Liberty Defense (TSX-V: SCAN): Revolutionary Weapons Detection Technology

Discussion in 'Canadian Stocks Message Boards' started by Acamar Journal, Nov 1, 2019.

  1. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    I have a mandate from Liberty Defense to help them raise equity and increase investor awareness. To this end, I would like to provide information and answer any questions people may have.

    I approached the company because I saw real value in the technology (which was developed by MIT) and some very high profile potential customers. I think the company represents real value as a Sept 2019 report by Laurentian Bank has a one year price target on the stock of $ 1.40. It currently trades at $ 0.26.
     
    #1 Acamar Journal, Nov 1, 2019
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2019
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  2. TomB16

    TomB16 Well-Known Member

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    I'm interested.
     
  3. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    Tom

    Thanks for your interest.

    Let's start with the obvious. Liberty's share price has been decimated in recent weeks. From a March financing of 80 cents, we are down to 25 cents (all prices in C$). Why?

    Liberty is a development stage company and a small cap stock (now), and therefore perceived as riskier (i.e. high beta). Such stocks typically leverage the market on the way up (so good!) and down (catastrophic!). So rather than be emotional, investors (regardless of whether they already own the stock) need to see if this may be a good time to buy (first time or again).

    I will put out my thoughts on a regular basis over the next few weeks (and try to answer any questions directly or by getting management's responses) but here is something to consider: Liberty has actually significantly de-risked the technology in recent weeks. They invited a select group of outsiders to see the subs-systems at work and it worked well. They continue to sign up high profile potential customers and have retained a very large German firm to help them get the FCC certification they need. Liberty expects to be in commercial sales by Q4 2020.

    Here's the thing. Warren Buffett made his billions using a simple principal: Buy value (as long as the fundamentals are strong) and sell when the stock is expensive. Liberty is addressing a massive global market with its unique product and its market cap is just $ 17 million (Patriot One, a competitor, is $ 238 million without any sales).

    So it's cheap but is there any upside?

    Laurentian Bank issued a research report in September 2019, where they put a 12 month price target on Liberty at $ 1.40. That makes it a 5.6 bagger, if it gets there. That's pretty compelling in my book.

    Read more at https://stockhouse.com/companies/bullboard?symbol=v.scan&postid=30298122#4Cc8oAJU2csc2AGC.99
     
  4. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    A list of the high-profile test venues that HEXWAVE will be deployed in shown below, Note the quality of the venues:


    Toronto’s Pearson airport

    The Sundance Film Festival

    At a National Hockey League venue in Vancouver (Rogers Arena)

    At the FC Bayern stadium in Munich

    At a Major League Baseball venue in Baltimore

    At a government facility in Utah

    At a mall in Florida (the company owns 150 malls)

    At a facility operated by the Virginia Division of the Capitol Police

    At a Hindu temple in the US (one of 3,300 owned by an organisation)

    At Toronto’s Convention Center

    At the University of Wisconsin

    At a cruise terminal in Tampa

    The owner of the Vancouver Canucks (who is also an NHL Governor) and a VP of FIFA sit on Liberty’s Advisory Board. Both could have just facilitated the tests at the Rogers Arena and at FC Bayern without publicly associating with a young start-up such as Liberty. This attests to their belief in the technology and their need for it in their venues.
     
  5. Onepoint272

    Onepoint272 2019 Stockaholics Contest Winner

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    Besides sounding like an Orwellian surveillance tool of the police state, is there a health concern for those upon whom Hexwave will be unknowingly deployed ?
     
    #5 Onepoint272, Nov 3, 2019
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2019
  6. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    OnePoint: I totally hear your concerns. There is an insane amount of mass surveillance, which I have grave concerns about.

    Liberty is a good tool for covert weapons detection. It does not take a photographic image nor does it retain the image, so it does not impinge on privacy. And as for the health risk, Hexwave uses "active, real-time 3D radar imaging technology. The antennae arrays send low power radio frequency waves, 200 times less powerful and less harmful than Wi-Fi, that reflect off both metals and non-metals, to generate signals (data) that are captured and are used to create 3D data and imaging of concealed objects in real-time."

