Investment - Page 8

Spingate is a new US-based fabless company focusing on development, licensing and manufacturing of solid state memory, specifically, perpendicular MRAM.

We have talked to Dr. Alex Shukh, Spingate's co-founder, CTO and CEO. Alex explains that they have decided to focus on perpendicular MRAM because according to their estimates it does not suffer from several fundamental issues of its longitudinal (in-plane) analogue.

However, to be successful with p-MRAM development, Spingate needs to solve several serious problems, such as, a reduction of energy consumption during writing, development of new magnetic materials with perpendicular anisotropy for storage and reference layers exhibiting high GMR, etc.

Spingate's IP portfolio already includes one granted and several pending patents on p-MRAM, which covers multi-bit cell, 3D-memory designs, etc. The proposed solutions should close existing cell density gap between MRAM and Flash since 2D-Flash won't be able to compete with 3D-MRAM. Spingate are currently working on cell design development and optimization, and is looking for investors.

Micromem announced that they have raised 375K$ in a private placement.

They will use the proceeds from the offering for general working capital purposes.

NVE Corporation announced today financial results for the quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2008.  Total revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 increased 23% to $5.88 million from $4.77 million in the prior-year quarter. The revenue increase was due to an 8% increase in product sales and a 150% increase in contract research and development revenue. Net income for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 increased 45% to $2.47 million.

NVE reported a strong growth in contract R&D. In the conference call, Daniel Baker (company's CEO) said - "Most of the contracts that we're working on right now are related to anti-tamper MRAM".

The company also announced today that its Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to $2.5 million of the company’s common stock from time to time in open market, block, or privately negotiated transactions. 

Grandis announced that it has been awarded $6.0 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the initial phase of research to develop spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) chips (for the 45 nm technology node and beyond). The total value of the effort, if all phases of the development program are completed, could be up to $14.7 million over four years.

For the first six months of fiscal 2009, total revenue increased 9% to $10.6 million from $9.71 million for the first six months of fiscal 2008. The revenue increase was primarily due to a 10% increase in product sales to $9.42 million for the first half of fiscal 2009 from $8.58 million for the prior-year period. Net income for the first half of fiscal 2009 was $4.20 million, or $0.88 per diluted share compared to $3.23 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, for the first half of fiscal 2008.

"We are pleased with our strong quarterly results,'' said NVE President and Chief Executive Officer Daniel A. Baker, Ph.D. "Increases in product sales and contract research and development revenue drove record earnings.''

NVE is a leader in the practical commercialization of spintronics, a nanotechnology that relies on electron spin rather than electron charge to acquire, store and transmit information. The company manufactures high-performance spintronic products including sensors and couplers that are used to acquire and transmit data. NVE has also licensed its spintronic magnetoresistive random access memory technology, commonly known as MRAM.

Crocus has raised 16.1M$ from VCs and government grants. The grants are from the French research and development agency OSEO.

The company says the new funding will allow it to complete its technology development phase, in advance of product introductions

Freescale has decided to form a new company called EverSpin, and to give its MRAM technology portfolio to this new company. Several companies (New Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Lux Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Epic Ventures) will invest 20M$ in the new company.

EverSpin will operate in a portion of Freescale's Chandler (Arizona, US) semiconductor foundry and take on about 50 existing company employees who were associated with the MRAM technology.

For the first nine months of fiscal 2008, product sales increased 25% to $12.83 million from $10.23 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2007. Total revenue increased 22% to $14.48 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2008 from $11.90 million for the prior-year period. Net income for the nine months of fiscal 2008 was $4.93 million, or $1.04 per diluted share compared to $3.23 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, for the first nine months of fiscal 2007.

Micromem Technologies Inc. (OTC BB: MMTIF) is pleased to announce that it has raised $400,000 by way of arms length private placements ranging from $0.45-$0.48 per share. The shares issued will be subject to Rule 144. These funds are in addition to the previously announced financing dated October 18, 2007. These funds will be used to further the company's effort to commercialize its patented MRAM technology for a wide variety of uses beyond RFID applications. No commission was paid on this financing.

With respect to the company's previously announced financing efforts, management will continue to pursue this opportunity.