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"However Alpha P should be guarding its resources and cash like the crown jewels - not putting assets at risk." What do you mean by this? Surely they are doing just this, by cancelling the divi to preserve cash? If you mean putting the whole company at risk by taking out the swap in the first place, well that's a fair point but it is 7 years ago and the clock can't be turned back. We need to look forward not back. Surely a massive dilution, let's say something crazy like 1bn new shares at 3p to raise GBP 30M, would bring the NAV down from 34p to 3p in itself? Why would instis (or anyone) invest at that price if the NAV per share would be destroyed. Yes, maybe they might have to issue 200M at 4p say, to raise £8M and ensure that the swap can be paid off, but in that case the NAV would only decrease to about 10-11p, still double today's share price? If they are now diverting all net cashflow to paying off the main debt, would you not expect them to be paying off the debt year on year (albeit fairly slowly), and therefore the LTV is unlikely to breach the covenant (itself quite high at 87.5%) unless the European property market valuations take a nosedive? I do value your views though Bordersman, so please keep posting.

Bordersman, I fully understand your frustration, and if I had been holding from 30p-odd then I would also be severely p*ssed off. I agree that it seems that the management have been remiss in not seeing the currency swap 'elephant' coming up - they should have cancelled the divi at least a year ago IMO, to put money towards the swap liability. Although to be fair, cancelling the divid is never going to help the SP of a share like this - they would have got a kicking from instio holders if they had done that earlier. So they can't really win. However, *looking forward*, I note that Barclays made £11M in interest charges from Alpha last year. They would have to be idiots to pull the plug on that sort of nice little earner, for the sake of a £5-10M one-off shortfall on the currency swap. Why would they not simply either add any shortfall onto the main loan, or come to some other solution which doesn't kill the golden goose? No advice intended.

My own view is that ALPH has more upside than downside at 5p. Or to be more precise: (a) Barclays force them into liquidation over a few million quid that they 'might' (depending on exchange rates) be short of re. the swap. But then Barclays would also lose the main loan, and end up with a bunch of European properties on their books - what are they going to do with those?? They don't want that - seems far more likely to me that they will either agree to add any shortfall on the swap onto the main loan, or possibly force a share issue. (b) if they force a share issue, say 100M shares at 5p to raise £5M, that would double the shares in issue. But the NAV is currently 34p per share... so that would bring the NAV down to 'only' 17p per share... or 3x the current SP! (c) the company could potentially take out an additional loan to cover any shortfall on the currency swap. They have stopped paying divis and so it should not be too difficult to pay off an additional loan for say £5M. (d) they could sell a property or two - possibly the unmortgaged property they have. Sure they won't get the best price in a forced sale, but just a couple of modest sized properties offloaded would get them out of a hole. My point is that the company have a number of decent properties, with sitting tenants on fairly long leases, and they have a good income stream. While they do need to make decisions quickly, they have *options*, and it seems highly unlikely to me that the company is going to go bust. Hence my feeling that the upside here is much greater than the downside. But it certainly isn't for widows and orphans, I would concede! Good luck all, no advice intended.

This is very interesting news about a bidding war for Marie. I am sure that Andywalden knows the potential consequences if he is found out to have attempted to manipulate the SP with false information, so I am assuming that the info he has received is correct - or at least the rumour is true!! Personally I would think that a sale for £60M or more would lead to an SP of at least 40p immediately, with potentially more when the other Northern European businesses are sold. DYOR

I got into SIT at 122, was well in profit in the low 140s, should have taken my profit but then saw it all go pear-shaped and have reluctantly got out at 89 a few days ago, making a substantial loss :-( I am wondering what the fundamentals of this company really are? These contract wins of $500K here, $1.5M there, surely they don't go any way to making a FY turnover of the predicted $80m? Are they installing lots of small-scale projects that we don't hear about? And since their margins are only about 15%, how long will it take them to hit the big-time? I am a bit disillusioned at present, someone cheer me up!

Strange that two nice orders announced today but no effect on share price?

Yes, sorry, I was referring to TAN. I am probably just annoyed because I got out of TAN at 132 thinking it was overvalued and have now seen it heading for 170 but am too nervous to jump in again :-| Sorry, TAN is off-topic - I will stop now!

Ah but! The power of TV can presumably work both ways, and if Working Lunch says that this is a good company but it is ridiculously overvalued at present then there might well be a stampede for the door!!

...I meant board meeting not AGM. There may be blood on the carpet...

Anyone heard anything about what happened at the AGM yesterday?

This share has been a total disaster for me, I have constantly underestimated how rubbish the management is, while failing to take advantage of the 50% climb a few weeks ago. I see that despite the collapse there are a few people still buying at around 50p. Do you think that there is any chance of another swift rebound to maybe 70-80p Davius?

This share has been a total disaster for me, I have constantly underestimated how rubbish the management is, while failing to take advantage of the 50% climb a few weeks ago. I see that despite the collapse there are a few people still buying at around 50p. Do you think that there is any chance of another swift rebound to maybe 70-80p Davius?

Only 3 trades today so far, and they are all shown on LSE as "unknown". What's that all about?

The people who subscribed to the IPO at 64p will be laughing, an instant 25% gain (note the 250K-300K sells yesterday - they will have made a 50K-60K gain). But having looked at a couple of the links from the Treehugger article (thanks chan), there is a problem about the length of time that it takes the plastics to degrade in water - currently about 20 seconds! So obviously it can't be used for bottled drinks!! Plantic are apparently working on increasing this time lapse, but my point is that it may be some time before the product goes 'bigtime'. The current applications of packaging biscuits and similar is not going to make them (or us) rich?!

SIT results to be announced 8th May.

Anyone got any intelligence on when precisely Walmart are due to announce their delayed decision? Debbie suggested imminently, on what basis?

...I have come back in for a reduced amount of SMC, licking my wounds... The interesting thing is that the 500 smackers I lost would have paid for several months of Level 2 subsciption fees, which might help me be a better trader! Ah well. Hopefully it will be a lucky Friday 13th for me!

Hmm, I am showing my inexperience with SMC! Bought in at 117 a couple of months ago after its big fall. Has never got above 110 since. When it fell to 60 I thought hard about taking a punt on a T trade the day before the results, but didn't, whereupon it increased 50% in a day... Then bought in at 88 hoping it would still keep going, but put a stop-loss at 80, which triggered when I was distracted by work this afternoon, making me a few hundred loss, whereupon it immediately rebounded!!! I think I need to stick to the day job frankly! Yours in depression,

What a pain in the a*se. 30% drop this morning. Is it an 'offload' or a 'buy more while cheap' moment do you think?

Biofuels are the politicians' and markets' favourite at the moment but there is a fundamental problem with the whole concept of biofuels. That is, the amount of land required to grow crops to fuel vehicles (because it is almost entirely vehicles that we're talking about with the 5% and 10% targets) is enormous. The reason is that each litre of oil represents millions of years of compressed vegetable and animal matter, providing and extremely energy-dense fuel which is very difficult to replace with single-year crops. 30% of the entire US corn crop last year went to make ethanol for biofuels, and guess what percentage this was of the fuel sold? 3%! Yes, maths fans, that means that to get to 10% biofuels the US would need to use its _entire_ corn crop... The US might have plenty of land available, but it may not be suitable for corn growing... and what about the much more crowded Europe? We will end up having to decide whether to use land to grow food or to provide car fuel... Sooner or later the penny will drop, along with biofuels shares... though this doesn't mean that there aren't short to medium term gains to be made! IMO you are far better investing in solar power / other renewables and fuel cells, since these are the only viable long-term energy sources. Take a look at SIT to see what I mean.