Member Info for CarefulBunny

IES

If you are new to investing, a good move is to pretend you have a portfolio by using a site like this one for the Financial Times to invent a portfolio for yourself and see how it goes, without sending any actual money. Otherwise, some early lessons can be very expensive! What I've learned is that for small caps everything takes longer than you expect (which makes sense: projects almost never slip to the left.) Also, typically, they raise money, then "burn" it and their share price goes down, then they dilute to raise more money, and then their share price goes down ... and then finally SOME of them do very well. Another lesson: a huge market for something doesn't mean your little company is going to capture that market. The market may never appreciate the wonderful new mousetrap, there may be other better mousetraps, and so on. Just because you have a new sort of cup does not mean you're going to swallow the Atlantic ocean. But small caps are interesting, because you can get your head round what they're trying to do and - if you go to investor shows (eg by subscribing to a magazine, or buy a few shares and become eligible to attend AGMs) - you can meet some interesting people. Small caps, because they're small, can double a lot more quickly that big caps.
It's hard to maintain a real interest in a fantasy portfolio, so maybe buying a few shares (very small amounts compared to your savings) would be a better strategy. Becoming an investor, like growing a small company, takes longer than you think it will ! But as long as you don't commit too much, it can be a great hobby. Don't wing it. There's lots to learn.

I didn't say the chair couldn't do anything, but I think taking the whole caboodle private against the wishes of holders of the majority of the shares(over two-thirds) is unlikely surely?

Allan Vlah is a non-executive director of the Company . With twenty years’ experience in the investment industry, Allan is a director in Aviva Investors’ infrastructure group where he started and continues to lead Aviva Investors’ Energy from Waste equity strategy.
The Whites own 26%. Significant shareholders hold 38%. Minnows presumably hold the remaining 36%.
Doesn't seem likely that the Whites will take it private just yet, does it?

Invinity - IES

I remember the change. Natural gas burns at a hotter temperature, and a lot of cooking was burned. Leaving something to simmer was difficult with natural gas. With coal gas you could leave the whole saucepan on the element, and turn it down. With natural gas you need to leave only part of the saucepan above the flame, and the stew nearest that part bubbles away quite fast and can get burned. Overall, good news anyway, as many of us have been placing our hopes on.

If Biden wins stocks may go up !!

They already know it works. The issue with the first commercial build is to establish precise building and (especially) running costs.

This is not the place to discuss it, but they already have treatments for e-coli and Salmonella in chickens. He has basically developed a synthetic phage. There is of course many a slip; but it is not the only treatment being developed. Interesting that the experts on that presentation were sceptical of vaccinations. He did not as far as I recall use the word "cure". One concept is the idea of a puffer, to give you immunity for a few days, e.g. enough time to go to a baseball game safely.
Interesting times.

It could be a cure, which is why I'm pointing to Cytophage who, as far as I understand have a treatment that can "sop up" the virus particles in the mucosa. Checkout the (2 hour!) discussion: the BioPub presentation on Cytophage Technologies, on YouTube. Stephen Theriault is no fool.

