A few Strawpeeps obviously dialled into the Calix investor day this week.  I won't go over the potential solutions discussed as others have done an admirable job at this.  I will, however, speak to the level of expertise demonstrated.  Some of commented on how impressed they were by the knowledge and enthusiasm of the experts.  They're not wrong BUT I wasn't expecting anything other than that.  That sounds like a negative and it's not meant as one per se.  However, these guys (largely guys but at least they acknowledged they need to work on diversity) are generally scientists.  My circle of expertise is not huge but I do understand scientists and the research environment more broadly.  I work with them pretty much daily, including one who was presenting on the investor call as a guest of Calix.

The knowledge of scientists (and I am generalising here, there are of course exceptions) is extremely deep, but typically pretty narrow.  Seldom do you get scientists who are both experts in their field AND commercially savy.  Their skillsets just typically aren't that broad.  To a university or research centre those ones that can do both are absolute gold.  As a holder of Calix my biggest concern isn't the science and it isn't even that the science can be made commercial.  It's that this management and these scientists can effectivey commercialise it.

There are some indicators that they can.  The water business is profitable.  They bought it rather than build it from scratch but they have grown it both at  the top line and the bottom line.  Their commercial partners are also throwing serious money at them to build pilot plants under their other technology verticals, which they wouldn't be doing unless they had already demonstrated proof of concept at a scaled down level.  For the second time their MD also alluded to positive results from LEILAC-1, which were waiting for EU consent to release.  I think the key is to really watch these guys on execution and if they can execute successfully then they could be right place, right time.  Hope so anyway...

[Held]