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Good to see a joint broker RNS....almost certainly being brought on to support the fund raise and often an indication this is imminent.

Absolutely I’m sure they had private funds offered...Mellon alone clearly had a few million he was wanting to put in!

However I’m firmly of the belief that there will be ample funds out there to also support a listed vehicle and the consultation with shareholders reminded the board that it maybe had a duty to look harder than just the cheque book being proffered by the guy across the table!

The proliferation of ESG and a flood of hot money into the cellular space (there has been quite a few links to articles showing how the value of raises has went up significantly this year alone) suggests there should be no shortage of doors to knock on to find II’s prepared to allocate capital into ANIC.

But I agree, until we see the shape and size of the fund raise it’s hard to get too excited here, despite the clear and obvious game changing potential of the underlying investment strategy.

Can’t see Mellon wanting to loan us multi millions for nothing for very long...you have to believe that as part of the ‘go private’ fiasco they got enough encouragement from existing and new II’s that a fund raise would be well supported.

We’ve added a couple of very nice investments since so I’m very hopeful to see a substantial fund raise announced in short order.

The only thing making it a touch tricky is the SP trading at a discount to NAV, but to some degree the BoD caused that scenario in the first place so you would hope they have the gumption to work around that.

In someways it’s a small paradox as getting a substantial fund raise away would go a long way to restoring confidence which in turn would likely see the SP move back to a premium.

Coca Cola are quite possibly already a customer of our partner...that’s the beauty of this deal. Let the established player develop and manufacture then sell to the producers. Significantly quicker and cheaper route to market than dealing with the producers themselves.

It’s still jam tomorrow news...although we have now agreed who’s going to make the jam...or at the very least the sweetener for the jam! ;-)

This is a classic example where the potential is huge but the visibility is still very low and the immediate payments are low enough to not bother even a £50m micro cap value.

But that said for the patient investor this move is exactly what was required. Effectively zero ongoing costs and a mega cap player brought on board to deliver the product to its existing mega cap food partners. What’s not to like there.

We may say a rerate as the RNS is digested but the big moves will start to come as and when we get the news that our partner has signed up a product producer and the stuff will be hitting the shelves.

Blue sky thinking sees this in thousands of products on a global scale with a critical step to that happening taken today....even a small piece of that coming true will bring plentiful enough rewards eventually.

I take it to mean that the royalty received by Opti will be higher for any products produced by the 11 companies that we have already had discussions with compared to the royalty that would be received from any company our new partner engages and develops products with.

This is great news today...although no numbers we have have effectively found a partner that will shoulder all development and marketing costs and enable Sweet to be commercialised as no cost to Opti.

If you believe in the product then global royalty rights will be more than enough in the long run to make up for the ‘modest’ fee today!

Great article, thanks for the link.

Very exciting times just around the corner!

Market Makers? IMB is traded via SETS so no Market Maker involvement. Same for Shell, GSK etc.

100% agree.

Of all the investment opportunities out there this was the one I wanted us to get a part of.

The tech looks superb, well advanced and this funding is to build the first commercial plant...so not exactly a blind punt on some promising story.

Absolutely pumped at this investment as I’m convinced Solar Foods will prove to be a real groundbreaking company in this field.

I quite like some of the investments here and the quarterly updates are always upbeat. But the main thing stopping me taking a position is the huge (relatively) operating costs of running this company. Last accounts show c£0.5m in costs and c£0.35m in salaries alone. For an investment company that has net assets of under £5m I'm left wondering if any gain on investment is simply going into the directors pockets as salary rather than to the PI.

I may well have missed something re the above so happy to be corrected but as it stands I see annual costs running at about 20% of assets which seems rather excessive to put it mildly.

Would be great to hear how the existing holders here justified this prior to buying...

Already in design with financials to come Q1 2021 but they key thing is the plan for INITIAL capacity is equal to current annual output!
This has been brewing for a while so the formalisation of an official JV is great news and puts another marker in the roadmap of ever increasing volumes.
We now have Hull looking to complete next year, then it’s ramp up alongside 4th reactor and now US plans starting to to firm up....next stop Petronas and once the Covid hangover clears AXS will be looking very well placed indeed.

Maybe we should just go for the single trade a day approach...and let the SP go up each time!!

They say good things come to those that wait....well we have all been waiting a rather looong time.....

Ahh always the way isn’t it! But £2 is a good price in a historical context.

Personally I’m here for the long run, happy to accept the div and accumulate over a few years. It’s a company that seems to have a very solid long term investment plan so while doubtful it will ever blow the lights out it should provide a pretty good annualised IRR for me over the piece.

As an aside another random trading day going on again....someone somewhere must be accumulating surely?

You mean treading in the right direction surely ;-)

Absolutely agree though...there seems to be a bit of momentum building in the business now, which will hopefully translate to the SP sooner rather than later!

Not read the details but performance fees are normally assessed annually. The high water marks are just that...the NAV high is considered from it’s highest point ever when assessing if a fee is due. So basically if the NAV goes from £1 to £2 in year one then a performance fee is due. If it then goes back to £1 in year 2 no fee is due. If it goes back to £2 in year three then there is still no fee due as the performance fee for year 3 is measured against the highest NAV ever which was £2 in Year 1 not against the starting NAV in Year 3 which was £1...essentially the manager can’t get paid a fee twice for the same performance.

Performance fees are a bit of a con but are not uncommon in rather more esoteric investments. Basically it’s the price we pay for access to a rather less popular corner of the market. I certainly would not be buying any global equity fund that had performance fees for example but here, well not much we can do apart from hope the fee is as big as possible each year as that means we are all doing well out of the managers success...albeit after the cats have had their cream.

Agree with the sentiment here today...a real about turn from the board.

Particularly with regards to the promise not to try the same trick again for at least 3 years, the floor on fund raising at 6p minimum and of course ensuring PI’s get a chance to partake in future raises.

On the ‘dilution’ front it’s got to be remembered that any monies raised will be applied directly to an underlying investment. So much more akin to infrastructure or property funds who issue to raise monies to buy more assets (but obv. With a slightly higher risk profile!). You really don’t see investors there moaning about ‘dilution’ as it’s not really diluting anything it’s increasing the NAV and building scale or meaningful stakes with a direct line to improved and bigger returns.

Not a perfect analogy I know but fund raising to deepen the balance sheet is not typical keep the lights on AIM dilution. So any future raises here should be welcomed rather than decried as ‘dilution’.

I’m probably more excited now than before this mini debacle as reading between the lines the board clearly see huge potential in this and if they can get even more funds to get in at the ground floor in this industry then we could all benefit in a huge way over the medium to long term.

Yeah it had a 5 for 1 in 2014.

Results today are excellent and show the real potential this company has. CV19 clearly will have an impact this year but looking forward to Hull, 4th reactor and the potential two JV’s you have to feel confident in the medium term this will come very good indeed!

75% threshold even!

And what of people that hold these in SIPP?

Most mainstream providers won’t let you hold private companies in a SIPP so those holders will have no option but to accept of the 85% threshold is reached.

A totally sly move by the board a mere 12 months or so after they pivoted their investment direction and raised many millions to support it.

Disgrace is the right word....what a shocker of a move. They even write the RNS like they are trying to do PI’s a favour!