Manny Backus has perked up some ears around Gumshoedom this week with his widely-emailed pitch for Triple Digit Returns (his $300 newsletter) that there’s “One stock you need to buy today” … followed up with an ad whose headline is “Buy, Buy, Buy.”
As usual, not a lot of subtlety or nuance here. But, well, when the world is crazy with worry why not counteract that with a bit of cockeyed enthusiasm… perhaps even a bit of greed as we dream of swimming in pools of gold coins.
Fear and greed both tend to sell pretty well for newsletter ad copywriters, but the stories of a global collapse and a currency crisis and a Fed that’s going to send the economy into a death spiral, well, they get old after awhile. No one likes to daydream about Bill Bonner’s “day the ATMs fail” or Porter Stansberry’s “End of America” or whatever the latest prophecy of doom might be… So let’s look into this little stock that Backus says can make us 1,483% gains, shall we?
The clues are, unfortunately, a bit thin… but there are so few reasonable candidates in this little niche that we can probably make a good stab at an answer. Here’s how Backus gets us started:
“Profit Like a Madman!
“How a 100-year-old experiment in the middle of Colorado changed the world… And why it could mean 1,483% gains for YOU
“Over 100 years ago, in the wilderness of Colorado Springs, a scientist created an electrical storm that would change the world.
“Lightning bolts peeled through the sky, showering the small town in light.
“People hid themselves… and for good reason….
“At the time there was incredible confusion.
“Today, we understand that it was the result of a year-long experiment conducted by none other than the ‘madman’ Nikola Tesla.
“We also understand that the principles he uncovered that night in Colorado Springs could now put 1,483% in the pockets of early investors.”
And yes, this all about wireless electricity — whenever anyone’s trying to get us revved up about wireless electricity or wireless charging, they pull out Nikola Tesla… whether it’s because he’s genuinely a pioneer and a character (which he was) or just because the car company that borrowed his name has been such a wildly profitable stock so far, I don’t know.
The dream, which was Tesla’s dream as well, is for a world where you can easily transmit electricity through the air — no wires or unsightly poles for long-distance transmission, which is more what Tesla was thinking of, and, perhaps more importantly for the modern era, no worries about your cell phone losing its charge and having to wrestle someone for an outlet at the airport.
You’ve all seen the first wave of “wireless chargers,” I’m sure — they’re built into some office furniture now, they’re sometimes available at Starbucks or airports, and they’re essentially a plate that you place your phone on, usually with a special case for your phone, and it receives a charge either from that direct connection or across a very short (centimeter or two) distance.
They’re a little persnickety sometimes, and things have to be lined up right for some systems… and it’s slowly gaining some adoption, but I don’t think you can reliably say that it has “taken off” or become mainstream. Samsung has one of these chargers available now for their last couple versions of their higher-end smartphones, but Apple does not — and Samsung hasn’t been able to leverage the existence of their wireless chargers into any real advantage, so while I’m sure Apple is working on wireless charging they’re undoubtedly not panicked. And, after all, placing your cell phone carefully on a pad and lining it up properly is indeed more convenient than plugging it in… but it’s not as nice as having it charge automatically without you thinking about it, or without you taking it out of your pocket.
Since it’s very early days for “wireless power” adoption by the electronics manufacturers, there’s also some debate about standards — if you’re going to count on finding a wireless charger at Starbucks, then you want all wireless chargers to work with all phones, right? Starbucks is not going to offer three different versions of a charger to their customers, and you can’t get all the phonemakers to agree to a single standard unless they’re pretty confident that charging sites will be widely available in that standard. That means the whole industry is very much up in the air on this one, and unless Apple commits to a wireless charging standard overnight (they probably won’t), it’s going to be a while before the “winner” is settled.
So who is Backus teasing? Well, I’ve let my own blatheration go on this long because he doesn’t really provide much in the way of clues — here’s a little more from the ad:
“… unlike in Tesla’s time, this is no longer some pie-in-the-sky wish.
“It’s already here.
“It won’t be long before you see it in residential homes, corporate offices, restaurants, coffee shops, and hospitals.
“In fact, inside of ten years we could very well be looking at homes and businesses without electrical outlets of any kind.
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just click here...“I mean, why go through the expense when the need to plug things in will be eliminated?
