Ann: FY12 Production and Revenue Report , page-43

I must say that I agree with those posters above who've expressed thanks to Marble, Max and the others, for the really clear expose of the issues with this stock, which have never been previously properly analyzed or discussed. On the face, they might appear a tad gloomy in their assessment, but I've got to say, I can't fault the logic of their analysis. I really feel for so many of the guys like Hypster, who've obviously been into this thing for so long, keeping the faith, only to see that faith blown up time after time – as Hypster says (and this reminds me of a couple of questions from the floor at last year's AGM): management have been repeatedly asked for their plan to restore value in the stock, and they just don't have a plan, other than to head to the bunker and hope the storm passes them by.

I just don't think that's good enough, given their princely salaries and the fact that they've taken this company, and shareholder value, from a Billion Dollar plus company, to a penny stock, all on their watch. There seems to me to be a bit of a cavalier trader's mentality in the talk about "upside" in some of the posts on this thread, which is fair enough for the traders, but it seems to me that given the performance of this company over the past couple of years, we'd all do well to focus a bit more on the downside, thanks to Marble and Max – I'd never had properly understood that downside were it not for their very insightful analysis (and I do remember getting very uncomfortable a year or so ago when Sandra McCullagh's reports were probing a lot of the same issues mentioned in this thread, but they've made it very clear to understand, and I think I now see what she was trying to get at when she was covering the stock back then).

It's easy for traders to talk about upside, but as Hypster is saying, what's the rub here? There's got to be a real concern as to whether this Company is beyond salvage! What's the likely reality: the downside, which certainly seems to be consistent with the past couple of years, or the upside, which I've got to say, I just can't see, based on past performance (and as for raising equity, as that guy in the movie said: "tell 'em their dreaming"!).

For me, the common theme that leaps out at me from these very good posts over the past couple of weeks is that whether you're a buyer, seller, or holder, there has been a definite, and greatly appreciated, recognition of the fact that there is substantial possible downside to the equity in this company, given (among other things), how exposed this company is to a very complex US tax-based structure and extremely high leverage in difficult market conditions.

There's clearly a strong parallel occurring today with Channel Nine, which is a highly geared company facing a potential debt default. Notwithstanding that Nine has a good ongoing business and has managed to sell its magazine business to offset the potential default, the media reports that its Mezzanine lenders are looking at a conversion to an equity value of around 15% of their original investment (an $850m loss), and its equity holders are looking at a 100% loss ($2b).

Compare this to IFN. If you consider the downside scenario mentioned in this thread (and in this market, with so many Eurozone lenders being under lots of stress and presumably in no mood to grant extensions and waivers, this is a whole extra layer of downside risk to Infigen's debt problem that no-one in these posts has covered, but is a real issue), unlike Nine and its magazine portfolio, I don't think you could say that Infigen has this type of lifeline, given the obvious issues with the US assets and Marble's "fiscal cliff" problem. And look where Nine is today!

All I can say is that my eyes have been really opened in a way that they weren't before, and you'd have to ask yourself is the risk of your equity investment (now it seems to be potentially down to 14c? - and whereto if it reaches that level, as we all know what the herd can be like when things get to that type of level) worth the potential of the upside, when that's by no means clear given the past history. I'd reckon there's much better and easily understood opportunities elsewhere – I'd certainly like to see this level of helpful analysis in other threads on HC regarding other stocks (and I can think of a couple right away).