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@StopAnimalAgri Who do you think will provide the loans? My best guess is that Lib Bio will be forced to give up equity at a big discount, which will mean we get diluted. Even if we don't, the value of our investment has or will fall. I get that construction projects go over budget, but shouldn't this have been taken into consideration when they were raising capital, ie overfund? Ultimately, this project has been badly managed. I just hope that won't damage credibility with future customers.

If the initial deadline was the end of 24, we are talking about a delay of 1.5 years. It's now mid-26 and they are still looking to raise the last piece of capital to finish the plant. What worries me is that 1.5 years is a long time. If they haven't knocked on every door and made every call to potential investors after so long, they must be pretty close to exhausting all their leads. The big question for me isn't about demand for the end product, but rather about who is going to provide the cash and under what terms? Senior and even mezzanine debt seems highly unlikely, which leaves equity and means dilution. They probably need something like an additional $10 million. We are told that VC money isn't interested. Will it be possible for ANIC to issue enough new shares to cover this? Probably not, which makes me question the wisdom of them doing so to invest an additional $5 million in Supermeat in May. Perhaps New Agrarian and their Gulf investors will come to the rescue, although I think they would have already done so by now. What's the point in talking about new plants in the Middle East Jim, if you can't even finish the one you began in the US?

Bottom line, this funding should have been sorted out months if not years ago, with the full amount raised to ensure completion and this should have been the priority because it's the biggest part of the portfolio. Instead they've blown their wad funding many of the smaller positions and we are now faced with the real risk that our largest holding could go under.

Wow! Really bad news. Didn't Jim Mellon they'd raised enough capital to complete the plant? Something here doesn't make sense. The article states they need a “substantial” sum to complete the project and that “There’s no major equipment that needs to be brought in now. We have the fermenters and the DSP [downstream processing equipment], so it’s more the finishing touches, electricity, plumbing, controls and so on that we need to complete.”

Why do they need a "substantial sum" for electricity and plumbing? I'm starting to get worried about Lib Bio. ANIC certainly won't be able to raise the capital by itself to finish the job.

https://agfundernews.com/liberation-bioindustries-pauses-construction-again-as-it-seeks-funds-to-complete-us-biomanufacturing-site

@PurpleKenny Perhaps, but both investments are frustrating me in equal measure

That's assuming there will be no more future investments where ANIC shares are used. I'd be surprised if they don't do more deals, but it's unclear to me which is the better option at this point: continuing to invest and maintaining our stakes resulting in selling pressure on the stock, or dilution?

We've had a long string of positive RNSs and there have been many tangible signs of progress and yet the share price has stagnated. Frustrating and disappointing and not what I expected. Will more good news make a difference? The common wisdom suggests that when some (several?) of the portfolio companies start generating revenue, that will be the turning point. Perhaps, but all but Solar Foods are private companies, with no obligation to post financials or information on revenue, and positive articles in the press don't seem to be doing it.

For me, the only thing the market won't be able to ignore is if CFG IPOs and our stake in the company starts to approach the market cap of ANIC itself. I suspect that if that happens, it won't be until sometime in late 27 or early 28 when CFG have scaled production for their edible oils.

"The GLP-1 angle is very interesting."

Precision fermentation can be used to manufacture something simillar in the form of dietary supplements, rather than GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs, which are purfied injectables. The supplements are in essence biomimetic peptides that activate GLP-1/GIP receptors, but they have a much shorter half-life (24 hours) and milder effect. They are also taken in powder form, rather than injected, which I think many people will prefer and will be seen as being more "natural". I think this could be massive as we are beginning to touch on a broader total addressable market - health and lifestyle, rather than just food and nutrition.

Https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/formo-foods-precision-fermentation-casein-dairy-protein-self-gras-cheese/

I agree that ANIC's stakes in the most promising portfolio companies are probably going to get diluted more than the "losers", but not for the reason you give that "ANIC managements violates very basic principles of the VC industry." At this stage, I don't think ANIC management has much choice in the matter. They don't have any more cash to invest, so the choices are:

- sell one or more of the porfolio. Presumably we don't want to sell the best companies, so who is going to buy the least promising, and at what price? Pennies on the dollar. Not a good option.

- issue shares at the market price, well below the NAV. Not a good option.