“No more batteries, no more cords, and most importantly, no more charging.”
That’s pretty far outside the realm of conventional expectations, just so you know — wireless charging, by whatever method, is also generally less efficient than wired charging and wired connections, and you don’t necessarily want to have a battery in every single electronic device. It’s the network effect — once everyone’s using it, you want to be using it too… before everyone’s using it, you’re not incentivized to start using it. Very powerful both as a reinforcement for a business that builds a captive consumer audience, and as a hurdle that any new standard has to cross before it can become viable.
Probably, I’m guessing, the first widespread use of any wireless charging/wireless power for anything other than mobile phones — and maybe before mobile phones — will be all the little sensors and gadgets that are part of the “Internet of Things” … those need power, too, and you don’t want to have to recharge a dozen little batteries every week or have to remember to change them twice a year like you do (you should do, at least) with your smoke detectors. But we’ll see.
So what’s that elusive clue provided by Backus? Here you go:
“Right now, the small company that’s currently behind this global transformation trades at around $6. Based on past discoveries, and past performance, I see it hitting $95 by this time next year.
“That’s a 1,483% gain in 12 months.”
I would take the “under” on that bet. Big time. But that 1,483% gain number is, of course, absurd — it doesn’t mean we have to ignore the company… maybe there’s a reasonable possibility that it could go up 50% or more? Let’s see who it is first.
Any other clues?
Um, no. Not really.
So what’s our stock? Well, in the world of wireless charging stocks there’s really only one near-$6 stock that’s a very good match here, so it’s very likely (can’t be 100% certain without more clues) that he’s touting Energous (WATT).
WATT has been pitched before, of course — I covered it back in February when it was being teased as a pick by the “Midas Supergroup”, and this is what I said to the Irregulars at the time:
“Great story, about a company developing wireless charging technology, and they’ve actually come pretty far in a short time at developing partnerships and demoing their technology… but no, MDB Capital, the folks who helped them raise money by going public, do not have the “Midas touch” to turn all stocks they IPO into gold, particularly long-term, so be nimble if you like this one.
“I don’t personally want to touch it without some notion of Apple or Samsung being on board — their $40 million will disappear fast into irrelevant deals for remote control toys if there’s no potential to get into the phone market, the only market that matters… but you never know, they could do great if they do get a meaningful deal with a phonemaker or get bought out for their technology. Extremely speculative venture capital investment that happens to be publicly traded.”
That’s the general spiel from MDB Capital, which was the company that helped WATT raise ~$25 million in an IPO about a year and a half ago — they’re essentially a microcap investment banking group whose niche is bringing venture capital companies into the public markets… and that’s what this is, Energous is a development-stage technology company that has designed a wireless charging system that works on a room scale — their equipment can create a network that transmits electricity sort of like a bluetooth or wifi connection transmits data. They got quite a bit of attention for it at the Consumer Electronics Show last Winter, and the prototypes have everyone excited, but it’s still a pretty substantial step from there to commercialization.
Has anything happened since February? Well, they continue to advance their talks with the tier-one partner they’ve made in the mobile space, but that seems to be moving pretty slowly. Probably as you’d expect.
Really, these MDB Capital companies are more like biotech companies when it comes to the public markets — they go public very early on, at the equivalent of a phase 1 clinical trial, and there’s a very good chance that they’ll fail. Just like there’s a very good chance that all tech startups will fail, it’s just that most tech startups are not publicly traded. That worries me a little bit, because the very fact that they’ve gone public gives small investors some idea that they’ve passed some milestone that their competitors have not passed — and that’s not necessarily true.
The company says that they have a “first mover” advantage in wireless charging technology, but they’re far from the only company trying to develop and commercialize a technology that can charge all the devices in a room from some distance — all of these companies are far behind the inductive/charging mat/charge across three inches technology that’s now pretty well advanced and available in a slate of products, with improvements expected next year as Intel has become a larger player in the space, but once you get past inductive charging (where you have to be touching or within a few inches of the charging pad, though that’s gradually improving as well with advancements from folks like Witricity), the next phase of wireless charging is competitive… it just doesn’t happen to be that the other competitors are public yet.
