I like your comparision with ARM very much, Hhoefi!

ARM and POET have in common that they both don't build anything but only sell licenses. And ARM's market capitalization of $22 billion shows where we could get with such a licensing model! Let's give both ARM and POET a point for the licensing model, so the score is 1:1 for ARM vs. POET.

But of course there are also differences between ARM and POET. ARM's market penetration is restricted to mobile phones, settop boxes etc., while POET addresses the whole semiconductor market, e.g. servers, desktop computers, sensors, transmitters, etc. etc. POET has much more growth potential in vertical markets. This gives POET a point over ARM: 1:2.

On the other hand ARM has something POET does not yet have: business experience. ARM is in the licensing business for many years now. Though POET has an excellent management, this is something the company still has to establish. This point clearly goes to ARM: 2:2.

While POET excels at this gallium-arsenide stuff and the cool components like optical thyristors and other basic building blocks they can build with it, ARM's core competence is chip design. Chip design means to fit millions and billions of those basic building blocks together to form a computer CPU, a graphics processor or whatever. If both POET's and ARM's expertise would come together, they could complement each other and both profit from some sort of joint venture. ARM and POET could both score here, so the final result would be 3:3.

According to this very, very, very high-level comparison, I take the freedom to make a very, very, very rough calculation and divide ARM's market capitalization by the fully diluted number of POET shares. Which gives about $100 per share – US dollar, by the way, meaning $110 CAD. Be it $40 more or less, but you get the idea and the order of magnitude. Welcome to the $70+ club!

Aside: ARM also shows that a buyout is in no way inevitable. $70+ or even €70+ are quite within reach for us retail shareholders – although there is no guarantee, of course.

Andrea ("Powered by POET")