Here's The One Thing Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) Should Be Focusing On

Ekso Bionics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EKSO) has had a pretty rough few weeks but the last couple of days have served up some degree of reprieve for shareholders. The company bottomed out last Thursday at around $1.12 and currently trades for $1.28 – a 15% appreciation. It’s nothing to get too excited about – we’re still talking about a company that, even with the latest run, is down 68% year to date – but it might just represent a shift in sentiment that could, in turn, signal a longer term change of direction for Ekso.So what’s driving the shift?In all honesty, not much. The company put out a press release last week detailing some intellectual property (IP) on what looks to be the start of a new generation of exoskeleton – what it calls its Artemis prototype. The press release was pretty vague, but we got a little bit more insight through a company newsletter, and the system apparently weighs 13 pounds and can successfully offload up to three-quarters of payload while also being comfortable to wear. That’s light weight, but the payload figure doesn’t offer too much insight – we need to know what total payload is for reference as to how the tech compares to that which the company has already built. The newsletter points towards the company having field tested the prototype, but that’s pretty much all we know.There’s also an update on the company’s military efforts that might be leading to a bit of accumulation. Again, it’s not game changing, but at a Special Forces Industry conference on Wednesday, Col. James Miller, the director of the Joint Acquisition Task Force TALOS (which is the combined efforts to create an Iron Man type exoskeleton, for which Ekso is building some of the key components, said:

“It’s getting very real right now… We are going to start building parts and snapping them together”

That’s a step forward, at least.So what’s next?Well, for us, these developments don’t really matter – at least not now. Sure, Artemis has great potential and TALOS is neat (and potentially lucrative, if the thing ever gets off the ground), but what Ekso really needs to do is allocated its resources towards selling the tech it’s already gotten developed and approved in the US, its stroke and spinal injury exoskeleton. Shareholders want to see a return on the time and capital that went into developing this tech (and it’s this technology that the company spent its time pitching as being at the core of its potential revaluation to the upside when it raised capital in the past) and, right now, things seem to be moving pretty slowly on that front.Couple that with a just filed an S3 that’s registering 75 million shares and this isn’t an easy stock to be in right now.It’s not an easy one, but at current levels, it could be a rewarding one. At its current capitalization of just $30 million, this one’s almost worth its cap in IP alone. Couple this with the approved system in the US, in what has the potential to be a very large market if Ekso can carve it out (herein lies one of the issues, it’s basically trying to establish a brand new market in the healthcare sector) and there’s plenty of room for upside revaluation if – and we’ll say it again – Ekso can shift up a gear in stroke and spinal injury.And while the registration isn’t great, as we’re going to see some dilution, if the company can put the capital to work towards the above-stated aim, it might be looked back on as a necessary evil; one that kick starts activity in the right area and finally gets this stock moving in the right direction.We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest updates on EKSO, sign up below!Disclosure: We have no position in EKSO and have not been compensated for this article.