- issue shares at the NAV, in exchange for more equity in portfolio companies

The third option is clearly the best, and that is what they are doing. When it comes to raising new equity, the best of our portfolio companies have options. Clearly they prefer to get cash, that other investors have and we don't, rather than ANIC shares priced at the NAV that they can only convert on restrictive terms well below the price at which those shares are issued.

So is it Jim Mellon's fault that these companies have the option of raising new capital at better terms with other VCs? The choice isn't Mellon's or anyone else's managing the fund. That's a very different picture than the one you paint of ANIC management selling their winners and keeping their losers.

I think this deal and the partnership with Migros has a lot of potential. SuperMeat and Migros first entered into an agreement in 2022 (the same goes for Ajinomoto). I would have expected that after 4 years, with no commercial product to show for it, both of these commercial partners would have lost interest, so it's very encouraging to see this isn't the case! Migros is a big fish, Switzerland's largest supermarket chain and meat manufacturer. How large of a custmer could Migros be? Well, and I'm not sure this is still the case given the pushback, but they were planning to build Switzerland's largest poultry slaughterhouse, which would slaughter over 30 million chickens a year: https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/switzerland/migros-plans-mega-slaughterhouse-thousands-are-fighting-back-2343235.html

It's interesting to see that SuperMeat's business strategy is to develop a licensing model with Migros. This is consistent with the agreement that was made 4 years ago. Here's what Supermeat CEO Ido Savir had to say about it then:

“The partnership could lead to Migros’ own branded cultivated meat products,” highlights Savir. “As a B2B company, SuperMeat plans to enable other food companies to introduce their own meat products with SuperMeat's cultivated meat inside. The possibilities for products that could come from this partnership are endless,” he says.

“SuperMeat is building a wide platform for meat production – from fat to thigh and anything in between – aiming to provide Migros and other leading brands the diverse tool box to produce the high quality products their consumers expect.”

“Our first commercial products will be cultivated chicken products, followed closely by multiple other types of meat types and parts,” he details.

Yes, that's a lot of dilution and a hard pill to swallow, but it's also just a reflexion of the limited uplift we've seen in the value of Meatly so far. There are still big risks, but is the company really only worth £27.7m? I was hoping the valuation would be higher than that, but it took Meatly a long time to do this deal, which suggests they weren't the ones dictating the terms and confirms what we all know - raising capital in the alt protein space is still difficult.

The big question for me is whether Clean Food Group will need to do a Series A before they IPO. If so, that will also mean more dilution, as I doubt ANIC will be able to provide them with enough capital by issuing shares at the NAV, but hopefully also a big jump is valuation. One that factors in the Knowsley plant purchase price.

The most important factor will be how valuable our portfolio companies become. We currently own 30% of CFG, for example, and that investment represents 5% of the portfolio. If CFG grows by 50X as JM hopes, there would have to be more than a 50X dilution, so a drop in ownership from 30% to 0.6%, for ANIC to lose on that investment. That's a lot of dilution. How about Lib Bio? (Our stake last I checked was 37.7%*) Would it be too optimistic to suggest the value of the company could 10X? So our stake could drop to 3.77% and the dollar value of the position would be unchanged.

Bottom line, success will only come at the cost of dilution, but I think the upside potential in valuations will more than offset how much we get diluted.

*NB this could now be lower. JM during his AMA indicated that the reason for the delay in finisheing the plant was because they were unsuccessful in doing a debt financing deal and had to raise equity, which implies our stake has been diluted. Why was there no RNS on this deal? :-(

"The Green queen article said that ANIC participated but i think that's a mistake". I agree, it doesn't look like ANIC participated, and the fact this round was an order of magnitude bigger than the seed round meant the dilution was significant. Companies have a clear preference for cash vs ANIC shares that they can only sell at a deep discount, so we may not get to participate in future rounds. That means more dilution. The silver lining is that Meatly now has access to a deeper pool of capital, which improves the probability it will be a success and we will ultimately benefit from that as ANIC shareholders. Oyster Bay led this round. Their approach to investing suggests to me that Meatly won't have a problem raising additional capital if they execute successfully:

"How much money do you invest?

