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6) The new high power system looks like another great advance, although probably a while before a commercial product.
Exciting detail is that it incorporates a novel AFC developed membrane. At present this type of membrane is used in PEM fuel cells. The only one available is a DuPont ?Nafion one which is very expensive. The AFC one is currently around 1/4 the cost. When ready it will have potential to be sold on licences both in other people's PEM fuel cells and also in electolysis systems. This could become an exciting earner for AFC and hopefully not too far off for just the membrane.

7) Adam Bond has received a lot of flack. I do not agree with this. I see him as having great potential to spot markets, close deals and be a huge asset to AFC. He will only be able to do this when he has a working product to sell and I hope this has now started.
When he first arrived he was buzzing with energy and excitement about where AFC could go. Three years of massive technology development have now put as where we thought we were. I hope his energy comes back soon and we all see just what I think he is capable of.

5) Lack of communications and the correlation with the drop in share price.

This was raised.
RNS of new products without enough pride in them to put them on the website.
Once a year update with a lot of interesting information yesterday.
This could be conveyed through the year using interviews, podcasts, newsletters, the TUVA PR machine. All these opportunities are being missed and are an essential part of managing an AIM company.
This may not matter, just causing us pain and uncertainty, until it comes to raising money.

They have just raised £800,000 at 3p a share with dilution to us. I see negligent communication as contributing to this sad situation.

It was interesting to see the body language. Eyes converged on John Rennocks. Distinct impression that the board and wider financial team are not supportive of the no news policy. I had wondered if somehow De Nora, a private Italian company without shareholders were pressing for a no news policy, but came away with the distinct impression it is just down to John Rennocks. As others have said, this is toxic to AFC. Unless this changes we can expect more fundraising at a very low share price, if possible. He is now, IMHO, presenting a risk to the future of AFC.
Discussion suggested TUVA are not doing their PR job because they are not allowed to.

His explanations and excuses were feeble and irrational. I concur with all the disparaging comments made by others on this issue. Vague comments about 'fake news' and suggesting the aim is good govenance just don't offer excuses or explanation. I struggle to think there is a rational explanation for this based on information I don't have, but can't find any excuse.

We also find:

Audited accounts were issued too late for deadlines for shareholders to vote to approve them.
Many of us were prepared to hear the worst, that AFC was no longer a going concern on the back of the news vacuum. Pleased that was not the case, but you can't expect to attract investors and support the share price like this.
We still don't have an RNS to say 'all motions approved' at the AGM yesterday.

This is now just looking like incompetent management.

The no news policy/John Rennocks as chairman must be improved on or I fear for the future of AFC.
There is a meeting about PR/communications on Friday. I hope something good will come of that and we can see AFC back on track to realise it's potential. I agree that we may not have the luxury of 6 months to wait for this change.

4) There had been a survey by ?FTI consulting looking for market where we can sell a product with aim of 20% profit margin. The options have been listed in the thread probably by Bumble B.

I remember Ian Williamson mentioning that AKZO had contracts on their electricity supply for ?4-6c/ KwH. We can't make a profit there, nor feeding into the grid and competing with a power station - we never could.

This does not mean we cant make a profit for large installations. eg where there is hydrogen and the water has value, or the Southern oil position.
Another snippet was that they can sell EV electricity at I think 40c /KWh. Volume will be much smaller than for chlor-alkali market, but profit margin per KwH much greater. We were told Rolec already have customers looking for an off grid EV charging solution.
The new CFO Graeme Lewis has come to us with vast experience of the generator industry from work at Barloworld. Again, the profit margin per KwH on generator electricity is far above anything chlor-alkali or grid generation could offer and there is a massive market for generator electricricity/backup power.

Thanks to everyone who has spent time reporting on an exciting AGM yesterday, brilliant work.

Just a few things to add.

1) Eddie has explained about Thalion. A group of HNW American Investors who invested in AFC before, did well on their investment and continue to be supportive of AFC. Am sure the word 'family' was mentioned but may not have meant blood relatives in retrospect. Also, some 'names we would know'. Things like Gates, Trump, Buffet sprung into my head, but probably I don't know enough names..

