Starting this thread to discuss $IONQ which was mentioned as a competitor to another DESPAC play here:
IONQ will be holding their Q4 2021 earnings call on Monday March 28th AH. This call will be particularly important as it will close out the 2021 fiscal for IONQ, but most importantly they will be providing guidance for 2022 (directly referenced in their Q3 EC). The Q3 earnings call was held on Nov 15 and the stock was trading below $20. EC must have been good because it shot up over 50% over the next two days to a high of $35 and has trended down ever since. It should be noted that when it shot up NASDAQ was trading at ATHs and we’re down over 16% from then.
Some quick financials:
Last mentioned bookings over $15M.
Q3 Revenue of $223K, YTD $451K
Holding Cash of nearly $590M, they burned roughly $10M of cash in Q3 so they can last quite a long time before they need to raise money or severely increase revenue. 10Q
IONQ is currently trading at $2.5B valuation.
I believe the pipe is unlocking soon. With the uncertainty in the market, specifically on unproven tech growth companies, we may see a sell off. IMO options are pretty cheap right now, it may be worth it to open a straddle and play the earnings call given it moved so drastically in the last EQ.
I know nothing about quantum computing, so interested in hearing anyone’s thoughts who follow the space.
Hello. I’m am going to probably play this depending on tech early this week. But to confirm their ER is 3/28 and unlock would be the next day 3/29? I had played them a bit in December so will dabble. Good stuff, cheers
Edit: Slapped the ask on a call this morning right at open on that news looking for 15 break sold for 40% gain when the break didnt look like it would hold. Break didnt hold so ill wait and see what happens later this week.
Really appreciate everyone keeping this thread alive as I have been too busy with work to post.
I’m not an expert on reading doc, but I have read a portion of the PIPE investors will be able to sell 6 months from the merger date which was Sep 30th. That date should be either 3/30 or 4/1.
Not exactly a reason this would be running, but something to keep in mind. I am holding a short position on this through next week to see if the price falls from PIPE unlock. Something to keep in mind also is the market seems to have recovered from all the Ukraine/Russia and inflation news so there may be a bullish force behind this.
I was eyeing this on the drop to begin a stock position, but this is a really damning report.
Scorpion believes the company’s claims of a 32-qubit machine are a “brazen hoax.” The firm points out that past employees have stated the technology “doesn’t exist” and that “it was totally made up.”
Scorpion even goes as far as comparing IonQ’s quantum computer with Nikola’s (NASDAQ:NKLA) rolling truck catastrophe.
Damn, this is a scathing report. It’s almost 200 pages long so I’m not going to dive into all of it, but I glanced at some parts that I think are interesting and important to dissect.
Regarding revenue and customers, the report basically says IONQ doesn’t really have any customers. The partners they tout are just people who are testing the software and probably use it a couple times a year. The only customers they have are basically the universities where the founders teach.
And not only do most of the revenues come from the universities where the founders teach, but IONQ actually spends more money with these universities than they receive in revenue.
There’s a very simple question to ask when looking at the validity of a company. Would you invest in a company where the founders have not left their day jobs? It is literally a billion dollar company ($1.4B at time of this post).
I’ll be looking to open some positions tomorrow, but I dont expect them to be filled. It should be noted they have a pretty healthy balance sheet of over $500M cash, so don’t expect the stock to fall below $2.50. Earnings are on 5/16 which would make 5/20 options viable to either play the IV or the earnings.
Managed to get some call credit spreads filled on the run up today. 7.5/5s if anyone is interested. Bit risky, if I knew the market was going to rally like this I would have bid for the 10/7.5s.
Anyone still tracking this? Earnings were confirmed for Nov. 14th. It’s trading/consolidating around $5 which is where it was before last earnings where it about ran to $9. Nov 18th options are quite cheap and might be worth the gamble if they get another run up to earnings. According to last earnings they have quite a bit of cash on hand and shouldn’t have to dilute anytime soon, haven’t seen any other news good/bad and it seems to just track overall market sentiment. For what it’s worth SI is quite high as well. I’m going to grab some 5c for .45c and gamble 7.5c for 0.05c.
