Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
We all share your frustrations BluePanther and I think we all agree that the shareprice would be substantially higher if comms had been more consistent, the lack of comms has meant that others have been able to take control of the narrative - I'm confident this will come good, just needs some time and a bit of action by management.
The 500 largest asset managers grew their AUM by 14.5% on average in 2020, thus increasing their fee income substantially - Alpha Growth is managing multiples of that growth but obviously hasn't managed to convey this achievement to it's existing or potential shareholders - that's one of the reasons why the shareprice has dropped back from the initial excitement regarding the Providence acquisition.
If you remember at that time we also had an undeclared 3%+ shareholder dump all their shares within a 24 hour period due to a margin call on other investments they held, that put significant downward pressure on Alpha and then negative sentiment took over and we end up where we are. There were other issues such as Pello and the knock on impact to the prospectus etc, thankfully all resolved now.
This is the type of share I look for - where there is a disconnect between the shareprice, the business performance and future potential. Although obviously now I've invested and management have allowed me to buy some cheap shares I would definitely appreciate it if they could resolve the disconnect :)
Little Dave is starting to really overplay their hand, I mean.. no one can be that stupid, surely..
Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"
I’ll admit I’ve been critical of this board in the past due to people coming on and ramping the hell out of the stock with complete nonsense – e.g.“I’ve spoken to Gobind and we’re getting bought out by Warren Buffet” type rubbish.. Share price reacts and that person disappears.. Then there was the wink wink brigade.. “I’ve heard that something is about to be announced…” share price reacts and that person disappears… Then of course there are just the usual bb posts where everyone is overly positive on a stock they’ve invested in..
We’re now in a phase where we have 2 or 3 (probably just 1 person) accounts talking down the stock constantly – I could filter them however I quite like reading the madness that Candy/Daisy/Little Dave sprout, makes me feel a lot better about my life knowing that I’m not Little Dave.
I invested in Alpha quite a while ago when the market cap was £2.5m, it was and still is a startup however it’s market cap, having grown on average 60% year on year, is now circa £10m.
As with all startups, there have been raises and those that have taken part in these and supported the company will have done quite well.
In January 2020, Alpha’s primary offering was the BOAGF fund – at this time it had AUM of $10m, in the most recent numbers published this month that had increased to $45m. That means it’s more than quadrupled and equates to an increase of 112% on average annually. Pretty impressive.
In Feb 2021, the company announced a strategic acquisition which added $275m aum to Alpha Growth overnight, 5 months later in July they reported that this had increased by $33m to £308m.
As others have said, Alpha makes money by charging a fee based upon the assets which it manages.
Going from $10m aum in Jan 2020 to circa $353m in Dec 2021 seems like a very good result to me.
Little Dave, for whatever reason and motivation, has a different view. They believe that increasing AUM from $10m to $353m is “Running to Standstill”.
Little Dave also thinks that Danny has left the org, however, weirdly he is still writing stock market announcements.. Although Little Dave also thinks that Gobind is travelling the world on holiday and this also turned out to be completely wrong.
I personally think the team are making good progress, they could definitely do a better job of keeping the market updated but from a business perspective they are building a fast growing company in a good sector.
Will the ‘RCF’ happen? Who knows – It used to be key for the business but I don’t think it is now, the business has moved on and grown fast without it.
GS referred to a ‘number of strategic advances’… that’s quite a big statement and could be transformational for Alpha - whatever it is, I’m sure all genuine shareholders would rather news came sooner rather than later.
In an interview a while ago, Danny said that he thought Alpha could be worth circa £100m – with the current shares in issue I make that a shareprice of 23p. I believe the business has moved on from then and it could potentially achieve more in the mid to long term, however, I may look to sell down a portion of my holding when/if it gets to 20p.
I’m obviously positive on the company and that’s why I’m invested, you would have to be mad to be negative on a company and stay invested.
GLA.
Ps Everyone needs a Dave in their life, just not Little Dave
Hilarious.
It’s called cash drag and whilst it impacts all funds, it has a more notable impact on funds which experience significant and outsized growth as a percentage.
