The Allure and Intrigue of Amorphous Metals…

Let’s take a closer look at Liquidmetal Technologies (“Liquidmetal”), a company that has been getting a lot of attention this week, most recently by our friends over @Hodinkee.  You may think this is somewhat off topic but I promise you that if you read on you will see that I have quite nicely tied this story into the world of luxury watches

Liquidmetal Technologies is the only bulk producer of what are known as “amorphous alloys” i.e. liquidmetal.  Readers of this blog will recognize “liquidmetal” for its use in the special edition Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean Liquidmetal, the watch which this blog was the first to discover and report on back in October 2, 2009.  I later reviewed the watch on June 8, 2010.

What you may not know is that Liquidmetal Technologies is actually a publicly traded company which trades on the pink sheets (LQMT.PK) aka a penny stock.  By many measures the company has not performed well in the last year or so – its sales for 2009 were approximately $14.7 million, down from $22.7 million in 2008.  2009 net income was a paltry $0.3 million, though an improvement from an $8.3 million loss in 2008.

I wonder if the company’s financial performance has anything to do with its obviously short-sighted and ill-fated attempt to market its technology for use in what would surely be insanely over-priced flash drives.  To see what I mean, check out this video, which by the way reminds me of TAG Heuer’s laughable attempt at sellling its own 8gb flash drives for $360 a pop!

Liquidmetal Flashdrive Video

But wait a minute, wait a minute—-WHAAAT?  Did you catch some of those luxury brand logos in the video?

Jaeger-LeCoultre, Montblanc, Piaget Liquidmetal Flash Drives — WTF?!?!?

OK that is just weird, isn’t it?

Let’s get back to my discussion about recent events involving Liquidmetal –

The company’s stock had long traded for less than a quarter per share until August 6, 2010 — the day after the company licensed its liquidmetal patents (on an exclusive basis for the field of consumer electronic products) to none other than Apple .  However — interestingly and perhaps questionably — the company did not issue a press release announcing the deal with Apple.  It was not until August 9, 2010 that Liquidmetal’s agreement with Apple was formally filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission via Form 8-K and the story was picked up by leading tech blogs CrunchGear, Engadget, and Gizmodo.  But the word was obviously out on August 6, as evidenced by the stock action:

So why all the hype about Liquidmetal? Well, it turns out the company does have some pretty cool technology:

Liquidmetal vs. Titanium vs. Steel Demonstration Video

The thing is, though, I wouldn’t get too excited about seeing liquidmetal used broadly anytime soon.  Why?  It’s expensive.  As much as $1,500 an ounce expensive.  This is because of some of the exotic raw materials such as beryllium and platinum that are used in some of the Liquidmetal alloys.

The high cost is also why Omega has indicated that it does not plan to use liquidmetal on a broad basis, either.

This said, I would not doubt the genius of Apple to figure out a way to mainstream the technology.  It is also interesting to me that this technology found its way into the world of luxury watchmaking, thus giving me a reason to write about it!

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