The next focusIR Investor Webinar takes places on 14th May with guest speakers from Blue Whale Growth Fund, Taseko Mines, Kavango Resources and CQS Natural Resources fund. Please register here.
Good for Alpha to be taking 100% of PLAC given the profits it is generating. Re: the equity - I don’t view it as settling debts but more incentivising board members / key personnel. Daniel Gray is now holding at Group level and will therefore advise across both PLAC and AILAC I would assume.
As for Jason, I’d say it’s a positive that he’d rather take his £80K at shares at 2.45p rather than cash.
Do I think there’s the potential for Alpha to be taken private at some point? It’s certainly crossed my mind given the low share price and disparity between it and how I value the company. “The market” doesn’t seem to agree yet though as we’ve not seen speculative buying.
Allenby Capital have published an update following their initiation broker note reflecting the FY22 results if anyone's looking for an accessible summary of the results: https://www.allenbycapital.com/client/alpha-growth-plc/
The company is also inviting questions and comments for a CEO Q&A they're planning: https://twitter.com/algwplc/status/1655904279335522307?s=20
Agree with the sentiment and all of the frustration. No-one invested in Alpha can be happy with the pace of share price progress. Also agree with the echo chamber comment, Christ I'm stick of the sound of my own voice on these forums... At times it feels like investing in Alpha is like adopting a religion. You're either a believer or you aren't and if you are you risk becoming fanatical.
All that said, my current view on things is that:
1. The downside here has significantly reduced over the past 12-18 months and I've increased my holding correspondingly to just below TR-1 levels. The company is now profit making so the risks of a dilutive share issue has massively reduced.
2. Whilst it may be the same old buyers adding more, I don't hear of any of them trading in and out. You only have to look at the top three holders TR-1 statuses to see this is the case. Mark, Roy and Marcus have all been adding. Mark Ward significantly. The old adage of 'follow the money' springs to mind
3. IMO sentiment around this share is probably at an all time low now but I don't feel that that's related to the fundamentals. Much more its related to the lack of comms in the second half of last year and the first quarter this. The company now needs to address this urgently with a series of updates
4. As to when the share price will move, I'm not even going to try and guess when that will happen but I am confident it will happen. Comms-wise I'm expecting updates from the company around a Business Update for Q1 combined with some objectives/targets for 2023, a Broker Note updated with the actuals and revised estimates for 2023 / beyond, then news releases on the next set of acquisitions as soon as they are agreed in principle. Will these move the share price? Who knows. As others have said what this share needs is to attract new investors. This can generally either happen when the company fundamentals get to the point where investors make judgements that the company is significantly undervalued and buy in, or more emotionally when they see the share price start to move and want to jump onboard to avoid missing out
5. What I am unclear on currently is the potential up-side now. The company has evolved and changed shape from the days when people talked about 20p+ being their target so is that still valid? My view is that the fund growth has been slower and harder than the company expected but perhaps the insurance acquisitions are proving easier and quicker. Will that flow through to a strategy change? What does the next 12-24 months look like? If not answered in company updates before I'll certainly be digging into these questions at the AGM.
I would expect the HL holding to be their nominee account holding company for all of the PIs invested here, same for II/Halifax etc.
Complete agree re: profit making. This is a key section for me:
"Had both AILAC and Havelet been owned throughout the year revenues of the Group would have increased by £1,920,919 and profits by £686,886" (pg66)
"Yeah.. certainly not the forecast that has been talked about on this forum."
Agreed. Was expecting a slight beat on the broker note estimates given they were produced in conjunction with the company, and as you say produced so recently. Still doing a page turn on the results and comparing to the broker note and FY21 and there's clearly progress being made. Certainly the Substantial Shareholders section caught my eye.
Entirely agree with your logic but in the absence of any update from the company shareholders will quite rightly have expected the accounts today in line with DTR 4.1. The planned publishing date should have been communicated ahead of time to avoid everyone just hanging on with a "Will they, won't they".
Oh well. It is what it is and we'll see next week (hopefully).
I believe they were yes. I wouldn't be surprised if they've chosen to delay them until Tuesday given "Friday news" and the long weekend but its very frustrating hanging on.
It is an opportunity to go back and remind ourselves of what we're expecting to see (and beat) based on the Broker Note: https://wp-allenby-2020.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/media/2023/02/20230208-Alpha-Growth-plc-ALGW.L-Allenby-Capital-Initiation-1.pdf?c3464=on but my personal copy is looking quite dog-eared now given how many times I've read it.
Indeed. This paragraph around acquisitions in the Broker Note was probably one of the most interesting:
"The ‘buy’ strategy is supported by an established acquisition methodology and a strong
pipeline identified as a source of potentially material AUA and AUM growth. Alpha does
not anticipate that it wll need to raise additional equity to secure its current acquisition
targets and has demonstrated that there are willing sellers for these types of businesses.
These typically consist of operations, some of which are substantial (up to c US$1bn
assets) but no longer regarded as core to their growth strategies. Group’s such as Alpha
can purchase these legacy insurance portfolios, for nominal sums which allows to book
an upfront profit (recorded as ‘profit on bargain purchase’ in the accounts), then receive
ongoing fees for management of the underlying assets."
If they're looking at acquisitions of that magnitude the 2B Plan will be met and exceeded sooner than we might have expected.
Nice delayed buy printed from yesterday. Not surprising to see some accumulation given we already have a yardstick from the Broker Note as to their conservative estimate of the FY22 results.
Going to be an exciting week next week for sure.
New tax year so am sure we'll see further Bed&ISAs and a bit more PI money flowing in before the announcements at the end of the month.
Won't be surprised if we see 3p again quite quickly then hopefully a nice increase based on the news.
Minimum investment amounts for the funds? $1K for AAACX and $250K for BOAGF.
I suspect the rerating here will be triggered by the fundamentals. The company continues to grow day by day with revenue increasing so either the imminent FY22 accounts will show the companies first profit, or the HY update later this year will. That will clearly be a very significant milestone and will help attract more Family Offices, UHNWIs or maybe even a small institution to invest directly. I feel we've already started seeing progress in that direction with the large share trades of the last few weeks. Add a new acquisition or two into the mix too to grab us some headlines.
My view is that (a) I see little downside here now with the company having derisked hugely in the last 12-24 months (b) the wider market has been very poor, especially for small caps (a lot of indexes down 30%+) (c) a large proportion of the company remains in the hands of a relatively small number of PIs so should any party want to acquire a significant holding its likely this will happen at a price significantly higher than the current share price.