Member Info for RWT2

I'm almost certain there is something smoldering in the background and this is not simply people getting bored at lack of announcement. To draw a slightly obscure parallel, at the end of July I invested in the IPO of Hydrogen One Capital Growth (HGEN) who aim to invest in a range of Hydrogen projects - so a speculative industry which may take many many years to prove its worth and is heavily reliant on the climate change brigade. This IPO was massively under subscribed and in the month since, like ANIC there has been radio silence. However, this is up 14% in the past month in spite of lack of news and in spite of any other economic, growth or tapering concerns which may be influencing ANIC price. It's therefore hard to believe that HGEN investors (who will probably be a similar bunch to ANIC investors) are generally much more optimistic than ANIC investors and it seems more likely there is a more specific underlying reason for the fall - I just don't know what it is.

It just seems an odd mentality to sell out now and wonder if there was anything more. The SP has hovered around the same value for several weeks. There has been no news for several weeks, but the cash is there when the opportunity arises. Why sell now when you have a warchest of cash to spend to get in at the early stage development of an industry which will probably take a decade or so to come good. Is current economic noise not just irrelevant to that? Is there any underlying news that we just aren't aware of (which is probably often the case with AIM stocks). Anyway, I'll hold and see what happens longer term.

....but in any case the current investment portfolio is not proving especially inspiring to the wider investment community.

The SP movement of AIM stocks is somewhat baffling, so not sure if there is anything to read into the current downward trend. Why would investors get bored this week and decide to sell off? Have I missed some critical news?

xviolet - you didn't think the newsletter was that bad?! I'll break it down for those who haven't read it:

1 - We raised lots of money. Yes, we know and you've not invested any of it.
2 - We ate some cultured chicken and it tasted of chicken. Not news.
3 - Lots of money was raised globally within this sector. Here's some examples of companies who seem to be doing well and who we haven't invested in.
4 - List of companies we actually are invested in - they have raised money too. Yes, we've known that for a while. Not news.
5 - One of the companies has rebranded to a forward thinking Latin name. Latin FFS! This is cutting edge forward thinking?? They were probably guided by the same management consultants who told Standard Life Aberdeen to just go with ABDN. Or whoever told Royal Mail to rebrand as Consignia. Smoke/mirrors or Emperor's New Clothes i.e. there's nothing there and it's not news.
6 - Link to LifeCycleAnalysis document which shows that plant based substitutes (which we aren't invested in) have far lower carbon footprint.
7 - Link to some press articles.
8 - Plug for Jim Mellon's book

That aside, the company half year update was truly informative and will inspire investors to get on board.

I'm sure I had read somewhere that they expected the cash to be fully invested in 9 months. That being the case and given that I don't think it would have taken a rocket scientist to foresee that they would easily raise the desired cash level, I do find it a little disappointing that there were not at least 1 or 2 investments which were "oven ready". Ah well. My expectation is there is going to be very long periods of watching paint dry with this stock followed by sporadic significant moves (not necessarily upwards) driven by whatever news gets released re. investments, IPO's or regulatory changes. The most recent newsletter was just drivel. I don't care if staff went on a jolly to Israel and tasted chicken that tasted of chicken. Given the hype, anything less would have been awful. Still, I am happy to wait patiently for a few years.

Moljen - I have been adding over the past several months, just drip feeding into my Lifetime ISA which on reflection was a bit of a mistake as I can't access this till I'm 60, so if this does make it big (and that is a humungous "if"), then I can't take any advantage of it for the next 20 years. Then again, it may well be that sort of timescale before it becomes mainstream (or dies off altogether). Re. the change to vegetarianism, I'm not sure what the figures are but I suspect it's not as big as you think and very much depends on where you live and what socio-economic category your peers fit in to. My personal experience from my circle of peers is that a very small % of them have switched to vegan/vegetarianism and this is pretty much exclusively for perceived health reasons, not for animal welfare or climate change etc. reasons, so for that group they would absolutely not be interested in cultured meat. For this to be successful it needs to demonstrate that it's pretty much the same or better taste/texture etc. as conventional meat and cheaper than the real equivalent. If on top of that it reduces emissions, then that would be the marketing trump card. They will definitely need something to counteract the frankenstein food criticism.

...but there is no particular news to support this point in time as being a particularly good or bad time to invest compared to last month, next month or next year given that it is likely to be many years before we know if this technology is going to have a significant impact on the (very competitive, low margin) food industry. Yes, there is a plausible climate change narrative to support this, but it's just a plausible narrative which may well be wrong. E.g. news article on BBC website today about a US lab which has achieved a landmark on the development of nuclear fusion technology. If in a decade we can have limitless, cheap clean energy then who cares about cow farts? The counterargument will be that it is not just the climate change agenda driving this and that is correct, but over at least the past decade, climate change has been the big ticket, headline grabbing cause celebre. Animal welfare and feeding the planet etc. are simply not in the same league.

.....except in Spain where the consumer affairs minister had to back track and grovel for suggesting Spaniards eat less meat:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57766345

Do not underestimate the powerful lobby groups who want to maintain the status quo. You don't give up a multi-trillion dollar industry without a fight. Spanish experience being case in point.

I don't think I have ever seen anyone pick a timescale of 8 years to evaluate their investment case. That makes me chuckle on a late work night, but perhaps I am easily amused!

