Member Info for RWT2

Re. mockery of eating insects, it looks like it forms part of the diet of about 2 billion people (according to the UN in 2013):

http://www.fao.org/3/i3253e/i3253e.pdf

Turns out it's not that weird after all. I'm not saying this will become mainstream in the ever so squeamish and sensitive west, but if you can process some peas to death and add some fake blood and hey presto, this becomes a burger, it would be foolish to rule out a similar possibility for mealworm etc. (acknowledging that I have no idea if that's an insect).

HectorB - I did take note of the presentation of the projected market share by 2040. Then I laughed, comfortable in the knowledge that this was a made up number and you could equally have picked 1% or 99%. No matter who the expert(s) was who arrived at this number, given this is a prediction of market share 20 years in the future for a novel technology whose market share is currently more or less zero, you can safely assume it's just a speculative guess. No actual math was used to arrive at that number.

Comparing BluNalu market valuation to Oatly is not credible as I have previously highlighted. Oatly are a 25 year old company who sell products in 20 countries from 90000 outlets. BluNalu currently sell nothing in no countries, from no outlets. That's actual numbers, using actual math. Now I am not saying BluNalu couldn't get to that point. They could, but incredibly unlikely in the time frame you clearly have in mind.

....and another thing! It's absolutely not guaranteed that CellAg will go mainstream. There were posts last week which flagged up that one of the central claims that CellAg will reduce greenhouse gas emissions is up for debate. No matter the other advantages of CellAg, climate change is the single biggest reason people are talking about this. Take that away and your coat is on a very shoogily peg as we say in this neck of the woods. So what about the argument that CellAg can feed the growing population? See article below (this may have been posted previously). There are loads of other competing products or solutions, any one of which may usurp CellAg (but I hope not!!!):

http://fafdl.org/blog/2019/08/01/why-cultured-meat-will-not-feed-the-world-but-mycoprotein-just-might/

Something else that no-one mentions much is the possibility of insect based protein. It's cheap and plentiful and I don't think many tears would be shed by the culling of insects. Why would insect protein be more objectionable than "frankenstein food"? You can't argue that "it just will". That's blind faith. Given the timescales we are talking about for this to come good, there can be absolutely no certainties.

I've gone into this with my eyes open. It's speculative and absolutely not guaranteed to succeed. It's not just about stock selection. The whole concept may fall flat on its face.

RyeSloan - now having us agree about something is just not cricket! So here's a couple of observations. I don't think BluNalu will add much value in the timescale you think. There is wide speculation that they will IPO n the next 12 months or so, and it is readily available information that ANIC have about a 5% holding in BluNalu, so on the basis that ANIC would be the easiest way of gaining pre-IPO exposure to BluNalu, I think the approximate BluNalu IPO valuation must already be accounted for in the ANIC share price and one would assume that BluNalu will be priced on the basis of speculative future profits. So all in, that makes me think that what you currently see in the ANIC price is all there is for the next few years until we establish if there is indeed any proof in the pudding.

I think it is nigh on impossible to apply any sensible valuation metrics to this stock. The best you can do is say that there is a small but not negligible chance that this stock will do spectacularly well and that ultimately this could become a multi-billion pound investment trust (though as previous poster noted, price will all depend on number of shares in issue). However, on the flip side, about 70% of startups fail within 10 years and that doesn't differentiate between sectors - I think the failure rate of biotech companies (if this is what these are?) is higher. The whole concept of cultured meat may simply not take off. But you've got to be in it to win it and as long as you accept that this is highly speculative, you can wait about 10 years for any meaningful returns and you can stomach the possibility of losing the lot , then it's worth taking a punt.

So it looks like Oatly are just like any other large corporation using their new found power and fame to kick the little guy in the proverbials:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57425162

I had hoped that a better corporate image would go hand in hand with the environmental image they and others like them are trying to portray. We want these brands to be different and better.

Lots of debate on an otherwise slow news day! Interesting though. Who knows, as Delboy used to say "this time next year rodders....."