For the type of fund we are discussing there will always be a lag between taking in cash and investing that cash, for life settlements this will be a longer drag than a fund that deals in traded liquid equities.
I’ll do a simple example and excuse the maths as I’m pretty exhausted, I’m an hour ahead of most of you guys after having to move to Switzerland due to unforeseen events… I’ve also lost my right hand man who would usually check this stuff for me.
Example 1
If a fund has $10m of assets in January and does not manage to attract addition inflows during the year but its investments increase by $2m then the fund will have achieved a 20% return. Great stuff at a headline figure however pretty crap as the aum of the fund has only grown by $2m.
Example 2
The fund starts the year with $10m in assets and immediately achieves inflows of $10m but doesn’t manage to deploy those funds before the end of the year. They make $2m of returns from the $10m deployed and end the year with $22m. Fund performance would show as circa half of what was achieved in example 1… however the deployed assets performed the same and the fund doubled in size.
Those are extreme examples (and apologies if the math is wrong) but hopefully helps.
I had a very literal 30 second scan of the doc posted and I would estimate that excluding cash drag the fund returned very high single digit or low double digit returns.
Obviously the people who are putting money into these funds have an outlook which isn’t measured in months or years but in 5+ year durations. Being invested for such a period reduces the impact of cash drag.
Also, as the fund is relatively small just now it can easily double in size which means cash drag is more obvious due to the percentage impact. When/if it gets to $500m in size then having say $50m in cash undeployed has a more negligible impact on overall fund performance.
In addition, the larger the fund the more life settlements it will hold - that means performance will be less bumpy.
I’m off to bed, Wendy’s calling.
Who needs to go down the casino when Amigo is around..
I bought a decent amount (not 4 million :) ) when it hit 121, then kicked myself I didn't buy more.. Just tripled my holding now.
The bounce back can officially start :)
Yeah, not too shabby
Couple of decent chunky sized buys
Candi - Please do provide your evidence that he works "about 1-3 days per months or even up to 1 day a week on Alpha Growth." Would be fascinating to see.
Gobind - If you're reading this, you better not be going on holiday - or taking any time off work at all.. Candi will come and give you a stern warning..
Drifting upwards or bouncing along the bottom? :)
Candi - You are so full of ****.
Do you actually believe any of the crap you write? I kind of hope you do, no one else believes it.
I heard Nightcap have just won a huge contract to supply booze and bars for Downing Street - should act as a good hedge against any future lock downs.
Wonder if we've found the bottom..
I resemble that remark! :)
The best thing that can be said about holding Amigo stock is that it's never boring!!
You do know the prospectus was for something that happened 10 months ago? This is just the paperwork being approved by the FCA…
There isn’t another placing planned or communicated.
I got bored of this and sold out… luckily just before the drop… half considering buying back in as there must be some interest from PE at this price…although, I thought that previously and was wrong
Looks like an RNS is incoming - Prospectus has been uploaded to their website.
That’s a major piece of the jigsaw falling into place, obviously the placing was ages ago and we’re not expecting another one soon - some people seem to be misreading that!
This plus the appointment of the new broker last week sorts out the issues that were holding Alpha back, sounds like an update on the fund (plus whatever else GObind has up his sleeves) should be announced in the New Year.
Wouldn’t like to be out of this over a Xmas…
Could this start the rerate tomorrow?
HoHoHo
Bob
This looks quite strategic - A good move away from Pello which I guess they had to do based on Pello’s recent issues - however Ardent are being acquired by Ince who have their own wealth management/pension division.
Surely Ince’s wealth management division will see Alpha as a good potential offer to their clients?
Regardless, glad this is now sorted - paves the route for the prospectus to be published and for updates on the fund plus whatever else GS has been working on.
It would be great if there was some positive and substantive news. However, it would be a bit of a coincidence that they found this out at the same time as they did their results - as soon as they hear news they have to announce it.
Hope I’m wrong - I don’t think there will be many green shares tomorrow, would be good if Amigo was one of them.
Good luck my Amigos