Member Info for expatbrat

I can only give you my opinion. This stock needs a lot of research and I encourage you to do it.
At the end of the day, this project that is keeping this business afloat is AltAlto. When I say afloat, I mean the hype surrounding it and the willingness for investors to buy shares because of it. VLS have a long history of placings to raise cash as they seem to be incapable of raising money any other way. This is not good for the private investors.
If you get on the right side of the news announcements, then you can make a quick buck, but I’d get out as fast as you go in, if there is a run up on the price.

So we’ve dipped below 6p, but has since popped above since. Let’s see if 6p holds...

This is the particularly large elephant in the room!

PortS, I think I big chunk if the interest from Shell and BA is for the PR value. I will change my tune when they stump up £100m to fund the capital requirements.
Until then, they are both just flirting with it.

It’s a huge deal DH. In my experience of waste gasification, its the tar build up that causes issues. Tars cause FT reactors to fail.. FT process have been around for ages and such tech is not what needs proving here; it’s the entire waste to fuel process which has not been done at any scale.

I agree with most of that, but I don’t think they will go bust. My gut feel is that AltAlto won’t go ahead due to the insane costs and lack of smaller scale testing, but the FT reactor business may do quite well due to the increasing interest in smaller scale FT fuel market that seems to be gathering pace.

The gasification of waste has a litany of failures. As far as we know, VLS has not gasified any waste as yet, so it’ll be very difficult to justify going straight to a commercial sized facility with no demo scale experience. They really need to take this one step at a time.
Of course, this all depends on the risk appetite of project investors and how good VLS is at talking the talk. Given they’ve been trying to finance the Mississippi plant for years, without success, suggests that talking the talk needs some work too.

Less risk averse possibly. But this is a still a half billion pound project, the process of which VLS has not proven at any scale. Investors (and I mean serious ones, not ones putting in a couple of million quid) are not going to overlook such a fact.

Lots of figures being referenced by VLS. One minute it’s £500m then it’s £350m.
They have a lot of work to do before they can even begin to start talking to banks about half billion pound projects.
Focus on the next 12 months and the funding needed to get the project to a advanced state.

Yep indeed. It’s called ‘Reality FM’....

Talk is cheap. It’s easy for the CEO to show support but equally as simple to back track given the more pressing issues of remaining a going concern.
As for putting green energy on hold, I totally agree. There are several low carbon projects being developed at the moment. However, the vast majority of these are using proven tech and the scale up is low risk - the main issue is finding. With VLS, the main issue is risk, which therefore mean even more issues with funding. At a time when nobody is making money, or losing it at a rapid rate, investment risk profiles will be heavily scrutinised.

What happened to BA/Shell and their option agreement for AltAlto? That came and went. Makes you wonder why the didn’t jump at the chance for such a cheap price. I’ll tell you why I think - it’s because they cannot at this time stomach the risks.

Hopefully, things will change, but the question is how long we need to wait.

I’ve said on many occasions that Shell are in this for the PR. In terms of bang for buck, they’ve got huge publicity for just a couple million quid. Shell have their own FT equipment, albeit designed for larger scale. They also have their own cataylst technology in the form of CRI . They may, one day, look to acquire VLS to add to their portfolio, but as has been stated that’s probably years away. It’ll come down to whether they want to be the ones to take the risk and fund the project now, at a time when they are laying people off. This applies to BA too.
There is a possibility that the whole thing may get put on ice for a while until all associated parties can get a handle on their own future.

They have another 16 months before the Immingham site option agreement expires. They’d best get a move on.

They are all highly paid executives being paid via your share purchases from placings. A **** ton is probably spent on business development, which includes expensive consultants. It’s an expensive, non revenue making business - at least for now.

I agree that big oil is pivoting to renewables. Only this morning BP made a big declaration on their new strategy. As always seems to be the case, Shell always follows BP’s moves, so I suspect something similar from Shell in the not too distant future. The problem for VLS is time. it’ll take time for Shell to restructure, which include laying 1000’s of staff. Only once this is all done and dusted, will they look to commence their new ambitions.
I personally don’t see Shell investing much in AltAlto. The value to Shell is the VLS technology. But as it’s a chicken and egg scenario, as without AltAlto there is no real commercial service evidence (forget ENVIA, that was just a large demo plant).
It appears that anyone with a bit of money can appoint an engineering firm to design, build and operate one of these refineries. Vls just manages the firm and brings their tech to the table. If Shell owned the VLS tech, they could build their own waste to fuel plant. Or on a lesser level, just license the VLS tech and build their own plant.
Remember that the only real value VLS has is their FT technology and nothing more.

BP investing in VLS? So you know something we don’t?

Just like ENVIA. And we know how that turned out...

Seriously tho. . If VLS had new orders then great, that’s something to celebrate. But this is just not news imho. Clearly a quiet period in the VLS comms dept.

Why is this news? They’ve fulfilled an order. It’s not exactly worth popping the champagne corks for!

FT processes are having somewhat of a resurgence. There’s a lot of support for fuels from CO2, air, biomass etc. They all need FT in order to produce a fuel that can be a direct replacement for fossil fuel.
I think the next 6-12 months will be a telling time for VLS in terms of general market interest. The only other FT system comparable with VLS is the Johnson Matthey equipment, produced in conjunction with BP. This will be VLS’s direct competition in this sector, short to near term.