Member Info for nomlungu

'Why would anyone think what rubbish you post.' Wise words when you turn them around at look at your posting history:

PM2022

Posted in: VAL

Posts: 2,208

Price: 52.50

Strong Buy

RE: Terrific Tuesday - Bull Run - 74p to 85p Range Incoming26 Oct 2021 08:40

Let's get that negative title out. Don't give these losers who have done no research any credibility.

We move on and a great day ahead as we are now very close to the big deal. If in doubt simply watch the recent interviews by Suzy and we are so cheap at the moment.

"posting rubbish"

So are you saying that it is rubbish to post about the likelihood of a placing in a few months time?

Bloomberg: "Dimon Warns World Not Ready for 7% Fed Rate: Times of India"

https://archive.ph/fRojb

7% in the US would force the BoE to increase rated here or see the £ get devalued and the UK import inflation. 7% here would be mortgages of 8% or higher. So much pain...

“The world is certainly not prepared for a 7% Federal Reserve funds rate,” Charlie Jamieson, chief investment officer at Jamieson Coote Bonds, told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.

“At that level we would expect that we would have a deflationary asset unwind, it would burst a lot of asset bubbles, it just simply wouldn’t be sustainable.”

"Not concerned just report them."

You want people reported for raising concerns about the likelihood of an imminent placing? On a company that has a history of discounted placings and could be facing a cash crunch at the end of the year. The manipulation seems to come from people who have tried to ramp this share all the way down from 50p and are now downplaying the risk of yet another discounted placing.

Remember, the more you post suggesting people report others for raising the probability of a placing in the near term, the more replies you are going to get amplifying the placing concerns. Even you said yesterday that cash burn is around £2m a year. If they only had a little over £1m to play with at the beginning of July, when will that run out? January? Do you want the company to run out of money? Or, should they raise money if there is no other imminent source of cash?

PS - "Not concerned"? Sounds a bit like Dr Dilly, who is still "Full of confidence and unconcerned".

"So with S P Angel, Cenkos and Turner Pope clients all fully rinsed"

I disagree; they will have plenty of clients onboard who will be prepared to take part in a deeply discounted placing. Those same clients will be registered with those businesses specifically to be asked to partake in such offerings and take part because they know they are more likely to make a profit flipping the shares than make a loss.

Dangle a big enough discount and the placing gets away. VAL have done a 50% discount in the past. And if 20 million shares cannot raise enough to see them through to the next AGM approving more shares they can always call an EGM and seek authority to issue even more shares... It gives shareholders a stark choice; dilution or bankruptcy.

Maybe management manage to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat... you never know but they are running out of time.

Mick - politics had a big part to play. The threat of Trump getting back in will have added pressure

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/25/ford-ev-battery-plant-china-00118037

Porky'

"this next placing is going to be a tough one to get underwritten"

Has VAL ever had a placing underwritten? From the last 2 raises:

Jan 23: Neither the Placing nor Broker Offer Shares are being underwritten

June 22: The Placing is not being underwritten.

This has been getting a bit of publicity recently; certainly one approach to keep an eye on:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/grid-scale-battery-storage-nickel-hydrogen

"Technologies for space are designed to be tough, safe, and long-lasting. So what happens when you bring the battery chemistry deployed on the International Space Station, nickel-hydrogen, down to Earth?

“[It’s] the most durable battery ever invented,” says Jorg Heinemann. Nickel-hydrogen batteries, he says, can last for 30,000 charge cycles, is fireproof, and outperforms lithium-ion batteries on a number of key metrics for energy storage at the large scale.

Heinemann is CEO of EnerVenue, a Fremont, California-based nickel-hydrogen battery manufacturer. “Our cost is comparable to where lithium-ion is going, and we use earth-abundant materials,” he says. “Nickel is the most expensive thing we use. We operate at a ninety percent round-trip efficiency, more efficient than lithium-ion. And there’s basically no maintenance on this battery, it was designed for sending up on a rocket ship into outer space.”

Nickel-hydrogen batteries can run for tens of thousands of cycles, giving them a life of over 30 years.

This fall, the company will finish construction of a 92,900 square-meter gigafactory in Kentucky that will start by making up to five gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries annually. He projects the facility will reach its full capacity when it’s churning out 20 GWh of cells per year."

Yet another reason to become (partially) self-sufficient as solar and storage get cheaper and the batteries safer. Leave it too long as you will not be able to export excess electricity to The Grid as GOV is not investing in Grid capacity (especially capacity suitable for receiving small amounts of locally generated / stored power).