In browsing around I ran across several names that are doing similar stuff to Energous — there’s Ossia, which has a similar-looking wifi-like technology for creating a charging network, or Wi-Charge, which uses infrared for charging. Both are venture funded, which is arguably what Energous should be, too, given the risk the company has of going to zero with the stroke of a regulator’s pen (or simple failure to commercialize), but Energous’ founder liked the idea of going public, and it also probably helped them to grow more quickly — it’s probably easier for a tiny company to hire good engineers if they know that the stock and options they’re receiving are liquid and sellable as soon as they’re vested, and being public might give them a reputational advantage when they’re looking for employees or partners.
It has also allowed them to raise quite a bit of money — though that’s not so hard in the private markets either, these days. They did a follow-on offering for another $20 million last Winter, and they’ve been spending it pretty rapidly on both R&D and overhead/selling costs — and have made no secret of the fact that they will have to keep raising money. At the current pace, they’ll need to do another offering in the next six months or so, so I’m sure they’d love to be able to release some exciting news before that to get the share price a bit more elevated.
A lot is resting on their partnership with the unidentified “Tier One Consumer Electronics Partner” who is working with them on their first high-profile products, and on their many smaller partnerships with companies that build small electronics, “Internet of Things” stuff, routers, etc… and, of course, there’s also the risk, which is pretty unquantifiable, that they think they’ll need FCC approval to sell their wireless charging equipment, and they might not get it.
The basic technology is sort of like wifi, you need a transmitter/router and you need a receiver chip, either built into the phone (or whatever) or in a case. The chip communicates with the router via bluetooth, they talk to each other, and the transmitter then sends a targeted wave of electricity directly to the immediate area surrounding the device, which is picked up by an array of tiny antennae on the device or chip, and provides what seems to amount to a “trickle charge” — it’s not going to recharge your phone from nothing just because you walk through the room, but will gradually top it up.
So you can sift through the tea leaves, try to figure out who their “Tier One” partner is and whether it will work out, and whether their third-generation chips will get designed into products and their transmitters will be approved by the FCC… if all that happens, the stock could be fantastic over many years. If none of it happens, the stock could be worthless. It doesn’t really matter whether the stock is at $4 or $6 or $10, there’s no reasonable way to value it that precisely and the odds are that it will either trickle down to zero or boom in value over the next five or ten years based purely on the regulatory and commercial acceptance of their particular charging technology… if you do commit to a stock like this, I’d urge you to think of it as a venture capital investment — commit to some small investment that you can afford to lose 100% of, and resolve yourself to the notion that you’re investing until there’s news about the first big commercial partner, or until they get or fail to get FCC approval, and don’t give yourself a migraine by watching it every day and worrying about whether it will drop by 30% the next time they have to raise money for more R&D… I’m not investing in this one personally, but if I were that’s hopefully the path I’d follow if I did. This is one where the only risk management will come from position sizing, since the business could always change overnight and it’s a tiny sub-$100 million company that’s all tied up in one product idea… don’t count on a watchful eye or a stop-loss order to offer much protection.
And with that, I’ll hand it over to you — go forth, researchify, and let us know what you think… is Energous worth a bet? Share your opinion with a comment below, maybe you’ll help us all to get just a little bit wiser.
I was following Watt a quarter or so ago and came to the conclusion that Hitachi would be the tier one. There is an agreement apparently that Watt will meet some sort of timeframe on a development being integrated into the wireless backpack. I cut out on a spike after considering the headwind of the FCC. Realizing that the pipedream was exactly all it was. No reason this couldnt be revisited after all deadlines and approval have been passed. Once the backpacks and even inventories to sales numbers backlogs and the type have all been crunched. Maybe no 1943% gainer, maybe no 0.(more likely). Easy to believe they fail to meet on the timing embedded into their contract with Hitachi, FCC?
I see it is reporting the stock at $6.00 but I see no mention of what it was at the first look into this stock. Did it go up or stay the same or go down.
Thank you
It was around $9.50 when a different publisher teased it back in February and we covered that pitch. It’s been on a fairly steady downward trend most of the year.
WATT High on 1/6/15 closed at 12.44; Low on /824/15 was 4.91; Todays close is 6.90 with 31,609 volume
Does the idea of more electrical radiation floating thru the air bother any one else?
I’ve seen it mentioned that this is a concern, from their perspective it’s a consumer fear concern, not a real health concern, since they say the very targeted energy transmission is not as powerful as the cell phone radio signal. I have no expert perspective on that personally, though.
