Myron Martin

What are the three companies you are referring to/invested in?

Myron Martin
Irregular
February 17, 2013 11:38 am
Reply to  Dan

Sorry for the delay Dan, the three companies referred to were Focus, Northern Graphite and Flinders which have been the most frequently mentioned graphite deposits. The newest focus is on MASON Graphite LLG which warrants due diligence. As per my comment last year, investing huge sums in such new and thinly traded companies is probably NOT a good idea for most small retail investors. It can take many years for these ideas and deposits to play out so a SMALL stake is at best a prudent way to approach companies in the exploration stage.
That being said, Byron King has probably made me more money than any other single analyst I follow because he is usually on the cutting edge of new trends and gets in early, but you have to know WHEN to take some profits, these are not “buy and hold” stocks, they are quite volatile and suitable primarily for skilled traders.

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saku
Member
saku
February 17, 2013 2:41 pm
Reply to  Myron Martin

thank you

who noze
Member
September 29, 2012 6:17 pm

anyone interested in graphene should look at GRAPHTEC INL they are working w// the material to create a product[[gti

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Swallowcres
Guest
Swallowcres
October 27, 2012 6:21 pm

There is a small company in the UK that is just starting to produce iodine in the US by a new, relatively cheap, non-pollutive method, There is also the strong possibility of water contracts.
The company is IOF.
More information here:
http://uk.advfn.com/cmn/fbb/thread.php3?id=26970676&from=9166

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