For those declaring their holdings, you need to provide a bit of context. If this makes 10% or 30% of your total wealth then that is only relevant if this is a meaningful % of what you would need to rely on for retirement. If you can comfortably live off the remaining 70% or 90% or whatever, then the ANIC holding is irrelevant. For what it's worth and without knowing your circumstances, I like the barbell approach advocated by Nasim Taleb in the Black Swan. So have about 85% of your holdings in ultra-safe assets (UK gilts, US T-Bills etc.) with the remaining 15% or so invested in the most speculative outlandish assets you can think of, but you need to have lots of small holdings in these different assets - if 1 or 2 came good they could rise 100 fold, so a 0.5% holding could become 50% of your wealth, but you accept most will fail. Have a look at Bill Gates company website for Breakthrough Energy for some inspiration for speculative technologies of the future.

Kuentai - did you read what your wrote "that's just a few multiplications of value"?? Let's be clear, it's a 100x multiplication of value. According to a book by Christopher Mayer, that was achieved by just 365 US listed companies between 1962 and 2014. There are a lot of US listed companies covered by that period! That's proverbial needle in haystack territory. The odds of BluNalu achieving that are minute. You can argue until you are blue(nalu!) in the face, that "this time it's different" because it's really new and novel technology but that isn't a unique argument compared to the period 1962 to 2014 when their were countless new and exciting technologies developed.

Kuentai - Various parties on here don't seem to think BluNalu will IPO any time soon. Not sure why they think that. I for one think they will list ASAP for the simple reason that they can get rich now. Why delay for 5-10 years and risk missing out because regulation or something else changes which drives a hole through your speculative business model. However, I don't think their share price will be quite as stratospheric as people think. Various posters on here have compared BluNalu to Oatly, but you have to remember Oatly took literally decades to get to the point where they are now and so they are simply not comparable companies. BluNalu will do well enough to make their own staff rich, but not sure about it making a meaningful difference to ANIC share price for many, many years.

Hi - I'm posting on the SMT page as this may be vaguely related. I've been having a look at the Breakthrough Energy website (this is the collection of investors led by Bill Gates with the aim of driving to net zero emissions) and there are several interesting speculative technologies showcased on this site. I'm invested in SMT and there appears to be some overlap with the types of speculative tech Breakthrough Energy are funding, and I'm also invested in Agronomics (ANIC) for exposure to cultured meat. However, I am curious if anyone has any ideas to gain exposure preferably via an investment trust rather than individual companies to some of the other technologies of the future as a complimentary holding to SMT and ANIC. I'm particularly interested in the prospect of room temperature superconductors and High Voltage DC technology. I don't think there is any exposure to this via SMT. Any thoughts? Like I said, it would be better for me to gain exposure via an IT as I am not brave or rich enough to sink a lot of money into an individual stock which has a very high chance of failure.

Chris - Being 1st to market doesn't guarantee much. Just Google "AltaVista". Don't bother AltaVista-ing "Google"!

Hi - I don't think I did miss that. The key phrase in your quote is that Cell-Ag is the best for all "meat" production. Veg isn't meat. Figure 1 in the report shows 2 bars for Cell-Ag. One with sustainable energy and one with conventional energy. Meatless and tofu are also shown - both lower than the sustainable energy Cell-Ag score.

Review makes reference to a Life Cycle Analysis Report which includes the following statement:

"Compared to all meat products, both cultivated and conventional, the environmental single score and the carbon footprint of vegetable protein products is low. With a carbon footprint which is 2.5 to 4 times lower, and an environmental single score of over 3 and 7 times lower, cultivated meat is unlikely to be able to compete with vegetable protein products on these two indicators."

I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed with that. It is fair to work on the assumption that the "meat-likeness" of veg based alternatives will improve at least as quickly as Cell-ag meat and so if they are both comparable in price by say 2030 and the overriding societal concern remains climate change then this implies veg based proteins have a significant trump card. Why would you buy cultured meat if a similar tasting, similar looking, similarly priced but lower environmental impact product was available? Answers on a postcard!

Does anyone else have a more or less permanently raised eyebrow that there is no RNS advising that an investor or investors have crossed a reportable threshold following the recent fundraise? I know this has been discussed before, but I'm kind of getting to think that the passage of time does imply that no-one has reached the threshold. Does this mean there are lots of investors who decided to dip their toe in the water but they are not sufficiently convinced by the investment case to make a bold commitment with a larger holding?

Interesting read but no-one is commenting on the sheer inconsistency in expectations.

In this interview, Mellon reckons 50% of meat will be plant based or cell-ag within a decade. The AT Kearney report which gets referenced on Agronomics own website puts that at 28% (with cell-ag being 10%, plant based 18% by 2030) and the McKinsey report someone linked a week or 2 ago indicated that cell-ag might get 0.5% market share in their high growth forecast by 2030.

Such enormous discrepancy in predictions should of course be expected because it is all more or less fairy-tales. Anyone that tells you they can predict cell-ag market share in 10 years time is lying to you. They can't. No-one can. Not even Jim Mellon.

Still worth a punt though as it has plausible potential, but I would put lots of eggs in lots of different plausibly exciting prospects. I don't believe for an instant that this technology is a certainty and the fact that so called experts presented with the same data come up with radically different predictions kind of suggests that no-one really knows what they are talking about.

On that note, enjoy the weekend!!

Thanks. It's more out of curiosity but I do also think that in spite of II's not being hugely popular, having them as major shareholders on board probably gives the whole sector more credibility and is therefore probably a good thing. I wasn't invested in this when there was talk of ANIC going private, but I also wonder of having II's on board also makes this less likely (I know there was a commitment to stay listed for at least 3 years, but I don't have a high degree of trust in the scruples of most AIM stocks management).

I think this was asked before but I don't recall seeing a response. Does anyone know off the top of their head what the rules are for the timescale allowed before notifications of significant shareholdings must be announced? I would have thought with recent placings, someone or other would have crossed a relevant threshold but I haven't seen anything about who that would be.