FYI, $WATT is in Zack’s newish Game Changers portfolio & I believe it is worth looking at, like the portfolio mgr. of this service. Pls. read my take on Manny Backus, I am a subscriber & can tell you his picks are very good, more experience w/the Triple Digit Service, highly recommend Manny’s stock picking service, recently booked over 70% gains on his call for GMCR to go to $100. Everyone was short but I sold at $89 when 3 days after pick was sent out, $92 buyout offer was made & accepted for GMCR, far exceeded the $300 fee! Have listed recent picks for you all to follow, so far several are doing very well, esp. w/Friday’s selloff. Hope this helps some fellow Gummies!
If they were planning to use UV or x-rays, YES! But they’re not, so no. Western culture has been swimming in a sea of low-energy electromagnetic radiation for many decades with no evidence of harm. Which figgers, as most of it passes thru us with no effect at all, the largest effect being to slightly warm us if the intensity is high enough. Be careful about standing too close to the hearth on a winter’s night, though. And remember to use sunscreen when you’re exposed to that dangerous big yellow radiator high in the sky.
No evidence of harm? Hmmm, increasing rates of cancer have accompanied all the radiated emissions in the wireless spectrum. I don’t have evidence that the two are closely related but you certainly can’t there is no evidence of harm. The other issue is one of efficiency. It is always more efficient to plug a charging device in rather than try to wirelessly accomplish this. This means more power will be needed to do something more conveniently.
Of course all you need is for someone who subscribes to confirm whether you are correct? Like me, although I couldn’t possibly comment. In fact it wouldn’t take much investment to belong to all the tipsters and then reveal their suggestions. I have invested in several proposed multi-baggers along the way and some have worked and some have not (MEI, INVN to name but 2 dire investments, not to mention DDD, which has spectacularly plummeted from it’s highs, where it was tipped to be the next best thing since sliced bread by the MF leader himself and where does it lie now?) But one feels with such hit and miss advice, you might as well use a financial newspaper, a pin and a blindfold. Now there is a good project and if I could be bothered I would, but life is calling. Bonne courage, bonne chance et bons bons!
P.S in this instance the thinkolator was spot on, what! And it was rec back in April 2015, when it stood at $9+. Timing (or should that be luck?), as usual, will be everything
I’ve been a subscriber of his services & it’s well worth the fees charged, for $149 you get 1 pick, for an additional $79 you get 3 picks, maybe 3 total sorry can’t remember for certain at the moment. Recently, I’m talking w/i a weeks time I took the GMCR trade, stops were set for an approximate 12% loss! when everyone was shorting this stock! updates from his service were stay in & I did to wake up w/i a few days to 70% gains when the company was bought out to go private at $92/share. I sold for $89/share, that was plenty of gains to me. Currently I bought P (Pandora & STRP) recent picks that didn’t look like they would do well based on current news but I’ve had nice gains on other picks. He’s good, it’s only difficult b/c you don’t know how long to hold but it’s been relatively short-term holds. STRP is over $17, seems it will be the next 5G service provider w/price targets in the $40 range & P has a $22 price target (watch & grab gains close, so if you sell at $19.50-$20 it’s a nice gain). Also he’s recommended recently CLW, but break of $46, stops of $42.23, target of $61. Next up is DEST, buy now at $8.98 (on a day of selling Fri. 12/18) closed at $9.17, stops at $6.97, target $15, last up is KTOVk Israeli biotech that just reported top line results from Phase 3 blood pressure trial, buy at $4.20, stops at $2.73, target $9 (stock dropped due to selloff Friday but given positive trial results, think it’s a buy, now at a better price). His picks require nerves, but I think you will make far more than you lose, his picking skills are very good. The call on GMCR, unreal results in 3 days, I gave you recent picks for you to follow results as they unfold. Consensus Picks are longer hold times: CLDX buy now @ $14.60, stops $9.43, price target $28, DFS Buy now at $53.80 zone, stops $49.47, price target $63.00, CPHD But at $31.84, stops $27.73, target $51, MOS buy at 29.40, target $40 (stops are not given, believe this will be bought out, feels very similar to GMCR). Last Consensus Pick from 12/17/15 is KKD, Buy now, stops at $10.93, target $23.97. Hope you are able to prosper & see for yourselves via live or paper trades if you find the service to be the “real deal”, I think you will find you will make far more than you lose & the fees become irrelevant (made back on first pick). Good luck to all.
