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EV?! What relevance is an EV for a company burning ~£2m a month and running out of cash? Oh and the lower the share price goes the higher risk it becomes as it gets harder to raise capital.

Their liquidity position needs to be clarified IMO, it's far from clear what their capital buffer is & in a time of the highest uncertainty the market needs to be reassured. On the verge of going sub £3 as I suspected would happen.

No need anymore? What about their portfolio companies? If POLX & DXRX have had to suspend their AIM listings you can all but guarantee GROW has been impacted. Beyond that this is a time to reassure shareholders of their liquidity, to not comment will do the opposite IMO. I expect this to fall back to sub £3 until they provide transparency, anyone buying right now is simply gambling.

Extremely bizarre that they haven’t had the decency to issue an RNS clarifying their exposure / current financial position exc. SVB. It doesn’t exactly provide reassurance…

It's a bit late for VC's to be urging calm when the horse has already bolted. The second SVB issued the 10k containing details of the $2.25b capital raise they were in the sh*t. Bank raising emergency equity is always going to cause panic, so the VC's are right to get out while they can.

Of further relevance to GROW is this para from Bloomberg;

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/svb-ceo-becker-asks-silicon-valley-bank-clients-to-stay-calm

"On the threads, many startup founders and executives worried how a collapse of SVB would affect Silicon Valley’s infrastructure. The bank could try to liquidate its stakes in portfolio companies, which would further drive down the already flailing valuations of many startups. Those lower valuations in turn would further weaken the balance sheets of other banks, hedge funds and crossover funds that hold the same assets."

Not good at all.

Interesting to see LOAM adding back quick significantly... chance for some to make their money back?

Agreed, nothing with a $33b market cap flies! I can't see it getting an IPO away with a valuation any higher than WISE currently commands (£6b), to even be comparable to the likes of Lloyds, Barclays & Natwest with the questionable reputation that Revolut has is pretty obscene.

Notable that the top 23 shareholders disclosed on the investor site owned ~87% of shares in issue at 31/12 (yes, 2 of these are nominee accounts in EQI + HL, which owned 4.8% of shares on behalf of PI's). So just 13% / 5.5m shares to play with - nothing at all.

It's also worth noting that Tim Powell, the newly appointed CFO, spent 17 years as CFO of London Stock Exchange and led the $27b refinitiv acquisition. With that background I suspect we'll see a move to main market in the medium term which would allow a FTSE listing. At the current market cap we would sit at number 284 in the FTSE 350, that would really open up the share to new investors IMO.

Lots to be excited about here - will sit tight for next weeks results now.

You think you smell a scam but are invested in PREM, seriously?! Just wait until it turns out your pilot plant doesn’t work as planned… Oh and cut out the racism regarding Ghana.

The market is certainly being cautious given the share price is trading nearly 10% below where it closed on the day of their October trading update (£20.20) !

They will absolutely reinvest some of the interest income into the ABS division to accelerate growth & profit. We don't know how much but hopefully next weeks results will provide a bit more detail. One thing is for sure though, having multiple options that will deliver an ROI on the new income stream makes it substantially more valuable than a business receiving a one off cash boost and having nothing to do with it except return it to shareholders.

Look forward to getting some more clarity in a few days.

If UK rates are forced higher by the FED raising to 6%+ levels then the benefit to ALPH could be really substantial. FWIW I think the BOE have little choice given the impact on exchange rates if they don't (importing inflation), plus the housing market has been more resilient than first thought.

In this scenario I struggle think of a better hedge than ALPH; it actively benefits from higher rates, thrives on helping clients manage against volatile FX moves (GBP - USD has moved down ~2% overnight) and also benefits from a resilient global economy. If we get a period of 2-3 years of higher than target rate inflation, high interest rates & volatile FX then ALPH could well grow into a £3-5b market cap IMO.

Keywords is an interesting comparison actually, a £2.3b market cap with £112m pre tax profit forecast in 2022. As per Liberum's Jan forecasts, ALPH is pencilled in to report £70.9m PBT in 2023, but that was based on just £24m interest income (low balled even based on Q4 average run rate). If BOE rates move higher still, I wouldn't discount us getting close to £100m in PBT, which would require ~£4.5m in monthly interest income.

With that level of FCF and a clear history of executing on growth, I don't see how this could trade under £1.5b cap / £35 a share.