The progress continues; full year Profit Before Tax ("PBT") of £4.2m (2022: £1.1m), an increase of 281%. My only question would be how many customers are at the new increased exposure threshold of £750k (it is easy to make more money taking more risk but it hurts more when it goes wrong). Seems a solid set of results; short AI summary of the accounts:

Key Financial Highlights

Revenue increased 17% to £27.6 million (2022: £23.6 million)

Profit Before Tax increased 281% to £4.2 million (2022: £1.1 million)

Earnings Per Share increased to 3.7p (2022: 1.0p)

Lending book grew 24% to record £170.1 million (2022: £136.8 million)

Net Tangible Assets increased 12% to £34.2 million (2022: £30.5m)

Strategic Progress

Focus on core secured lending - grew own-book origination 14% to £73.4 million

Exited non-core businesses like consumer loans brokerage

Launched new Asset Based Lending product

Continued investing in sales team - doubled in size over past year

Operational Performance

Invoice Finance and Asset Finance now represent 70% of lending

Average deal size in Asset Finance division increased from £22k to £36k

Maximum customer exposure limit increased from £500k to £750k

Outlook

Macroeconomic environment remains challenging but SME demand for financing is strong

Good progress made on strategic objectives positions company well for continued growth

Balance sheet strengthened provides funding capacity to meet medium-term growth plans

Skier

1/5 Labour

5/1 CONservatives

200/1 Lib Dem

https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.167249009

You can lay 1.21 about Labour for good money; excellent arbitrage opportunity if support for the CONservatives is going to increase. Betfair allows you to create a round book and withdraw profits when in profit. A traders' paradise if you are correct as the house's margin is incredibly low and the market is a decent size.

Throw money at the problem and see what works; "The US Department of Energy (DOE) has shortlisted the projects to receive US$325 million for long-duration energy storage (LDES), with technology providers including Energy Dome, Invinity, Form Energy and Redflow.

The grant funding will go to a total of 15 projects across the US which are deploying technologies that provide 10 or more hours of energy storage discharge at full power, the DOE’s definition of LDES.

The government department aims to reduce the cost of LDES by 90% by 2030, and the funding aims to help companies overcome the technical and institutional barriers to full-scale deployment of LDES technologies."

https://www.energy-storage.news/energy-dome-invinity-form-redflow-projects-among-does-us325-million-ldes-winners/

90% saving? Game changing if they get anywhere close.

I think what the real story is that Waitrose's PR department made up a story for Big Media hungry for AI related stories and successfully got free publicity out of their efforts.

If Waitrose need to know what is suddenly popular / trending with their customers all they have to do is look at unexpected spikes in demand for specific products and tailor offerings to cater for that demand... And then jack up the prices and feed stories to the Media about how this new trend is creating shortages for that product line that they just happen to have in stock.

They have enough data from their stores to mine very profitably.

"Val only burns 2 million a year ignoring asset purchase."

And at 30 June they had £891k and received a tax credit of £193k afterwards. Without any changes, cash is due to run out around New Year. Management cannot risk running out of cash, can they?

So do they soldier on in the hope of that magical deal resulting in upfront cash and risk bankruptcy if said deal does not materialise? Would that be acting in shareholder's best interests?

Or, do they seek more capital? If they are going to do a placing, it would make sense to complete it before the end of the year. And, if the share price keeps weakening, then surely the placing should come sooner rather than later, so the damage to shareholders is as little as possible?

A placing could be coming much sooner than some expect... Even Uber ramper PM has basically shown there is a danger that cash runs out at year-end.

The vaccine is showing positive 2 year efficacy so far so may not need to be administered yearly; good news for sure but it may not be a huge income stream if it does not need an annual dose like the flu vaccine.

Evi,

https://poe.com/PAPERSNAP

Good a summarising stuff like the FT article; save the article as a PDF and ask Papersnap to summarise with a prompt like "summarise for a novice investor". From memory, you can upload a 2mb document to analyse (pretty generous for a free service)

AI summary for a novice investor

Here is a short summary of the key points from the article tailored for a novice investor:

The carpet company Victoria recently published its annual financial results.

The auditor, Grant Thornton, did not give Victoria's results a clean bill of health. Instead, they issued something called a "qualified audit opinion."

This means the auditor had concerns about potential issues at one of Victoria's subsidiaries that they could not fully investigate.

The main concerns were around potential fraud, improper accounting, and violations of anti-money laundering regulations at the subsidiary.

Victoria did not allow the auditor to do more investigation into these issues. This is very unusual.

The auditor makes clear they could not get enough evidence to confirm whether fraud or legal violations occurred.

This qualified audit opinion raises red flags about the reliability of Victoria's financial reporting and controls.

As an investor, a qualified audit opinion would make me very cautious about the company. It suggests potential problems.

More investigation by regulators into Victoria seems likely and smart investors should watch closely for any developments.

The situation highlights issues with financial controls and reporting at some UK companies.

In summary, the qualified audit opinion raises big questions about Victoria that novice investors should view as warning signs to be very careful with the company. More experienced investors are better equipped to analyze the nuances. But for novice investors, this situation warrants avoiding investment in Victoria until the issues are resolved.

Evi,

The bone and muscle loss is called Sarcopenia

https://www.google.com/search?q=sarcopenia

Unnaturally inducing it by taking a weight loss drug because you are too lazy to help yourself is beyond stupidity.

This is bad

https://www.ft.com/content/52ba07ba-fca4-40aa-aea7-756114e6da5a

======= or ==========

https://archive.ph/7brVe

Https://www.ft.com/content/52ba07ba-fca4-40aa-aea7-756114e6da5a