Ann: Half Yearly Report and Accounts, page-56

Can I twist your comment a bit WW, and say that 'one thing holding the SP back right now is the Bird Group Deal nothappening so far, or not progressing fast enough with too little guidance as usual for investors'. Too much playing around with 'nice to do' stuff like Italian Trade Fairs which do a bit for image but not much for down and dirty volume, growth and the ultimate translation into real profits, dividends and SP. B2b customers care little about prestige tinkering, and are essentially only swayed by price, operational features and reliability. And to get the B2c stuff growing as it should we need focus on getting India done faster, and some real effort into (eg) Thailand. Thailand is a huge market, and it is wrong to perceive it as just a cheapy market .... affluent Thais (they were the biggest spenders in some recent years at Harrods !) use a lot of mopeds/scooters as run-abouts in Bangkok ....many more than the entire British or Italian markets and they are very 'fashion conscious'. But VMT is still in the slow lane there. Half the time and money spent in Italy would get far better returns in Thailand. Thais don't care too much for China, but they like Australia.

The half year results are good, but only as good as expected really. The solid profit result looks very nice and will attract some investors, but as per my previous post the Company is making too much profit at the expense of growth at this stage in its development. They had the foresight 'back then' to build a 400,000 - capable factory, but have done little to fill it to-date. Need to have a close look at receivables and bad debt, which is a potential concern since the Company announced possible financial assistance to get deals through last year.

There is still precious little guidance for investors, and if you really analyse Charles' comments about the future they are the same old wish list with no numbers and no dates. We get better guidance from 'Charlie,s Aunt' (er ... VYR) and it wont be too long before we see if his prediction of Q3 units equalling the half-year units comes true; that would be a good improvement, but even with the disclosed order book I don't yet see enough urgency from Management.

Finally an encouraging announcement from Shell, who are installing 50,000 charge-points in the UK between now and 2025. Not so important for bikes as cars perhaps, but it is another positive kicker for the EV market as a whole and we will see more of this ramping -up.

As for our own rampers, well I do expect that we are approaching 'rabbit out of the hat' season at VMT, which is nice when it happens but not very professional, and I do wish these folk would ramp less and actually buy more !

Best to all. 2000.