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Morning all,

A decent and expected set of interims posted for a growth company. Few observations and a few things that go through my mind when reading them...

1) Anyone who follows several companies will know that interims have a pretty prescribed format - they also need to be published within a certain timescale. Some people have said they are bland and that the RNS was unnecessary.... well... Interims are pretty bland statements usually (the relevant authorities apparently look dimly on anyone who provides interims by using interpretive dance or a laser light show) and the RNS was necessary as the company would have been obligated to put it out by a certain date.

2) This is a growth stock - generally you have two types of early stage companies. Slow growing but making a profit, or fast growing and not making a profit - sweeping generalisation however generally true. Alpha is investing in future growth and that's why I personally invested. If I wanted to invest in a slow growing company, I would pick one from the FTSE350 not a micro-cap. I've invested in growth because that's where I'm confident that my £100 can turn into £1,000 - I'd have invested elsewhere if I wanted my £100 to turn into £110.

3) The Guernsey acquisitions revenue/fee's will be consolidated into the next set of interims, as well as full year accounts - next year the company will receive the full benefit of the Guernsey acquisition (this year will be partial, maybe a quarter worth) - this will be transformational for revenue, gross profit and net profit - we've known for 6 months that's a significant inflection point for the company.

4) The newly announced interval fund should have an immediate positive impact on fees over the next 3 months and a larger more significant benefit to next years numbers - the fee structure for this fund is 1.5% of what could be a substantial number. We'll need to wait to next year to see any meaningful impact I would think..

5) The company has reiterated that they are not expecting a placing unless it's to deliver a value accretive acquisition/deal - great news and in black in white for even the hard of thinking to understand.

If you look at any early stage and fast growing company, they are generally loss making - Amazon is obviously the one that everyone uses as an example, it's ubiquitous - they took almost 10 years to make a profit, not because Mr Bezos woke up one day and found the secret sauce of profitability... but because he had reached an inflection point in scale and growth.

Amazon could have been profitable from Year 2 however if that approach had been taken then Mr B would today probably be running a very good online bookstore and we would all have to drive to B&Q to pick up that bag of nails, we'd also probably have less cardboard boxes in our hallways.. Bezos made the right choice

I'm happy we're investing in growth and looking forward to the impact that this growth has on both the top and bottom lin

Good to see some insightful posts over the last few days etc, some really good points made.

Few observations from me..

On the buys and sells - Think it's important to remember that what is reported is really just a guesstimate based upon an algorithm, it's often wrong and the accuracy of the reporting will vary wildly based upon whether someone has used an app to buy or whether they have called a broker.

In the current market, share prices are hard to move even with good news - a lot of people who perhaps bought in at 3p are now selling into any rise and therefore keeping the price down a bit.

I usually find that using an app to buy shares in a company with limited liquidity isn't the best approach and you invariably don't get the best price, much better to call a broker and initiate the trade that way - this also is a good work around if you keep getting NT's when you try and buy - The broker can put the price up on the screen to free up more stock. The cost to trade may be higher but depending on the volumes you're buying it can often work out cheaper overall.

With regards to news timescales.. Alpha has a habit of taking all the time they have given themselves, although appreciate that many of the comms releases will be dictated by a 3rd party.. eg. When something is signed, or how quickly they must release market sensitive news. I don't think they'll release anything on a Friday as that's generally bad practice.

AUM once deal completes - there was talk of $1bn AUM however I think that's unrealistic, I've invested in a few bigger asset managers and their AUM has reduced by 20% or so in some cases due to the market conditions - mix of the underlying asset prices being depressed and people withdrawing funds due to fear of a market drop. This shouldn't impact BOAGF as it's uncorrelated but may impact the insurance company assets as they will have exposure to equities - if they're fully invested in oil & gas then we could hit $1bn however that is highly unlikely. We also need to consider currency fluctuations - if anything is priced in sterling it will have an impact on an AUM that's usually quoted in dollars. That's just the market - in 6 months time hopefully both sterling and the stockmarket are in more positive territory, all depends on Russia/price of energy/inflation/etc etc. Our AUM will obviously increase substantially but impossible to predict by how much, a lot has changed since the initial announcement.

I don't believe warrants are being executed for the same reason as others have pointed out - people will tend to wait until the shareprice is far in excess of the warrant price, I also believe the company would have to declare that a warrant has been exercised. Could be wrong but that's my understanding.

My tuppence for what it's worth. I remain very positive on Alpha and believe the company will end the year looking very different from how it started the year, it just needs some patience as the StockAlch

I've been ignoring my portfolio over the past few months however saw a couple of LinkedIn posts and tweets so thought I'd check in.

Hello everybody - good to see some new as well as some familiar names.

Is Giles still with us? Hopefully sunning himself somewhere..

Great to see much more volume coming through the share over the past week compared with previous, that's quite a step change and it's obviously had a positive impact on the spread - down to circa 3% from about 20% before. Even if you're convinced a share price is going to 5 or 10x there is a psychological barrier to being hit by a 20% spread! The decrease in spread is probably one of the reasons why we're starting to see some chunky transactions.

Looks like the share price has doubled from recent lows - reading through the RNS's it sounds like we're going to find out about Guernsey by the end of this month... any day now.. (this doubles AUM and therefore possibly doubles Fees and Revenue), then there was also mention of a significant development within the Fund business... Alpha has a history of being quiet and then hitting us with some amazing and transformational news - that will be interesting to see, could be another few days or a couple of weeks on that, depending on how you read the RNS. Hopefully they'll leave a gap between the announcements, only so much good news we can take at once :)

Since I doubled down on my investment a year or so ago the Revenue has gone from £80k to £2.65m, that's a substantial increase and I expect it to at least double this year - accounting for partial year Guernsey contribution and the BOAGF at the increased investment levels. I'll need to sit down and do a rough calculation for future year revenues (based upon $2bn AUM) however next year obviously benefits from full year contribution from Guernsey plus whatever other increases to AUM are achieved by their buy or build strategy. Could be another significant bump in revenue, this coupled with low operating costs means that Alpha could be very close to generating significant bottom line profitability.

I'm not entirely convinced by Arden Partners, I can't see what they've done for Alpha so far - they are the broker on one of my other small cap investments and they've been similarly useless. Hopefully they wake up soon and start earning their money.

Comms seem to be improving overall and I thought the brochure was a good step in the right direction, hopefully it's being used to introduce new investors to the share - although obviously it's difficult to get people to invest at this time (especially in high growth but small cap shares) due to external macro economic factors.

Excuse the brain dump - in a rush but wanted to check in, will write more once I've had a proper chance to read through everything again.

My initial price target remains 20p+ - We won't get there overnight however edging closer to recent highs would still be a great result for all long term holders.

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