Houston, we have a problem!

11/5/07 I have run into a bug with the lab resulting in 2 BPO's going missing. Cap Propulsion Engines and Small Tractor Beam BPO's were showing as completed lab jobs. The corp office in the POS system had expired on rent due to my oversight. I re-rented the corp office (paid the isk for release of impounded items ), then hit deliver on the 2 BPOs but they did not drop to either corp hangars, personal hangars or POS mobile lab storage. Looking at the science interface the BPO's don't appear anywhere. I have petitioned for their return.  

Freighter assembly line commissioned

9/5/07 I'm sure anyone taking an interest in Optech will have noted my announcement earlier in the week [link]. This large injection of capital has accellerated the commissioning of the Optech capital ship line by many weeks. Optech now owns the 4 component BPO's and an ME1 Charon BPO. 2 of the components have come out of research, another 2 have just gone in. From my calculations it appears that I may be able to run an Obelisk production line alongside the Charon line (although would need a second capital cargo BPO). I am planning on 2 ships per ship BPO per month and conservatively working on 250 mil per ship profit. I have begun buying the large stockpile of minerals and in a couple of days Optech's trader should be able to pilot a freighter to go and get them all. I'm not even going to try to move that kind of volume in a standard hauler. 

 

This weeks figures are almost certainly going to be dented by the many hours of faff to get the capital production extablished, and of course the lack of profit on employed capital whilst the BPOs are in research. Additionally the capital construction skill was expensive at 67 mil. Fret not dear hearts. As the new capacity comes on-line profits should bounce back. The fallback position is that if the freighter production venture is a turkey the BPOs can simply be sold off. 

 

Bunsen

Optech begins capital component production

28/4/07 I have just finished cashing up for this past week which was the first under the new growth fund prospectus. I was pleased to be able to slightly exceed predictions of 3% profits per week in fact turning in at 3.62%. Thats all good. I was rather expecting more investors to be put off by OPTUT switching to become a pure growth fund, after all everyone likes a dividend. In fact after 2 weeks of very little new investment into the fund I was starting to be concerned about getting stuck at current capitalisation. However, in the end there was almost no disinvestment by current investors, and a further 330 mil of new funds (plus my own which I kind of discount) bringing the fund to nearly 4.2 bil.

 

With that kind of money sitting in the corp wallet it was time to head for Jita 4-4 and spend some isk! A handful of jumps later and I'm plugging Optech's shiny new BPOs into the Mobile Lab for a little ME loving and the wallet is 1.9 bil lighter :-)  So now a few timescales have to come together. I am 4 days from metallurgy V, 5 days from industry V, and and 4 days off mechanic V  so 10 days before I can produce from these BPO's. I'm not quite sure whether I can make BPC's from them before I can produce from them, but that will become apparent over the next few days. Meanwhile Optech's hauler pilot is 12 days away from being able to fly a Charon freighter. Because the mineral volumes look daunting I have thrown a small tractor beam BPO into the lab as well in case I need to do some compression.

 

What else is new ...

 

An attempt at corp recruitement last week was a dismal failure. It appears I can make money but not friends! No sniffs of interest at all. The idea was really quite simple, Optech is developing pretty respectable buying power and research capabilities for a new corp, and new players benefit greatly (as I did) from a few early million lent or help getting into an Osprey. With my now perfect manufacturing skill there's clearly a mutually beneficial relationship if only I could get started. I may just have to sit in a starter system spamming local for a couple of days to get over the chicken and egg problem of nobody being interested in joining a corp with no members.

 

An alternative way out of my social ghetto is being explored and I have joined Fair Trade Syndicate . It looks like a thought provoking concept but then I've not got access to their forums yet so I will have to reserve judgement until I find out more about what goes on.

 

Bunsen

Research POS commissioned

15/4/07 350 mil has been allocated against this weeks accounts to pay to Dopper for setup of high sec POS in a 0.6 system close to Jita which includes 1 month fuel. Corp standings are 5.61 to  Caldari State so anchoring should be possible over the next day or two. Trading continued to be successful and brought the fund back to a small profit despite above expenditure. A small Caldari Tower, Mobile Lab, Corp Hangar Array, and Drake with fittings have been purchased and shown as assets. My hope is that the drake will deter all but the most determined of gankers and so improve trading security.

 

I have had to think carefully about the future of the fund. OPTUT had delivered some 27% profit over its first month and to be blunt under the existing terms it would have been better for me to wind up the fund and simply work for myself. This was an option, however I believe that with a more sustainable return to investors there will still be a mutually profitable relationship. I have therefore given notice of several alterations to conditions of fund which will come into effect from 21/4/07 (see current prospectus). Anticipated weekly fund profits revised to 3% per week which is approx 12.5% per month. I have decided to stop paying a weekly dividend and instead 100% of profits will be re-invested for NAV growth. This will considerably simplify the end of week valuation as the manual payments were a pain and I was constantly worried about making an incorrect payment. We will see if there is any appetite for such an offering over the weeks ahead and consequenly the fund has been re-opened to investors on the revised terms.