Still a bit vague, but sounds much better than the Caymen Islands front for laundering drug money who would bale on us when the cocaine crop failed, we might have feared.

2) PLACE was all about getting to the price point where we could make a profit.
The last two AGMs had a graph of:
x axis - price per Kwhour. y axis - production cost,
with three lines on it for 1, 2 and 4 years longevity. To me, the progress on price on this graph was what PLACE was all about and needed to achieve.

This year it was absent, so I asked. We are now around predicted 3 years on longevity for both electrodes and in the stack. Production cost is 'about the same'. I remember the pointed waving around 1/3 to 1/2 way down the graph last year.
So, a vague response and probably not something you want customers or competitor to be clear on. But, the answer was that we are now very healthily below the 10c/ Kwh mark. To me this conveys that PLACE has been met and we are now at a price where we can make a profit in some markets. PLACE is no longer an issue because it is done.

3) Jim Gibson stayed on after people had left and kindly talked us through more of the updates in the technology. We feel as if it has been a long wait, but the advances made have been massive and very beautifully done. They were all necessary to get us to where we have a product we hopefully can sell at a profit. Massive thanks and congratulations to the tech team for all this work.

Could these have been some of the subscription shares for sale at 3p and to be admitted to trading 18th April, so yesterday.
I hope they managed to shift more than 100K worth if that is what they are.
Do they not normally RNS when subscription shares are admitted to trading.

Should we be getting RNS on the new shares admitted to trading today.

Yes, but the biggest issue for me is that the sp is currently 3p.
We need to raise 4million to remain an audit going concern.
To do that at 3p a share would have been enormous dilution.
To do it this way at what we hope will be a higher share price later may cut down enormously on the dilution to us.

Cost of about 20% for 3.5 years is not too bad, but if the last finance is taken at 50p or £1 per share, 20% cost is little to pay for the trade off in dilution compared to a placing for the full value at 3p now.

Obviously would have been far better if we could have raised funds with low dilution if the share price had not been at rock bottom (correlated with the no news policy).

However, given where we are this is as good as it could be in my opinion.

The way I understand this funding is that we can draw down up to £4million in chunks.
This issues loan notes versus a share price of 3p, or whatever the price is at the time we take the money, so could be higher than 3p.

The day of reckoning is 3.5 years away, when we either hand over the shares (up to 133 million of them), or can pay off the loan earlier.

This seems to mean that if the share price got to say 50p, we could raise £4million by issuing 8 million shares and pay the whole loan off (ignoring the 5% supplement). This instead of the 133 million shares we would need to have sold at the moment to raise £4million (if that was even possible).

This strikes me as great for shareholders, potentially avoiding massive dilution as long as the company makes a go of commercialisation within 3.5 years. I dont see this as 'death spiral finance'.

However, has anyone heard of Thalion. I can't find out who they are.
Where has this money actually come from?
Nothing on google or companies house search.

Ianous,

I may be very wrong about this, but suspect.
When we submit accounts we need to be a 'going concern' with funds available for the next year of trading.
When that is in place they can pass through the auditor meeting 'going concern' criteria.
This form of funding was only in place on 11th April.
So perhaps there was not time to return them to the auditor before posting them.

I do wonder if the date coincidence with Brexit decisions meant they had to use plan B.
Or perhaps they were hoping for some other news to use a plan A.
I would be shocked if taking funding this close to the wire was the ultimate business plan.

But I am very relieved we got this.

LOL

Just wondering if it is a coincidence that this form of funding was secured on the day the Brexit deadline got kicked down the road again.
Is it possible that a DeNora/brexit dependent solution was Plan A, and that the Brexit decision meant they needed to use Plan B.
Perhaps we would have got results earlier if something had been resolved by the initial 29 March deadline.