Pask - thanks for posting. I think you have actually demonstrated that my appeal to authority actually is important! It's way too easy to dismiss a Wichita cattleman, but having a researcher from one of the worlds most prestigious universities conclude that "The scale of cattle production required for the very high levels of beef consumption modeled here would result in significant global warming, but it is not yet clear whether cultured meat production would provide a more climatically sustainable alternative" should at least raise an eyebrow for anyone invested in this. I appreciate that CellAg has more going for it than the simple environmental aspect and I do accept there is animal welfare issues etc. However, I think the overriding cultural message at present relates to climate change. If CellAg is not unequivocally better for climate change then the whole product story becomes more reliant on aspects that like it or lump it, the world cares less about. Then it will just be a drive to the bottom based on cost and I don't know which side would win. I think this all changes dramatically if the grid is completely (or almost completely) decarbonised.

Idg69 - lets not start criticizing each others ethical stances. That would be a slippery slope (e.g. do you take an equally tough stance on the arms industry or abortion etc.- please don't answer, like I said it's a slippery slope). We live in the luxurious west where we can afford to take choices based on an ethical. That is not the reality for most of the worlds population - they need to eat what is available to them and what they can afford. Also, I daresay you can debate with a cattleman, but are you qualified to debate the Oxford Uni PhD researcher who has concluded that CellAg emissions may outweight those of conventional farming. Don't just pick the easy target. I was very clear in my posts that the credibility of the claims was based on the Oxford uni research

But Claire, the cost doesn't make terribly much difference if the product doesn't reach the consumer in a state fit for human consumption. That'd probably be logistics 101.

The Oxford Uni PhD physics researcher who wrote the paper on which the article is based is called John Michael Lynch. You can contact him via the following link. So if you want to you can directly verify the claims made in the article.

https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/506860/overview

I don't hold a physics PhD. I'm guessing most posters on here don't either. Why are you not willing to accept that someone perhaps has scientific knowledge that you are I don't have and can therefore provide additional insight?

Hi Claire - I agree to an extent with what you are saying but this is a huge oversimplification. The world already comfortably produces enough food to feed a much larger global population, but a significant percentage of it gets wasted (in 2011, the UN estimate was about 1/3 of all food for human consumption gets discarded). That problem is not eliminated by lab grown meat. A significant problem relates to the infrastructure and logistics required to distribute perishable foods. Increased urbanisation perhaps makes that a little easier but I am not convinced it will make that much of a difference. I have read that theoretically you shouldn't need to refrigerate cultured meat as the bacteria present in a slaughtered animal is not present in cultured meat, but the expectation was that manufacturers will err on the safe side and refrigerate anyway - I think I'd agree with that. I agree with your point that this will come down to price. I can already buy premium products which are notionally more environmentally friendly but in many cases I simply choose not to. For example, in spite of its multi-billion dollar valuation I have never bothered with Oatly milk. it's available in my local supermarket, but I am happy with normal dairy milk and milk costs less. I think my attitude to this is the norm. Once the products cost the same (and arguably to shake off the "frankenstein food" label, they may need to sell at a discount) and once they have the same taste and texture, then there is a good chance this will take off. Many challenges along the way though.

I think you need to be wary of being too dismissive. The article is based on a paper from Oxford Uni Post Doctoral researcher from their Physics department. I for one would not claim to compete with their level of knowledge on GHG emissions and carbon sequestration and I suspect you can't either. We should not be too dismissive of facts just because they don't match our preferred narrative. However, the transition to lab grown meat becomes more carbon neutral/negative if the energy source is derived from renewables, so the success of lab grown meat goes hand in hand with decarbonisation of the grid i.e. we are reliant on many stars aligning. UK making good progress on this, but US less so.

Hi - It is an interesting product but I don't know how big a market this would turn out to be. Promoting this as better than formula milk for environmental reasons is all good and well, but I suspect part of the driver will be to promote it as being more or less equivalent to breastfeeding hence making it more attractive beyond just the environmental aspects. I would accept that it may be better than formula but it is categorically not the same thing as breastfeeding. To name but a few differences, actual breastfeeding passes on mothers antibodies, helps mother to child bonding, helps the development of the baby's facial structure, reduces mothers risk of breast and ovarian cancers and osteoporosis etc. Man-made breastmilk will not have these advantages so for those who don't wish to or can't breastfeed it will come down to cost, how much they care about the environmental sector and exactly what benefits of the man-made milk can be proven (noting that it is absolutely not the same as breastfeeding). It will capture some of the market, but possibly not that much. Breast milk donation is already a "thing". It will also be competing with that.