Our initial check size is usually between EUR 1m to EUR 5m - with significant follow-on reserves for the next rounds. We like to lead rounds and follow-on for the next 2 rounds after our initial investment."

https://www.oysterbay.vc/#insights

This was a long time coming and it's great to see Meatly was able to raise capital in what in still a challenging environment. New investors also participated in the round, so it's also good news that they were able to draw from a wider pool of capital. However, there's a limit to how much ANIC can raise by issuing new shares that need to be sold in a market with limited liquidity, and that comes at the cost of dilution: our stake in Meatly has now dropped from 25% to 11.57%. Ouch. I was also surprised to see there was a drawdown in the valuation from £4.5 million to £3.2 million.

@AIM_higher, No, I dislike Proof-of-Stake blockchains and variants thereof, like DPoS.

US Judge Dismisses Onego Bio’s Patent Lawsuit Against The Every Company. There is another motion in Deleware, but let's hope both companies can now move on:https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/the-every-company-onego-bio-lawsuit-precision-fermentation-egg-protein/

In addition, The Every Company and Liberation Bio were part of a list of firms awarded grants by the US Department of Defense in 2024, as part the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program. The Californian company Biosphere was also part of that list and has just received additional funding after the initial awards. The roadmap for additional funding is planned to be finised by Spetember 2026, so we may possibly get some good news on The Every Company and Lib Bio in the next three months:

https://agfundernews.com/biosphere-lands-pentagon-funding-to-build-portable-protein-from-air-bioreactors

I listened to the interview again. CFG currently have a 4000-tonne annual production capacity, all of which has been bought by Mondelez, the owner of Cadbury. Just one customer! He also talks about Ferrero/Nutella, so I would image there is also interest there. The Liverpool plant is only currently operating at 1/5 capacity, and the plan is to increase that by 5X in the next two years. Interesting that JM makes the bold claim that CFG will "own the UK oil market in the next two years", which corresponds to that timeline, but also plans to expand to the US and the rest of the world.

When talking about the Gulf States, he says they've already announced one plant and that they will be announcing more plants (I originally thought he used the singular noun) in the next two or three months. This is the region he expects to see the most activity in the short term.

He says "We'll take Clean Food Group public later this year, and we'll probably make between 50 and 100 times our money on it."

It's unclear to me whether he means at the IPO or at some point in the future, and is he talking about a multiple of their investment (£1.6million) or its carrying value (£7.0million). 50X £1.6million, or £80million is only slightly bigger than ANIC's £72million market cap.

The other good news he mentions is that he expects Lib Bio's plant to be finished by mid-summer and that it will begin production at the beginning of 2027 and that they have pre-orders for full production. I think that last time we heard, these were only letters of intent. JM also expects there to be an announcement for a new plant in the Middle East in the next two months.

About 47million new shares have been issued since the end of 2025 to settle non-cash investments. Difficult to know how many of those have been sold, but I'd imagine the portfolio companies who received them wanted/want to monetise asap, so I've been pleasanty surprised by how well the share price has held up, and suspect this has put a cap on any upward movement above 7p. I agree that if there is a positive catalyst, it will be from another angle, probably CFG, as I think Lib Bio will now be more of a 2027 story. Unless of course CFG need to do a Series A ahead of their IPO. I was also hoping to hear that Meatly would have completed their own Series A by now as they've been trying since at least June 2025. How long has it been since Blue Nalu was on the verge of getting regulatory approval in the US? Hopefully that happens before the end of this year.

And when *will* it open? Job postings are now talking about the end of 26 or beginning of 27. It would be good to know why these keep slipping for what's probably our most important asset. Let's just hope this hasn't led to a rethink for Vivivi or other prospective customers. "Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting" - Joyce Meyer.

Stop, I think there's good and bad news here. It will convert, therefore dilute ANIC either before maturity, in the event of a Series A raise, or if CFG gets bought. If the CLN doesn't convert before maturity (Aug 2027), it will do so at 16.5p, which was the price of CFG's last equity raise. That means current shareholders (ANIC etc) refused to accept a lower valuation, a thus limited dilution. It also probably means CFG is struggling to raise new equity at a premium. Investors were given a nice option here. If the value increases before the term of the CLN, they get a 20% discount, if the value of the new round falls below 16.5p they still convert at 16.5p, so don't suffer the lower valuation new investors will have to accept.

I would have hoped that the acquistion of the one million-litre fermentation manufacturing facility in Knowsley, Liverpool would have boosted the valuation of CFG in the eyes of new investors. That clearly isn't the case.