    The FCC has to approve the product as safe before it can available as a commercial product.
     
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  7. TomB16

    TomB16 Well-Known Member

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    Hi Acamar. Can you tell me about the "deep learning" used in the HexWave product?

    Does this refer to AI? If so, how far along is the development?
     
  8. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    Tom

    It is AI. They have developed technology that is AI driven so that it learns about what objects are threats and what are not. Once it learns, through rigorous machine learning via neural networks, it can then automatically identify a threat and set off an alarm. These tests at these venues are meant to provide the AI with information outside the lab to refine its learning in real world conditions.

    The Laurentian Bank report looked at all the major players in this space and had this to say: “In our view, Microwave 3D Imaging, as championed by Liberty, appears to be the most practical for the emerging threat environment, as it is able to support the best feature rich solution set (3D, AI, range, throughput, RF and third-party compatibility) at a reasonable price.”

    Let's contrast how Patriot One's technology works relative to Hexwave.

    Patriot’s PATSCAN CMR product requires a database and is built on the ability to recognize specific weapons. For example, one manufacturer may offer pistols in 7 sizes, 7 calibers and over 50 models as well as 5 generations. To update PATSCAN CMR therefore requires a significant database of threats. HEXWAVE’s learning algorithms look for a class of threat, not each individual item.

    The best example here might be of a chair – a chair generally has legs, seat and a back and HEXWAVE will determine that the object has legs, a seat and a back and therefore is a chair. PATSCAN looks for a specific type of chair and that specific chair needs to be in the database. PATSCAN is trying to recognize a specific weapon’s “signature“ as opposed to HEXWAVE which uses its 400,000 data points to make a determination of whether a threat or non-threat exists, i.e. it looks for a weapon rather than checking for each type of weapon.

    PATSCAN CMR is also quite sensitive to the environment to be able to function optimally while HEXWAVE is environmentally agnostic.

    As PATSCAN is still not deployed, and because Patriot One had raised over $ 98 million to commercialise it, they used some of the money to acquire and add more products, so they now offer a platform of overlapping technologies: video threat detection, chemical threat detection, disturbance recognition, and so on. But PATSCAN, I believe, cannot detect non-metallic threats.

    The market is large enough for several competitors to co-exist and the scale of mass shootings and terrorist incidents are on a rising trend, so all these technologies are desperately needed.

    Finally, Patriot One’s market capitalisation is C$ 240 million and Liberty is just $ 14 million.

    Read more at https://stockhouse.com/companies/bullboard?symbol=v.scan&postid=30311205#wOblJ31VlHOOPP20.99
     
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  9. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    Tom

    Here is something I wrote recently that shows the potential of AI:

    In 1997, IBM's Watson program beat world champion Gary Kasparov at chess, something that the experts did not think was possible. Then it beat former champions at Jeopardy in 2004, again considered impossible because of the use of natural language and quirks like puns and clues in the answers.

    Then in 2016 Google's AI program, AlphaGo, beat the reigning champion at Go. Go is an extremely complex game with trillions of permutations and it was consider impossible for software to crunch out answers in brute force due to the time contraints in the game. But Alphago won 4-1, and the champion, Lee Sedol, said he was speechless as he fully expected to win.

    A year and a half later, a new program, AlphaGo Zero, thrashed AlphaGo 100-0.

    The remarkable thing was AlphaGo Zero was not even taught the rules of the game, it was given data in the form of a large number of games that had been previously played by humans and it was self learning. It learnt the game in 72 hours of playing itself before it played AlphaGo.

    Think of the implications. Go has been played by humans for over 3,000 years. In 72 hours, a machine learning program came up with strategies that humans had never conceived off and we will never, ever be able to win against a computer at Go again. Think of the wonderous new ways AI can conceive our reality and offer completely new perspectives on how things can work better.
     
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  10. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    Capitulation?

