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The problem is that you know another placing will be needed when these funds are used up. Yes, VLS have more runway that planned, but the money will be gone eventually and another dilutionary placing wil happen. This might put longer term investors off. Remember that if project capital is needed, you’re talking 100’s of millions and they may turn to the market to raise at least a portion of it. Future rounds really need to come from project investors to help stop the shareholders being continually shafted.

Thanks SP. Agree with you on the fact that the runway has lengthened thanks to the placing, hence the risks associated with the company running out of funds, is reduced.

I (incorrectly) interpreted your statement as being related to technical risks and these being substantially reduced. These risk still remain, and will remain until the project is commissioned - unless a smaller scale version of the entire waste to fuels process is built and successfully operated in the interim.

Spurious. Can you explain your statement “ ...this investment has been substantially de-risked”. What has happened to reduce investment risk in the project?

Thanks Loosely. I stand corrected.

All oil majors have their own FT products. Don’t forget that the only IP Velocys has is their FT reactors, so unless they want to go into this niche market, i doubt it. If VLS had designed the entire waste to fuel process and all its respective equipment, then maybe, but that’s not the case here.

VLS hold the power? It’s the ones funding the project who have the power. VLS have a design on paper which could be replicated.
The issue is that project is being fully funded by others, with VlS having minority control (based on the 1/3 ownership). This isn’t a problem in terms of revenue, assuming VLS get royalties from their FT systems and some cash from the project , however the future of all these projects will be decided by others.

Good to have you on here Duncan Banatyne.

Actually, it was a genuine question. 20m seems like more than they need.

Lets break this down. First off, the directors only spent 60k on shares between them all. I'd have expected that to be much higher. Directors should be risking more of their own funds to give the market confidence.

IP strengthening - VLS is now a development company as per its 2017 declaration, so no 'new IP' should have been developed, so not sure why money is needed for this?
Working Capital - Wages and Bonuses
AltAlto project FEED (process engineering phase) - appropriate spending, maybe 2mGBP
Mississippi fund raise completion - Completion? What has been raised already??
Debottlenecking of manufacturing lines - paper exercise as large reactor orders are not forthcoming (at least publicly)
Implement Learnings (I assume from ENVIA) - paper exercise.

20m will more than cover the above list of items, so one could argue the placing was too much?

· The Directors intend to use the net proceeds of the Fundraise of a minimum of £10 million to complement funding commitments already made by British Airways and Shell as follows: (i) to further strengthen its intellectual property and trade secrets protection, working capital and central costs for up to one year; (ii) to complete the process engineering phase of FEED for the Altalto Immingham Project until the first quarter of 2021; (iii) to complete the fund raising for the Mississippi Bio-refinery Project and launch the associated FEED; (iv) to evaluate and design a de-bottlenecking of the reactor core manufacturing line in the United States to reach a production capacity of more than 12 Fischer-Tropsch reactors per year (twice the current capacity); and (v) to implement learnings from a post-operative analysis from the demonstration reactors for the benefit of our clients via updated operating manuals and training.

Yet another raise. Why do they keep robbing shreholders of value? Why can’t they secure external funding from strategic partners and raise money the right and decent way? I’m honestly not surprised tbh, but it would have been far better to ‘on board’ one of these strategic investors they’ve been on about. Shameful.
Loosely was bang on with his end of month prediction about the company running out of money.

After getting in at around 5 I got out at 14.5. I’m greedy and the near tripling of the sp in the space of 3 days (Shapps Effect) was too much to ignore.

I take that as a (veiled) compliment.
My take is that we are back to business as usual with this stock. The Twitter tampers and derampers have moved on and as I said last week, the breaking news on the front page is now keeping fish and chips warm.
This stock is sensitive to news driven sentiment as proper revenue is years away (if it gets that far)
Ideally, we need to know what those milestone are that relate to the F4C. Then we might get an idea of when we’ll see some more news.

Sorry, I meant for VLS...

Has a broker target ever been met, within the timescale it’s been issued for?

Just to be clear, the company had a completely different plan back in 2014, when it was at £2.40. Back than, VLS was targeting stranded shale fossil gas whilst only dipping a toe into the water of biomass, via third parties. Since then, reactor sales were minimal hence the need to change from a technology company to that of a project development company. During that time, several placings occurred.
I don’t think it’s relevant to compare where the company was 6 years ago to where it is now as it’s not the same beast. In my opinion, the performance of the company and its management since 2017, when they announced that they were ‘pivoting to renewable fuels’ is where you should start. This new direction is what you need to be looking at imho, and the potential to develop projects rather than develop technology.
I don’t think we’ll ever see 3p again, but I do think it’ll be a rough ride going forward as most price movements are on the back of news, rather than fundamentals. More material progress needs to be made on both US and UK projects before this gains any real, sustainable traction. Of course, this is my opinion only.

Thanks Wolves. Sounds just like the ENVIA story for VLS, but 10 years earlier.

@loosely, any insight into why they shut it down? Market forces?

Excellent post Spurious. Whichever way you look at it, funding is needed. Unlike most previous rounds funding now needs to be directed into project development rather than R&D.
I actually think the Government is looking at what type of projects benefit the Uk from a domestic and non domestic perspective. Remember the Gov is all about exports, post Brexit and keen to promote technology. If Velocys can expedite thier project, and assuming Enerkem or Fulcrum don’t turn up in the near future, then the export of the Technology would be encouraged. Obviously, all this assumes VLS make it that far and you know my position on that, but it’s a good example of how exports are being promoted.

Yes I thought that too Sean83, but given the government has been ‘backing’ this for 12 months or more already, the Grant Shapps mention is merely a comms channel, opening to the wider audience (particularly the day traders). The fact that the shares only rose a small amount on the back of official Planning, the BA extra funding and the F4C top up, suggests that the. ‘Shapps effect ‘ rise is a little unfounded, which I do agree with. If the share price stays where it is now, give or take a few pence, then one could argue the stock was coiled up, waiting for a better comms platform. Or if it falls back, it may revert back to the pre-Shapps announcement price, and from thereon, priced on the fundamentals. Time will tell I suppose.