Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
This line is from an RNS from July 2019- " the LIGHT system is designed to produce higher quality proton mini-beams (beams less than 1 mm in size)"
Then today they announce a breakthrough that the machine produces beams less than 1mm in size.
Honest?
In Jan 2021 it was "sometime in 2021". In Jun 2021 it was "H2 2021" and now it is "H2 2022".
First time I remember them mentioning "RF Conditioning". Ridiculous.
By the time they get this machine out (if they ever do) very few will want it. Radiotherapy has improved so much recently and costs in the tens of thousands for the machine. The AVO machine will be a niche product in a rapidly shrinking market.
Still one of my favourite vids. Michael Sinclair in 2013 talking about a machine that produces at 250 MeV (not the 230 MeV mentioned today) ready for production in 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHm4TV1hDCo
I am also interested in knowing the debt situation. Update not very clear.
Net debt at 31 Dec 2020: 120 mil.
Senior debt repayment 2021: 39 mil.
Net debt at 31 Dec 2021 given as 98 mil. Doesnñt make sense.
Unless
Start of Q3 debt was 106.2 mil. Q3 senior debt repayment 7.3 mil which then takes us to the 98.9 mil. But that would be the start of Q4. Not the end.
Unless the 11.8 mil Q4 debt repayment is reducing the 98.9 mil to 87.1 which would bring closer to the 39 mil annual debt repayment. Thoughts anyone?
Regarding the 433 million additional shares placed, my understanding is that the shares do not necessarily have to be traded. The placeholders who subscribed to the 433 million issuance do not necessarily have to trade publicly these new shares. So there is no reason I can see to expect such a large volume to hit the market.
The holders of the new issuance shares can, as far as I can fathom, quite happily hold on to these shares. Of course, they can realise immediate profit by selling but the liquidity is not there to absorb such a large number of shares. My opinion is therefore that placeholders would have subscribed with, on average, a longer term investment horizon.
Yep makes sense to me. Market cap goes up by amount of proceeds received for the share issuance. SP stays the same because of dilution.
Problem here of course is that as of now, the company is committed to issuing half its market cap as equity at a share price of 2.6p.
The main risk to Mint of a falling share price is liquidity. At 2p share price conversion they will be trying to offload 45 million shares. 1p price conversion they will be trying to get rid of 90 million shares. I need to read the terms again but seems with a 20% drop on conversion news, Mint would also have been taking a bath.
53 million Hemo shares traded today. The most since April 2020 when the Covid play started. This drop has momentum.
Will dilute by over 300 million shares when this is over. Company could have raised 10 million pounds issuing 100 million shares at 10p. Don´t think investors would have minded much. Now is giving the company away. Vlad needs to stay in the lab! Why he started a CLN programme before issuing bad news has me scratching my head.
Digittt, the maximum holding of shares that Mint can hold in Hemo is 30% at any one time. My understanding is that they can sell are many shares as they want. Therefore there is nothing to stop Mint converting a tranche of the CLN but then selling all the sharestaking them back down to 0% before they convert another tranche. In this way they can easily convert all their loan notes and never go over 30% share holding.
Sparticus, yes your post wasnt clear to me but thank you for explaining. I see other figures of $100 million a year for AMC and I read your post in that context. $25 million a year for a 19% stake makes more sense to me.
Sparticus, to me the income due to AMC on the 19% equity stake would be the profit due not the revenue. So the $120 per ton is revenue, what is the net profit distributable to share holders? Maybe $25 per ton? I dont know but this is the figure that should used. I stand corrected but i think the revenue figure should not be used to calculate direct value of Amur stake.
In reply to Digitt´s question as to the success rate of pre-clinical drugs, I have found this article from Reuters. Seems general success rate is 1 in 10 across the board, dropping to 1 in 20 for oncology. Better odds than I thought, but not an all eggs in one basket investment for me. As always dyor.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pharmaceuticals-success-idUSTRE71D2U920110214
On the face of it a pleasant enough RNS. However, as far as I am concerned none of this matters until they have a machine.
So, I read and re-read the part of the RNS that states "All the accelerating structures required for accelerating protons to their maximal energy have now been manufactured." and further along "all these components have been commissioned, tested as part of our verification and validation process and assembled at our assembly site at the Science and Technology Facilities Council ("STFC") Daresbury Laboratory, UK".
It is tempting to take from the above that they have a fully tested machine. Except they haven´t actually said they do. They also said they have all the components ready to take the proton to 230 MeV. Except not together and not at the same time.
All this talk from them about this being a proven technology and that the main technological risk was with the proton generator, which they now of course have, makes the issue so much more stark. Why are all the timescales for this machine so far behind. And please dont blame Covid.
It seems clear to me that they are as always being deliberately vague about this and not admitting that there is a problem with the machine. How they get anyone to invest is another question.
I respect the opinions of Goez. They are a genuinely independent research house as opposed to Hardman who cough up anything you pay them to. Strange this wasn't published as an RNS. But I still wonder why if the technology is so de-risked, the company hasn't communicated this.
CuriousInvester, there are absolutely many positives in the past few years. Easy funding on favourable terms, Good tech progress as well. But when the BOD isn't being truthful, they should be called out that's all.
I was wondering the same. Why would a company sign this type of agreement with an unproven tech that doesn't even produce the full speed beam. I suspect the hospital company will have an opt out after one year or so if the tech doesn't progress. So for them essentially this agreement is meaningless and non-binding. With some free PR. Also probably this is the hospital group's only real option to install proton therapy for space and finance reasons. So no time would be lost. Who knows what goes on but I know the AVO BOD go to great lengths to bump the share price up. Not such great lengths when being truthful with investors!
PM44, I'm not new to AIM or to investing for that matter. What you should bear in mind it seems is that riskier companies should be questioned more annd held more to account. You say you aren't too worried about reasonable delays. And neither would I be. However, I don't see anything reasonable about a 6 year delay and I would read with interest any explanation you have for this.
Curious, I am not shorting this stock. I am a shreholder and ask out of genuine interest as to whether to invest more. I have concerns that there is a genuine problem with this machine. I say this because I recently watched Michael Sinclair in his 2013 youtube video confindently declaring that the machine was by then a third of the way to completion and would be halfway to completion by 2014 and within 2 years hopefully ready for first patient treatment. Now this is all water under the bridge and things have changed since. But not the machine. It is the same machine and that same machine is still stuck at 52 MeV. Michael Sinclair says in his 2013 video that getting from 52MV to 250MeV was just a question of putting more components together. Clearly for me this isn't the case. This to me is a six year delay and no progress has been made since 2013 and the company has offered no explanation for this. If someone else can, I would be greatful for what I am missing.