... It’s super light and saves over 40 pounds versus the forged aluminum wheels which are pretty lightweight wheels. Even daily driving you can sense that it’s not just lighter, it’s stiffer and you can really feel that ... on a two minute lap it’s a second to a second and a half quicker. It’s noticeable – equivalent to a fair horsepower increase... 

Corvette Chief Engineer - Tadge Juechter 

This quote from the release this morning sums up both the new win with GM for wheels on the C8 Corvette Z06 & Z07 and the company at its essence. Super lightweight wheels for performance vehicles.

While the business has been impacted over the last two years, this update shows the management team is doing a decent job of accommodating the challenges and making progress.

• Strong sales of 4,397 wheels (up 109.4% on the dismal Q1 FY22 and almost back to pre-pandemic levels
• Growth pipeline with two new agreements in the quarter
• Mega-line project on track

The company continues to burn cash and at the current rate has about a year and a half of reserves available. 

Hold small positions here and IRL portfolios. These are not hope holdings, it’s a business I like and want to see succeed even though shares a long way off from my buy price. 

Results were released today and showed a 10% decline in revenue and post tax loss of $32M. The company advanced several manufacturing projects and improved the balance sheet. 

Ferrari launched two models in the FY and both featured the wheels from this Geelong manufacturer. 

The global push to EV’s is a positive. As I have indicated previously Carbon Revolution can benefit as an OEM as well as after-market.

I also like that Ronal Ag (Swiss wheel manufacturer) also sees it appropriate to hold nearly 8% of the stock on issue.

Whatever the case, the market appreciated the update with shares up almost 10%. I continue to hold and look forward to seeing this Victorian manufacturer taking on the world.  

Manufacturing is hard. That is why almost everyone has exited Australia and looked to low cost geographies for their production. Unless there is automation. This is where Carbon Revolution comes in with the recent capital raise and announcement of the mega-line.

It is pleasing to see they expect ROI on the investment in circa 2 years.

The announcement yesterday, as COVID still impacts the world is unfortunate, but short term. It is also not garbage. I ordered a car in February and it is still to be delivered. The global chip shortage is impacting motor vehicles.

Now excuse this slight distraction from CBR and traditional car manufacturers. There is a little bit of madness in my method. Tesla is out gunning traditional auto manufacturers in the chip game – they are doing this via putting a central computer in their cars to control a host of things, which they program themselves, where traditional manufacturers use discrete computers that a black boxes.

Back to the reason for the diversion, auto manufacturers are changing to be more electric, more like Tesla in their approach, and this is CBR market. The market is moving to electric, and so is CBR. Their OEM focus is on EV’s.

I also think the consumer will move this way too. Where is one of the first places an enthusiast makes a change? Rims!