Member Info for iWantThatOne

It’s gone quiet for a few weeks after a good run of news. The strategic review has been ongoing for 3.5 months now.....it can’t be much longer at all before the outcome becomes clear. I’d be amazed if a number of outfits haven’t been running their slide rules over the company.

Interesting point, BB, you’d expect far fewer stacks to be required for a given EV charging site (car park, service station, whatever) than for a large power station or chlor alkali plant, hence higher cost of maintenance too when refreshing them (more labour intensive). Greater longevity would definitely help mitigate this. On the subject of what income might be expected from this product, I’d hope to see a broker note setting out their analysis as soon as the final Rolec contract is signed. I imagine there might be a license payment up front followed by a fee per unit or fee per hour’s usage, which surely would be estimated by both parties, so the data would be available.

Hi Klunk, the report is in the Science section of the BBC site. No real data given but they claim that if scaled up, this innovation could produce 10% of drinking water in arid countries.

Article on BBC News site about a wonderful invention that can produce clean water as well as electricity - essentially a solar panel that uses some of the electricity produced to distil salt water. Hmm - not heard of an alkaline fuel cell then?

Agree to an extent, BB, but the GeoPura /Siemens / Logan Energy combination is not a commercial product either - just a set of cobbled together disparate components. I tend to agree - AFC hasn’t the money to do PR at this level - and as a result it’s losing the PR battle. Let’s hope they’re concentrating on products and orders.

Looking at GeoPura’s website, things are not quite as they seem. The hydrogen was produced in Ireland using wind power and an electrolyser, then tankered over to Goodwood where it was put through a “second hand fuel cell”.

Posts on Twitter today from Siemens UK who are charging Electric Vehicles at Godwood’s Festival of Speed with s hydrogen fuel cell provided by GeoPura. There’s a 5 minute interview with Sky News that’s been posted. Siemens’ CEO Juergen Maier is making all the same arguments that AB has made. He says currently the cost is approx 2x that of conventional grid charging but expects that to come down. AFCs’ demo in the Dunsfold car park looks sad by comparison. So much for first mover advantage - it hasn’t lasted long! Hopefully AFC has a few advantages - cost (ammonia), longevity, Rolec working on a production model etc., but the PR effort needs a rocket under it. Needless to say I added a comment to let Siemens know they hadn’t actually come up with a “world first”, as they claimed.

I’d be slightly concerned if H1 EUS was only £440/450m as that leaves an awful lot to do in H2 (approx 800m) to meet the “additional 700” that Ray has flagged. So I’d like to see 500+ in H1. Agree margin is important, a tiny drop from 0.94 would be acceptable, just a bit more if connected with a large deal. I’d be very surprised and disappointed if the whole business is not yet EBITDA positive - it was in Q4 and is clearly one of the key milestones for 2019 by £2 or £3m.

Just read Sunnyca’s post that suggests AFC has “missed the boat” because someone is already rolling out a few hundred solar chargers. There is more than enough business for many many producers here. I’m expecting we’ll hear soon from an AFC partner in a continent other than Europe - perhaps Asia or USA. And we’re still waiting to hear about the Japanese industrial giants who approached AFC following the Hydrogen Council. I wonder if that related to EVs?

Interesting that the caution in the statement seems to be around financing more than the technology. They seem to have done an excellent job so far of raising capital when needed. I note they say they’re very aware of potential dilution, so I expect at least some of the future fund raising will be in the form of debt. My reading of the RNS is that they’ve been focused on ensuring the precision of the beam so that it remains highly targeted once energy levels are boosted later this year. 11 sites identified in Asia - excellent!

Manufacturing agreement with AP.

Thanks KB, I missed that one. So Bango expects to support the new cryptocurrency if and when it goes live just like any other currency, provided MNOs and others accept payments in it, of course. I’d got the impression Libra was different in that people might pay for apps or physical goods (for example) with it in a way that would cut out Bango from the value chain. I guess that would mean DCB would be sidelined in some way, as consumers (especially those without bank accounts) may be able to make their purchases in some other way using Libra. (That certainly seemed to be the fear of the Sunday Times writer). More info needed.

Some commentary in the Money section of the Sunday Times on Boku (bear with me...). The writer has shares in Boku and reflects on how the proposed Libra development sounds very similar to what they are doing (in his opinion) but Boku have been “unable” (more likely, haven’t responded) to explain how they intend to counter the threat of Libra. So he’s sold out. I would also like to hear from Bango management on this threat - any thoughts? On the face of it Libra sounds like it’s in the same space - allowing users without bank accounts to pay for things cheaply and efficiently.

This continued drift on no news is depressing. Come on Ray, give us a bone. Very close to the half-year-end now, how about a trading update?

I’m getting sick of hearing experts in the media talking about offshore wind, onshore wind and solar as the answers to our thermal power generation issues. No mention of fuel cells for decentralized, small scale developments eg Dunsfold. Will AFCs ever be mentioned in the same breath? When all the usual nimby objections are made to the roll-out of onshore wind, I just want to scream “well just stick a load of AFCs behind a hedge then!”.

Yes me too. I'm now hoping for 3 RNSs in quick succession on AP, De Nora and Southern in the very near future. That''d kick things on quite a bit. I still have 10.5p in my mind as a sensible baseline share price - I remember my disbelief at dropping to 8p, followed by horror and anger as we headed towards 3p!

GS, ah right, thanks for explaining. Well I stand by what I said. Last year net profit was c$20m after impairment, or c$30m before. The cost of the full year’s dividend was about $14m. This year we’d expect the net profit to be at least high-$20m’s, as EBITDA will be lower but there’ll be no impairment. And following the company’s divi policy (>50% retained profits distributed), I cannot see the divi reducing. Indeed it would be very strange for a company to reiterate its progressive dividend policy (twice) but neglect to say that the divi is first to be re-based!

Good prez. US online gambling revenues 2018 $300m. Estimated 2019: $700-800m. Forecast 3-5 years: $5-6bn! Can't help but think those 3-5 year forecasts are very light when you consider how few states are contributing to 2019's figures.

GS - a dividend reduction of up to 3c in 2019? From 7.022c? Are you sure? I can't see it. In 2018 the full year divi cost about $14m out of $20.8m net profit. The latter was affected by the impairment, which we won't have this year. Adjusted EBITDA in 2019 is forecast to reduce only from $43.9m to $37-38m or so. In going to net profit, some of that reduction is then effectively clawed back because tax will be less, and there'll also be fewer shares in issue due to the share buy-back, which reduces the cost of the dividend. And the share buyback doesn't affect distributable profit because it's being paid out of current cash balances.

Very strange RNS today. Good to support the marketing effort, but is it actually an “update on the technology”? And was it necessary to publish via an RNS? Still welcome but I was hoping to hear more on the milestones mentioned. At least the first treatment target date was reiterated.