Hi Bep1964,
thanks for sharing and giving us the chance to follow that list. I don’t know most of those companies, but one I was owning myself( STRP)…I am sure you are aware of recent lawsuites and stuff. I was owning it in $40 ties already and saw in coming down to about $7 . Luckily i had gotten out of it already before it made the splash, but that was pure luck. I have been watching it since then. Actually got in around $8 but did not trust the move up …so I went out at $ 9 again…Now at $17 i am wondering if it is time for a STRP to go back down to $10 again. So all I am saying is be careful with STRP…
Anyway good luck with your investing…looks like it is working out for you very well these days.
Hi Herbalix,
Look again at my buys from Manny Backus as I told you it’s UNCANNY his ability to nail the majority of picks. $STRP, which I’ve booked now (have tight stops), after adding shares this am, over $800 in 4 days time, w/today being day 4, the stock just passed $20, remember the target is $44 & it’s been a parabolic rise. Next buy DFS in $53.80 zone, stops $47.47 w/target at $63. $DEST has hit $9.68, CHPD was a buy @ $31.84, stops $27.73, target $51, stock is over $35! If I can share & help others make some quick gains, my pleasure. I take the gains which can be very modest, but generally the picks override w/gains. I missed the buy alert on FC, the same day w/i hours it had a tender offer & was too high to “catch the falling knife”. I believe $MOS will be bought, no guarantees but I purposely posted these picks so you could see for yourself however they played out. The options on $STRP indicate an ongoing upward trend. Anyway, hope you jump on a few of these & take the gains here & there, I’ve made WELL over the $299 price for the service. Good luck (hope you don’t mind my posting back again).
Wireless electricity is a wonderful idea with enormous market potential, given there are already more wireless devices than people on the planet. The challenge is coming up with an economical, practical way to deliver electricity when and where it’s needed, and at the appropriate power level.
One company that appears to be addressing the issue in a fairly rigorous way is WiTricity; a 2007 spin-off from MIT, that was set up to commercialize what a group of MIT physicists had developed.
It’s run by a group of technology executives; it has a good intellectual portfolio which it licenses to various organizations; it has financial backing from Intel, Toyota, Foxconn and several venture capital groups; and it works with various companies to develop products for automotive, medical and other applications. The gotcha: it’s a private company
Travis,
This is one of the best lines EVER! Did anybody pick up on this? I’m going to quote it from time to time ok? “their $40 million will disappear fast into irrelevant deals for remote control toys if there’s no potential to get into the phone market”
I agree Chris. Great line Travis. And most of us has seen it happen. I need to follow the info from my friends at gumshoe. When I started investing, I followed Money magazine and Bottom Line . I opened an account, made a killing on Cisco, and bought a new car. Now, on the internet, I have read too much crap, bought and sold too frequently, and have watched my small portfolio begin to disappear. The good stocks I had, I sold on a gloom and doom period in 2012 to lose all the gains in many top stocks for the following 2 years. I purchased touted risky stocks instead. I need all the help I can get. Thank you all!
Energous just did a secondary offering at $6.90, FYI. That took the air out of the stock after it had gotten a bit inflated by some lab testing confirming the power transmission of their devices, and the announcements about their next generation receiver chip in development. No word yet on the “tier one” company and what their product might be, they still say it will be small peripheral stuff that probably gets developed first.
$NXPI NXP Unveils Multi-Standard Charging Reference Platform and Adapters at APEC 2016.
– Releases industry’s first wireless charging platform that supports 15W WPC Qi and 5W PMA standards;
– Collaborates with LG R&D to drive mass market adoption for in-vehicle wireless charging;
– Introduces configurable ACDC fast charging adaptors for mobile and computing markets
http://www.econotimes.com/NXP-Unveils-Multi-Standard-Charging-Reference-Platform-and-Adapters-at-APEC-2016-182227
Long NXPI.
Matter of fact that stock is WATT, as I did get into his subscription this year. Well at this point WATT looks ok with the moves the stock made lately. But >1,000% , hard to believe.