JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #87 - March 2014 Special JEC Europe - 20

business
years. Another priority is to sign
on the world's really big brand
names, the well-known emblematic ones.
JCM: What is your situation in
your initial sector, the composite
industry?

Hybrid composite and plastic combination

helped the composite sector to
become more democratic and
to aim higher.
JCM: What are your objectives
with respect to the company's
admission to the regulated
market?

A. G. : For shareholders - large
investment funds have an 80%
stake in RocTool - the listing
on NYSE Alternext has the
advantage of boosting the initial
public offering price and making
their shares more liquid. There
are few manufacturers listed on
the stock market, for a simple
reason: valuation. The world of
finance is very bad at determining the fair value of industry.
A manufacturing company is
valuated on average at between
six months and a year of sales,
which is nothing! This is due
to low production margins.
A techno company with a
licensing out business model,
like RocTool, is usually valuated
at 5-10 times its sales. When
RocTool doubles its sales, the
fixed overhead will stay about
the same, and the surplus will
be EBITDA (earnings before
interest, taxes, depreciation and
amortization). I'll be frank, if
we were to attain sales of US$20
million, we would have to pay
out 30-40% in EBITDA - that's
unheard of in the composite
industry, but routine in the bio-

tech and medtech industries.
JCM: Did you feel constricted in
the Euronext Marché Libre?

A. G. : Yes, and there were
also credibility and visibility
problems with the Euronext
Marché Libre. A lot of investors
won't buy the shares of companies in the Euronext Marché
Libre, while NYSE Alternext,
which is a regulated market,
brings big names, start-ups and
more-established companies
together, and that guarantees
reliability.
JCM: What is the next step, or
new capital-raising plan?

A. G. : We won't be raising
any more capital in the short
term. RocTool has cash, strong
demand, and the means to develop. Our growth objectives are
significant, but we aren't putting
out any figures yet. When you
go from $700,000 to $7 M in
four years, everyone imagines
that you'll go on rapidly to $70
M. No doubt RocTool's growth
potential is even higher than
that, but over the long term, not
in 3-4 years. Growth for its own
sake is not our current priority.
We need to take a breather,
consolidate our business and
teams, work on profitability for
2015, and also set up technical support services for our
licensees worldwide. Those are
our priorities for the next two

20 jec composites magazine / No87 March 2014

A. G. : About 50% of our projects and sales are in composites.
Of course, there is more volume
in plastic parts, but composites
offer much greater margins.
We powered our way into the
smartphone and touch-screen
tablet business three years ago,
and the subsidiary in Taiwan
that we created in the thick of
that industry has good technical
development capability there.
Today we are starting to see a
return. In September 2013, one
of our licensees in China just
happened to create the world's
largest facility for the production of composite parts based
entirely on RocTool technologies, and for the production of
smartphone and touch-screen
tablet parts. At full output, they
produce around 10,000 parts
per day! That's about as many
as the best plants for composite
parts put out in a year.
JCM: How much does plastic
injection contribute today in your
organization?

A. G. : The other half, with
most of the automotive, gaming,
consumer electronics and luxury
cosmetics applications. The field
of plastic injection has been
much faster to adopt our production technologies, but over
the past year, our composite
business has increased rapidly.
And since the automotive sector
is way behind on high-output
composite processes, RocTool
will have a card or two to play in
that area.

JCM: You've mentioned the metal
industry a number of times
recently. What are your objectives there?

A. G. : All materials are competing with each other, so we
want to have a hand in all three
pies, so to speak, with composites, plastics and metals. Auto
builders, aircraft manufacturers
or big smartphone brand names
involved in developing a new
product will make the rounds of
all available materials and processes: composite, aluminium
and plastic, among others. Take
the example of smartphones and
touch-screen tablets. Samsung,
LG and HTC are "all-plastic",
Google with its buyout of
Motorola is "heavily composite",
with others to follow, and Apple
launched the "metal" style,
followed by Microsoft, Asus
and Lenovo. My background
may be in composites, but I also
have to admit that metal has
its advantages; e.g. for a tablet,
it is cold to the touch, which is
important, and it also has good
mechanical properties and a
"noble", high-quality image. But
it has one big problem: it is very
difficult to achieve fine thicknesses, and the surface quality
requires extensive and expensive
finishing steps. So if RocTool
manages to develop a process
that allows producing metal
parts less than 1 mm thick with
good surface quality, I know of
a few companies that would be
willing to break open their piggy
banks!
JCM: From the international
development viewpoint, what
are your projects?

A. G. : The Taiwan subsidiary
is now operational, and we are
creating one in the United
States. The objective is to have
a subsidiary in Germany and
Japan as soon as possible using
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #87 - March 2014 Special JEC Europe

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