Desmond45 / JackieWeaver - I thought you had me on mute?!

Please explain in a well thought out, non-paranoid, logical manner how any comment I make on this board can have a material effect on the share price?

And as an aside, I have said on several occasions that I hope this share price multiplies many times over. I am also realistic to the very distinct possibility that it won't. Are you?

RyeSloan - do you not think it is disappointing if in this pioneering field of science/technology, they can't find anything worthwhile to invest an extra few million quid in to accelerate development?

TwoCents - i said they had failed to deliver shareholder value, not failed outright, but again, that's besides the point. In the case of ANIC they had the opportunity to get more money from PI's and I don't think the dilutive effect would have been a big deal. They chose not to take advantage of that. Now I don't pretend to know AIM or other company rules especially well so it's possible they were legally bound within some limits of what they could increase the offer by (they increased from £2M to £3M when there was £17M of applications). So I am asking why ANIC or probably any other company prefer II cash and are happy to knock back PI cash. I don't honestly know, but I am floating that PI's are more awkward to deal with and that II's are better at showcasing the business etc. which in turn is likely to make their access to future funding more straightforward. Maybe having a high % of PI's looks unprofessional or too speculative to the wider market. Don't know - just putting it out there.

TwoCents - It's easy to present II's as being the face of all things evil. I don't know anything about AFC but I assume you are talking about AFC Energy rather than Aberdeen Football Club. It's just possible it's a really cruddy company with really cruddy management who have destroyed shareholder value. Most companies fall into that bracket (and I accept this one might as well). I think the figure is something like the entirety of growth in US stocks since 1990 is accounted for by 1.5% of listed companies and globally the entirety of growth is from 1% of companies - so the remainder are doing what exactly? I used to do some work for an engineering technology company who are also now involved in Hydrogen. They shall remain nameless but they are still listed on AIM (under a different name from when I was involved with them). They were simply charlatans. When I did work with them they were big in turboexpander and turbocompressor technology, then it turned out their product was rubbish and that side of the business closed. They bought a heat exchanger company and a metal bashing company - they turned out to be rubbish too so they got binned for a fraction of the price they were purchased at. So they bought an air purification company and now they have something to do with Hydrogen. That's been a whistlestop tour of a typical engineering technology company and their aimless wanderings through various hair-brained schemes. All the time the leadership kept raising cash and kept destroying shareholder value. All the time the man at the helm has been the same and has not been held to account. Lets just call him "Big Phil" (as that's his name). But feel free to blame II's for the failure of AFC or any other listed company for that matter to deliver shareholder value. Most companies just aren't very good.

If the offer to private investors was so oversubscribed, why not just take the extra money rather than limit it to £3M? If the logic goes that every penny available for them to invest can be multiplied several times over, then why not have extra pennies? I don't think the dilution effect of an extra few million would make much difference? Is it because ANIC don't actually want a huge % of their shares held by private investors and they would rather large chunks were held by Institutional Investors (who probably behave and buy/sell in a more predictable and manageable level)?

PS - someone posted last week that they wouldn't want to be short on ANIC right now. Well.........looks like there is short term profit to be made with that strategy and I don't especially begrudge it.

OWLS, thanks for the feedback. I have a large chunk of my portfolio allocated to IShares World Momentum Factors Tracker ETF (IWFM) so am in agreement with the general momentum strategy. I think going for IWFM is less work than your suggestion but very possibly not as successful. It's almost tripled in price since 2014 but not done so well of late. If you want less effort, then maybe this is one for you to look at. The only reason I queried whether you had a "dartboard approach" was selling after 12 months come what may. I know you said this is because you rely on investments for income, but if you have several investments and after 12 months some are still meeting your momentum rules but others aren't but then you sell it regardless i would have thought that negated a lot of your upfront effort. All said and done, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Wishing you well!