EEStor Corp gets price target raise at Paradigm Capital

The latest positive data from EEStor Corp (TSX:ESU) has Paradigm Capital analyst J. Marvin Wolff raising his price target on the stock.

On Monday, EEStor announced it had completed he fourth phase of testing of its composite modified barium titanate (CMBT)-based energy storage technology at an independent testing lab. The company said the results showed continued improvement over previous phases.

“We are extremely pleased with the results and advancements of the technology over the past year,” said CEO Ian Clifford. “By including MRA in this round of testing, we have complete confidence in the test results. This, alongside increased time constants and capacitance, should accelerate our discussions with potential capacitor partners who rely heavily on these leading testing organizations for validation. With the company’s high energy density work under way, the imperative to realize sustainable and scalable solutions in energy storage has never been greater. I am confident that EEStor will become a leader in electrical energy storage as we continue to develop technology that will help replace non-renewable fossil fuels and challenging electrolytic energy storage that has significant safety and scalability concerns.”

Wolff says the potential for EEStor’s technology is huge. The analyst says he is comfortable with the assumptions of EEStor consultant and author of the Paumanok Report, Dennis Zogbi, that he garnered from previous communications. This mutually agreed upon valuation model assumes that EEStor’s initial target market will be the $687-million (a 2014 estimate) aluminum electrolytic capacitor market and that EEstor should be able to penetrate a single vertical in this market to the $100M level in annual sales over 5–6 years, representing 10–12% of this vertical within six years. He believes that the technology should be able to enter three such verticals within the same time frame. Wolff believes these test are an important step in that journey.

“In our opinion, these test results are significant, and have been achieved slightly ahead of target (scheduled for December),” says the analyst. “The data further suggests that EEStor’s CBMT powder has the potential to be disruptive to the high-voltage capacitor market, as it can provide both physically smaller solutions at the same charge capacity and also applied to solutions at much higher voltages, and has the ability to be produced at lower costs. With these results, and the stronger balance sheet, we are reducing our discount rate to 15% from 20% and increasing our target EBITDA multiple range to 10–14x from 8– 12x.”

As a result of these changes, Wolff today raised his one-year price target on EEStor Corp from $0.40 to $0.65, while maintaining his “Buy” recommendation on the stock, implying a return of 72 per cent at the time of publication, including dividend.