The Mech Touch novel Chapter 330

When Ves delved into the galactic net and called up a limited summary of the LMC’s earnings, he became surprised how much it had earned since he left for the Glowing Planet.

The LMC itself made a good chunk of profit by selling over thirty silver label Blackbeaks at elevated prices. The profit margin went up over time as Marcella likely took advantage of the increased demand of the silver label model.

Right now, the company made around 30 million credits per mech in gross profits! To put that into perspective, if Ves extrapolated this performance to an entire year, the company could easily rake in over 5 billion credits in profits with its own production alone!

"It’s too bad we aren’t producing the Blackbeaks fast enough." Ves shook his head.

Even if the LMC possessed a fantastic production line, it could only do so much. Fabricating one comech like the Blackbeak was the best that the LMC could achieve.

"I should consider adding another production line in the near future. This bottleneck is really starting to annoy me."

He also wanted to reduce his reliance on third-party manufacturers, though he guessed he’d never be able to get rid of them. The more his designs caught on, the more people wanted to buy his products.

Many other manufacturers possessed a head-start compared to the LMC in investing in their production capacity. In the short and medium term, it made more sense to license his designs to third parties.

However, Ves believed that ultimately the LMC would catch up when it reinvested its profits into adding new production lines.

"The profits I’m earning from the licensing deals will help a lot."

Compared to the insane profit margins of the silver label Blackbeaks, the bronze label versions obviously earned the LMC a trickle of money.

Elemental Mech Engineering sold just over a hundred mechs each month and paid the LMC 2.5 million credits per sale.

In a business perspective, the EME profited big at the expense of the LMC, as the third-party only had to handover a flat fee per mech while being able to jack up its prices to take advantage of the increased demand for the entire product line.

Ves, Marcella and his company had done the heavy lifting to promote the Blackbeak design. He risked his reputation and Melinda’s life by accepting a public design duel against Michael Dumont.

Still, as much as Ves could harp on EME’s freeloading, the company at least produced decent mechs. The reviews and comments on their products had generally been positive, and nobody complained about the minor imperfections they still hadn’t been able to eliminate.

The LMC would be set to earn about 3 billion credits per year in licensing fees from the EME. This was a very tidy income stream considering that Ves and his company didn’t need to lift a finger to earn this sum.

If the EME already made a modest contribution to his company’s earnings, then the newer income stream from Vaun really ratcheted it up.

Vaun Industrial had hit the ground running as soon as they signed the licensing contract about a month ago. They allocated a significant amount of production lines to the first batches of Blackbeaks.

Impressively enough, almost none of the copies featured any faults or imperfections. This enabled them to sell their bronze label Blackbeaks at a slightly higher price than EME.

More remarkable was that Vaun Industrial skipped the local markets entirely. Instead of selling their mechs in Bentheim alongside the offerings of the LMC and the EME, Vaun had made the bold decision to export it across the Republic’s borders.

Vaun had actually managed to sell the Blackbeak in the Ylvain Protectorate of all places!

"I thought those religious nutjobs always turned up their noses against foreign mechs."

Bordering on the far side of the Bright Republic’s borders, the Ylvain Protectorate was a rather peculiar third-rate state. Similar to the Hexarchic Hegemony, the government instituted a strong religious regime, practically brainwashing its citizens from birth.

The Ylvainans grew up to be a closed and xenophobic bunch. This happened to make their state a favored recruiting ground for the CFA, who constantly needed new blood to crew their warships.

Compared to their passion for warships, the Ylvainans were less impressed with mechs. Even though they understood their necessity and oriented a significant part of their society to mechs, they only maintained a robust defence force and had never shown any signs of aggression.

This pretty much made them one of the best neighbors of the Bright Republic. The Ylvainans would never ally themselves with the Vesians and attack the Republic from two fronts.

"Vaun isn’t satisfied with exporting the Blackbeaks to the Ylvainans alone. They’re also starting to break grounds in other foreign markets."

Ves didn’t know what to think about their ambitious actions. They basically pre-empted the LMC by expanding into the foreign markets first. Would the LMC still have room left to sell their own products once they finally got around to exporting their own products across the border?

The conflicts of interests that resulted in such a clash might upend their entire relationship. On the other hand, Vaun also did the heavy lifting in creating a demand for the product line outside the Republic.

"It feels weird for my company to be the freeloader this time."

In any case, the relatively high volume of production already netted the LMC a lot of money. Regardless if the mechs sold or not, Vaun had to pay the licensing fees upon producing a model.

This already netted the LMC around 700 million credits. Vaun already showed signs of ramping up their production even further, but even if it maintained the same level of production, they still had to pay over 8 billion credits to his company on an annual basis!

Compared to what Ves earned from his contributions on the Glowing Planet, the LMC generated at least five times as much money!

"They didn’t even need to risk their lives." He muttered.

This was such a drastic rise in profits especially since the LMC didn’t incur that much expenses. The LMC would have earned a multitude more money if it didn’t have to rely on third-party manufacturers to compensate for its inadequate production capacity.