Finally got results!
We clearly needed a fundraise to declare results with sufficient funds for a year of trading and to be a 'going concern'.
Raising £4million at 3p would have seen devastating dilution.
Am so relieved they have actually managed to raise this money at the current share price.
Todays RNS could have said they were not able to raise funds. This one is fantastic.

Also, very clever that each tranche of funding is at the prevailing share price.
Just hope this gets higher as we need the cash. Also, seems the debt can be paid for if it becomes possible to fundraise at a better share price between now and 3+ years forward.

News on tech progress also seems very positive.

Well done AFC for pulling this off. Wondering if this coming at the 11th hour was plan B because plan A had not worked out. I hope there was a plan A!!

Overall very pleased we are still trading and without dilution to oblivion.
And hoping 2019 will be the year we see contracts and installations.

I still see the 'no news' policy as having done damage. Can we stop that now please John Rennocks?

Of course it is important, but it was really about meeting targets on a number of factors to get to a product with a commercial price point.
Doing better on one factor would be able to make up for not meeting the target on another, so just the individual targets were not set in stone.

So, getting to 3 years longevity instead of 4 but reducing the production cost could still add up to meet the commercial price point.

Southernhay, yes that is right.
Cant remember who, but one of the AFC people who know said at ? last AGM that getting longevity to 4 years becomes diminishing returns in terms of cost and price per unit becomes the stronger target.
Indeed, getting to the best price for sales/profit is a trade off between these factors.

So probably there is no definitive 'PLACE' to announce, but we could be better informed on factors like longevity.
Perhaps though if they are testing lots of groups, a cheaper one lasting less long might be the better option.

This is all true about PLACE.
Ultimately it is about making it all as good as it can be to get to the lowest cost and most competitive/saleable product.
So it need not be a fixed target. If we dont meet it all there may just be fewer sales/less profit.

I can see why it is not easily a fixed target they could announce.
Also, they may really not want competitors/customers to be aware of build costs/profit margins.

Today I am invited to vote prior to the AGM with deadline of 24/4.
I am asked if I approve the results to 31/10/18.
With Easter in the way that now gives 9 working days to return a vote but no results yet available.

Nice to see yet another iteration of a better product, but would be nice to know whether the company has funds to remain a going concern by the end of this month.

Come on John Rennocks. I thought you were there to manage govenance.

I may be wrong, but I understand that when submitting accounts the company needs to declare they are a going concern and have funds for the year ahead of trading.
At the moment we don't know where this funding is coming from.

I hope there is a plan. I understand there is a point where a company would be 'technically insolvent' and has an obligation to cease trading. I dont know exactly when that kicks in, they may be able to say 'we have confidence' again. Given the change in CFO which we have also not been officially told about, I think information about funding is alarmingly overdue.

Lets hope we get this and results very soon.
Is anyone better informed than I am about these obligations.

Good find!

This may be the Graeme Lewis
https://www.linkedin.com/in/graeme-lewis-3abab93/

I hope Richard Dunkley sorted out the funding before he left.

It would be better if the RNS had been news of a massive contract, but this is great progress.

To get to massive contracts there is a price, competitive with local alternatives and markets, people will pay for power. However innovative our product, reaching that price point is key to large sales. Our price point depends in part on how long the electrodes last and how much they each cost.

At the last AGM there was talk of the electrodes lasting around two years. However, we were shown videos of gas flow over the plates and how this had improved. We were then shown longevity results. Was not clear whether they had not tested for long enough, but may have shown that electrodes lasted half as long in the stack as in the lab. It looked like the flow over the plate was a weak part of the design and could be improved. It now looks as if that has been actioned.

Other fuel cell/battery companies are putting product out to market at a huge loss and tapping shareholders for cash on the promise that mass manufacturing will see the price lower and a profit. Those companies will probably never really be commercial and will fold leaving shareholders with huge losses. AFC are not doing that, they are getting to a product which can sell and make profit at the local energy market price point.

Yes, it is painfully slow and we could have hoped for more exciting news on advances, but I would not invest in one of the companies selling product at a huge loss. Lets hope AFC get there soon.