    The selling in Liberty's stock has been very aggressive in recent days. Patriot's stock has rebounded since about the 10th of Oct. Will Liberty follow soon?

    As Liberty's fundamentals continue to progress, the stock has completely disconnected from reality and is very oversold. At some stage, it will reverse this ugly trend and some may think it represents an real buying opportunity at this prices.

    I'm seeing firmer bids and lower offers. Turnaround?
     
  11. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    So here is an update on Liberty. They have announced a financing of $ 2.5 million at C$ 0.23, at a market cap of about C$ 15 million.

    Typically, financings put a floor under the share price, since the brokers doing the financing don't want the share price to fall further (if it were to fall to say 16 cents, an investor is better off buying in the market rather than through a PP (private placement; also known as a PIPE (Private Investment in a Public Entity)). In the meantime, the company continues to make progress in completing its alpha testing and getting ready to do its beta tests at the following sites:

    a. Toronto’s Pearson airport
    b. The Sundance Film Festival
    c. At a National Hockey League venue in Vancouver (Rogers Arena)
    d. At the FC Bayern stadium in Munich
    e. At a Major League Baseball venue in Baltimore
    f. At a government facility in Utah
    g. At a mall in Florida (the company owns 150 malls)
    h. At a facility operated by the Virginia Division of the Capitol Police
    i. At a Hindu temple in the US (one of 3,300 owned by an organisation)
    j. At Toronto’s Convention Center
    k. At the University of Wisconsin
    l. At a cruise terminal in Tampa

    The owner of the Vancouver Canucks (who is also an NHL Governor) and a VP of FIFA sit on Liberty’s Advisory Board. Both could have just facilitated the tests at the Rogers Arena and at FC Bayern without publicly associating with a young start-up such as Liberty. This attests, I believe, to their belief in the technology and their need for it in their venues.
     
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  12. TomB16

    TomB16 Well-Known Member

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    Based on your description, HEXWAVE sounds like a confluence of RADAR imaging and Genetec Security Center.

    Assuming this is the case, this is the future direction of security, as far as I know. Once operational at a few points, if they can prove to be effective, they will spread like wildfire.

    One of the issues with a company like Liberty Defense is the lack of product and engineering detail. It's the nature of the beast, for sure. This precludes conservative investors, such as myself, from investing in what could well be a terrific opportunity. I respect the hype, as it is a point of view, but would prefer to make my own assessment.

    I echo your point about the market undervaluing innovation. So many things are about to change and so few people can see it. The market does not properly value innovation, right now. That makes this a great opportunity for the brave and those with vision.
     
  13. Acamar Journal

    Acamar Journal New Member

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    Tom

    You're absolutely right. it's all about risk-reward. Investors who are less risk averse invest in young tech, industrial, mining and other start-ups because they like to be part of a potential growth story and of course the potential to make multiple returns on their investment. After all, Apple, Google, etc. were all start-ups at one stage, and made a ton of money for early investors and there is a graveyard full of young companies that did not make it.

    The good thing about Liberty, versus so many software and tech companies which offer esoteric products that most of us can't understand much less figure out market potential, is that we have all experienced the slow line-ups around metal detectors at airports, for example. So we can all gauge how much easier our lives would be (and how much more security would be provided) if Liberty's system becomes ubiquitous. It's just a smarter detection system than the current ones, just like smart phones replaced the old clunkers we used to carry.

    I think the technology risk has been substantially mitigated, with a prototype expected to be ready by the end of the year and beta testing to begin early in 2020.

    Risk-reward. For those with the appetite, Liberty is certainly promising, with a Sept 2019 Laurentian Bank research report projecting a 12 month price target of C$ 1.40.

    I don't think I'm hyping here, just providing facts and my personal insights. The price target, for example, is not mine but a credible financial institution's.
     
  14. cheburec90

    cheburec90 New Member

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    Never heard about this company previously. As far as I know, Recfaces is one of the leaders in biometric software products in the world. It is a very competitive market, actually and there are lots of small companies there.
     
  15. Nanostox

    Nanostox Member

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