 

When I have a better idea of who remains on-board (and consequently the size of the war chest) I will be looking at purchasing some BPO's to make some isk off research and copying. I also plan to address a first audit of the fund to take place over the coming month.

Encouraging trading figures and plans for Optech's first research POS

8/4/07 More normal profits this week without any further hostile actions to dent income. Although the balance sheet shows over 1.2 bil in cash this is just about the highest level it has been. As I speak cash is at 240 mil with the rest in escrow or stock so there is better use being made of cash than is apparent from the weekly balance sheet. I made a conscious effort this week to buy in bulk and ran stock out of Jita to more peripheral hubs where the markup was higher, and the 0.01 isk market warriors are less active. It was good for my sanity too because I don't aspire to nursemaid market orders when I could be breaking new scientific ground.

 

On the training front Research, Science, Lab Ops are up to V, Production Efficiency is at 4 , and I'm currently working on Metallurgy. My trader employee is still some 27 days away from freighter. This is frustrating.

 

I have contracted Dopper from M'8's corp to deploy a high sec POS for Optech. Hopefully he will achieve the necessary standings over the next few days and I can begin anchoring mobile research arrays later in the week

 

I have been pondering the future ahead for OPTUT. I would anticipate a number of high value purchases for Optech to bring us to the next phase of development. Items such as freighters and BPO's are not cheap and although personal wealth is rapidlly approaching 1 billion isk my shopping list exceeds that by a factor of 10. The unit trust format may not be ideal for financing high cost low liquidity capital purchases. I may have to consider a traditional IPO for Optech, or perhaps a bond issue. The Sovreign bond issue looked an interesting model [link] and I see Ionia is floating idea of high return unsecured bonds [link]. 

Pirate action in Jita dents profits

Miserable news from my intrepid trader last night who had to shamefacedly report the destruction of her Condor class frigate by a ganking Drake pirate in Jita. The silly bint was reportly on autopilot at the time and returned from a "bio break" to find herself in her pod by the Perimeter stargate with the Condor and Drake wreck next to her. The non-trivial part is the loss of 2 projectile collision rigs and 6 aux thrusters worth over 100 mil. My mood can best be described as foul. The clear culprit for this ridiculous state of affairs is the insurance company paying out when pirates are legitimately destroyed by Concord and effectively sponsoring the pathetic lowlifes. Trader bint will be finishing some accounting training later today and will then be tasked to learning some ship skills in order to pilot something a little more robust in future. Ideally I would like to have a pre-trained trader/transport/freighter pilot but the transfer costs are prohibitive and at the moment that money is better used as trading capital. Looking at her current ineptitude with piloting it looks like a ridiculous 42 days training to get her into a transport ship. In the meantime she can be in a Drake herself in a little over a week.

OSF Wound up - OPTUT Launched

Another hectic week at Optech Central, and I have had more than a little sensation of being drivien by events. OSF performance was even better than expected and returned a whopping 95% profit over 2 weeks. Admittedly this was on a small initial capital, but nonetheless a credible performance. I was half way through the second week of OSF when I had my inspiration about improving on the investment mechanism of OSF, and having had my "flash" I could not get it out of my head.

 

I was expecting howls of "scam" from the Galnet markets forum, but extraordinarily there wasn't a peep. Instead Utility Bots wallet started to flash and flash and flash some more. I was somewhat astonished and gratified to see the investment in OPTUT rise to a creditable 785 mil isk (including 100 mils of my own). At this point I had a little sit down, cracked open a bottle of vintage spiced wine and considered the situation. On the scale of the Jita money markets 3/4 of a bil doesn't even cause a ripple, but flashing in Utility Bot's wallet it sure as heck looked like a lot of isk and responsibility to me.

 

Utility Bot needed supervising through all the admin of winding up OSF and confirming purchases in OPTUT, which was exceedingly tiresome, but by midday Sunday I was in the clear and able to start buying stock. It' a strangely different thing dealing with the bigger numbers and it's taking me a while to get my head around it. The percentages are the same and I'm confident I'm in a market segment with additional volume to play for, but theres more of a lag filling and cycling the larger orders which takes some getting used to. Previously I would buy 100 @ 90, sell 100 @ 100 and cycle the isk. The larger orders I'm now placing take longer to fill and so I am more in a position of tweeking 6 or so permanently open buy orders, and the same with the sell orders. The moment to moment financial position is less transparent as well. On a couple of occasions with my traders wallet bumping along on 600 mil I had to do a quick stock check to reassure myself I hadn't just lost a huge chunk of money. I hadn't ;-)

 

Looks like an interesting week ahead.

 

Bunsen