They tested it for over a year in prototype, stressing it by turning it on and off often. Peel are a major company and have judged it worth backing with big money. That indicates it's a reliable technology. I spoke to Keith Allan at an investor show ages ago. He didn't make silly claims. For example, I pushed him on what molecules/atoms would be left (would the molecules ALL be gone?) , and he said well, maybe there'd be a bit of N2 (Nitrogen) left in molecular form, but all the big molecules would be broken down to elements. He was clearly a scientist in that conversation, willing to engage, rather than a suspect salesman trying to dominate you without giving you facts. They have been working on it for over fifteen years, starting I think back in the day when Keith Allaun started working on it (I guess from scratch) and they ran out of money, went into liquidation, and started again as PHE. I don't know why Keith left. It was for "personal reasons". Maybe he, as a founder, was not the person to build a corporate entity. Who knows. Maybe someone artful dodger will engineer a very low sp and then swoop and buy it up and make a billion pounds. I hope not. Certainly it's a technology the world needs desperately, and a big enough thing to stand alone rather than be a department within Peel. I think it's worth backing. Maybe the share price will jump a bit on good news, but the probable sp route will be steady or up and down, but no breakthrough until income from a commercial working unit, with all the precise costs known. There is a risk that cover etc will delay things so another dilution is necessary, which is why I'm pointing to Cytophage as hope on that horizon (it's a private company, so no opportunity there unless you were in on the ground floor.) A second breakthrough may come when HMG gets its hydrogen strategy together - predicted for about a year from now? (but likely to be delayed of course). The hydrogen economy was always Allaun's dream, and it seems very likely that there is going to be a lot of hydrogen in use, that's for sure. But trying to gauge the precise lowest point for an sp is too difficult. Anywhere between 4p and below would seem to me to be much lower than what this is going to do over the next few years. We'll see. Whether they have produced Hydrogen or not I don't know, but if they haven't it will be because they are confident the move from Syngas to Hydrogen is a known path.
That's my two pennorth anyway.

I'm afraid everything takes longer than you think, and very few projects come in earlier than expected.
Even if an effective treatment for Covid is pronounced "safe" by January, it will take government a few months to get us back to whatever is normal after so many businesses have failed, and there will be a drag effect from that. Also, signing deals will take months and months, plus the time taken to roll out. And the most unexpected things can go wrong.
Nevertheless, this can be a great company, a transformational company. I very much hope it will be.

Someone watch all of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN-hCt2hKmQ
and say what you think. To me it looks at least a big step towards a preventive treatment. Once we have that, we can accelerate out of this pandemic.

Re
The vanadium storage tanks are just resevoirs and the ion exchange happens after pumping through an electrode assembly (i believe)
Is this the explanation?:
Start with one tank empty, and one full of the liquid, uncharged. Basically, add the charge and store the charged liquid in the empty tank. That way the voltage is always at the top level. When you use it, put it back.
If that's what they're doing, that makes sense.
I was assuming you start with two neutral tanks and move the charge from A to B, but that doesn't work.

This is interesting, but of course does not address the need to demolecularise dangerous chemicals in waste otherwise going to landfill. At least, that's what I assume.

Thanks everyone - that will keep me busy for about a year ! (Well, less than that I hope ...)

Thanks, yes, I'd seen that sort of article before. It doesn't really answer my question and I can't follow it with enough knowledge of physics and/or chemistry to work out an answer. There must be some reason why they make car batteries the size they do. I assume with car batteries that if you put the two metals a few miles apart in an enormous vat of distilled water you would not get the same voltage. I assume there is some point at which you wouldn't make the unit bigger, you would instead move to two units instead of one.

Compare a Coulomb of charge stored in one very small vat holding just a pint of the liquid vanadium they use, with the same amount of charge stored in a great big vat that would cover a football field 100 ft deep.
It seems to me that the voltage you would get of the small one would be noticeable, whereas from the latter you would get zilch. This means that scaling up must be more complicated than just having a bigger vat.

Let's hope; though I feel end of October is optimistic. It's astonishing how long everything takes, and Covid has made it worse.
In my limited experience small companies with brilliant ideas typically burn cash while their sp falls; when really good news comes in the effect is damped when holders sell. Or they dilute unexpectedly. Sometimes the market just doesn't understand how good the new mousetrap is. Many go under through eg ramping up staff numbers a little too early, and so on.
BUT, I thought the Invinity board looked experienced enough and unemotional enough - no offence intended, but craggy and wizened and hence reliable what what I felt about them ! - and so this is one I am staying in. Fingers crossed. They do have a very good mousetrap after all, and the media are screaming the need for such a mousetrap all the time.

Just watched the whole of this on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d6RlzSqrQk
One hour seventeen minutes, well worth watching one evening if you have the time, but in there was a interesting reference to massive support for hydrogen. Good for PHE I think.
Apologies to those shareholders who already know all about this.