New Technology Valuations, Technology Research & Development New Technology Valuations: The Values of Technologies Under Development

Developing and investing in advanced technologies are ways in which companies can create truly exceptional value. The history of the chemical and energy industries is full of examples of technologies that produced enormous value, both for the developers as well as industry and society as a whole.

The current economic environment coupled with environmental challenges represents a fairly unique opportunity for companies to create extraordinary value by developing new process technologies in the chemical and energy industries.

To assist its clients with this challenge, Nexant has completed a comprehensive multi-client study that analyzes the values of new technologies that are not yet commercialized, but which are known in the industry to be under study and in the R&D phase.

A key analysis presented in the study includes a survey of over 50 significant new technologies that are now in various R&D stages, but have not yet achieved commercial or demonstrated proved status.

The technologies that were screened as part of the study included valuable prospective technologies in the following technical and feedstock/product categories:

Chemical / Petrochemical:

Based on or to produce: Methane, other alkanes, methanol, ethylene, propylene, butadiene, aromatics, polymers, organic acids, and octane-1.
Isocyanates: TDI via non-phosgene routes, and MDI via a carbonylation route

Biotech:

Fuels, such as via biomass to liquids (BTL) and genetically designed oil seeds
Chemicals, such as acetic acid, butanediol, propylene glycol, polyols, succinic acid, MTHF, polyaldehyde, and polylactic acid.

Fuels and Others:

Methane to Fuels (MTL), and innovative GTL technologies, such as Compact GTL’s compact design and Velocys’ microchannel technologies
Tar Sands upgrading or conversion technologies
Methane storage technologies, such as via metal-organic frameworks or nanotechnology
Anaerobic Pump technology for conversion of wet biomass to methane

After screening these technologies, 24 of them were studied in detail, resulting in:

Assessment of market potential
Estimate of likely investment cost and operating costs
A valuation analysis of the prospective technology’s present value from licensing technology
An explanation of the valuation approach and methodology employed

Nexant analyzed these new technologies by employing a consistent approach and using only information that is either in the public domain or was estimated by Nexant completely from unrestricted sources, i.e. information not covered or affected by confidentially restrictions.

The conclusions of the study were estimates of the eventual attractiveness of the technologies, using two key criteria:

Nexant’s estimate of the eventual operating Return on Investment from utilizing the technology in a typical plant
Nexant’s estimate of the value of owning the technology for a typical technology licensor.

The technologies that were valued included:

New Technology Valuations: The Values of Technologies Under Development provides an independent unbiased estimate of the technology values. These judgments will be critical to technology developers and investors as they chart their strategies for their technology business.

For further details, please contact: Michael J. Kratochwill, email: mkratochwill@nexant.com or phone +1-914-609-0331, or Edward S. Glatzer, email: eglatzer@nexant.com or phone: +1- 914-609-0325.

For more information on ChemSystems Reports, please contact chemsystems@nexant.com.

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