They are a million miles from fantastic…

Suspect we'll see shares back at £6 before results are announced on April 3rd, a mere 19 trading days away. Crazy that it's trading flat vs the price 2 days before the 27/02 trading update which upgraded 2023 and flagged the business was trading ahead of these figures after the first 2 months... without the illiquid drop on the Friday this would already be sitting at £6+

The fact is the AIM post IPO market was nuts in 2021. This went public in June 21 at 120p a share, it was exceptionally illiquid and PI's were flush which drove the price up to a high of 295p by November on essentially no news to speak of. In that context the 138p raise last July was still at a 50% discount to ATH's, but it had held up well through the carnage of Q2 and appeared to have an exciting future. The placing was one of the most surprising of 2022, Vic must have sold the ConMet deal to perfection to entice £23m of II investment at a time when the capital markets were all but closed.

Unfortunately, things started to unravel within 3 months with the change in strategy away from near term low volume sales to larger opportunities announced in October followed by one of the original founders selling aggressively at 70p. Today's update and huge downgrade of expectations continues the trend of massively under delivering against promises & I agree with Choppy that they've now lost all credibility. No institutional investor is going to throw good money after bad, so their options will be limited IMO. I'd say this is a good candidate for a Riverfort CLN special or some other form of highly destructive death spiral financing to keep the directors salaries rolling in for a bit longer.

It may turn out differently, however in the current market I'd say the odds of a successful investment from current levels are less than 1%.

"Its fallen a long long way. £11m cash in bank and self sufficient so no need for external funds"

You need to think beyond what the company is telling you, they've burned a huge amount of cash & continually missed over ambitious revenue targets, why would they suddenly be able to turn this EBITDA / cash generative in a few months? If it was that easy why not do that from the start & then add on the more ambitious targets?

The previous 2023 revenue forecast was £8.5m, this has now been reduced to just £5m. 2024's previous forecast was for £32m, which has now been cut to £10m (assuming they hit the 100% growth target).

Frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would believe anything these guys say at this point. They appear to be making it up as they go along...

In terms of re-rate potential, this looks like the next TXP / I3E / ZPHR? Certainly looks cheap considering steadily growing production & management execution...

"The assets of the company are now close to 6 x higher thanks mainly to the addition of £468m intangible assets."

And intangible assets are relevant why??? Gross profit is what matters if you are looking to acquire this business, historic intangibles are of almost zero relevance to future value IMO.

In 2018 they had a market cap of ~£800m with $52m net cash, so an EV of ~£760m. Gross profit came in at $63.6m, so it traded at ~14x gross profit.

Today they have a market cap of £500m with $60m net debt, so an EV of £550m. In the last results to June 22 gross profit came in at $142m, so it's now trading at ~4.5x gross profit.

Essentially, any competitor acquiring CRW could strip out most of the operating expenses and vastly increase FCF. At the present valuation a bid is a real prospect IMO.

@semi interested, that figure was from the admission document;

https://data.fca.org.uk/artefacts/NSM/Portal/NI-000025843/NI-000025843.pdf

All other public communications from the company can be found on the FCA national storage mechanism; https://data.fca.org.uk/#/nsm/nationalstoragemechanism

Look forward to the results as always, it's truly hilarious to read between the lines of a company like this.

The most impressive thing here is how they've massively outperformed forecasts released at the IPO via organic & inorganic growth, without taking on a penny of debt.

Their first finncap initiation note from July 2020 forecast 2022 EPS of 18.9p and closing net cash of £25.9m. In the end 2022 EPS will hit ~29.8p and net cash will be >£20m. This is after paying $14m initial consideration for iOlap and £4.3m for Retearn + Coast. Dividends have also come in at more than double the initial expectations of 4.7p for 2022, highlighting just how well they've been doing.

Looking ahead 2024 EPS is currently forecast to be 36p, however if they continue growing in a similar vein to the last 2 years (and yesterday's update suggests they will) and can execute their planned strategy of 1-2 acquisitions per annum at around 20-30% of market cap, then I think 2024 EPS could easily exceed 50p.

Given this genuine growth potential, I think you can make a case for ELIX trading at double today's valuation, at £5.20 I think it's the best GARP stock on AIM / LSE by some distance.