On a 9.6m market cap at 1.75 VLE have:

- 6.9m of net tangible assets, including 6.8m of cash, per the pro forma Balance Sheet issued after the recent takeover of NMT
- subsidiaries with 13m annualised turnover being turned around

Any good news on acquisitions or profitability in the Vectra/environmental/safety core businesses should have a decent effect on the share price.

Web site : http://www.volvere.co.uk.

Major shareholders (take a good look at this roll-call of the rich and powerful) are (in % terms):

Friedman Billings Ramsey Int 500,000 8.6
Neil Ashley 250,000 4.3
Dawnay Day Intl Ltd 500,000 8.6
JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management 350,000 6.0
Jonathan Edward Lander 350,000 6.0
United Gulf Bank 282,000 4.8
Dawnay Day Lander 250,000 4.3
Chiltern Trust Company Limited 250,000 4.3
Richard Bernard Kalms 250,000 4.3
Harold Stanley Kalms 250,000 4.3
Merrill Lynch Inv Mgmt Inc 200,000 3.4
Nicholas Paul Lander 25,000 0.4
David Buchler 28,985 0.5

= Director

VLE is the holding company acquisition vehicle for, mainly, the Vectra Group (it was originally a cash shell which then acquired Vectra):

http://www.vectragroup.co.uk/index.asp

The results are here:
http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=200605020700582464C

VLE acquired Sira Group in Sept'05 for 1.4m, which provides certification services covering the safety of products that are used within potentially explosive environments (such as chemical plants, mines and other hazardous areas). The business also provides training for personnel that work in these environments. This was making annualised PBT of 0.5m pre-acquisition on 2.3m annualised turnover.

Then in March'06 VLE acquired Sira Test. Sira Environmental provides monitoring and conformity assessment solutions to the environmental monitoring community in the specific areas of water quality and emissions monitoring. In addition Sira Environmental operate the MCERTS program for the Environment Agency ('EA') - certifying people and products as conforming to certain EA technical standards.

VLE paid 30k for this business which came with 80k of net assets, 0.5m of turnover and trading at break-even!

Sira Certification has an excellent new web site - lots of news flow and goodies:

http://www.siracertification.com/

60% of VLE's shares are held by directors and a variety of institutions as above including a number of members of the Kalms (Dixons) dynasty - Stanley Kalms is a director. So the free float is a little limited.

Note that this company is run on the cheap - total directors' remuneration last year was 153k (2004 - 136k). The directors' are incentivised through their shareholdings and interests in A and B shares which are convertible based only upon share price performance.

VLE were recently tipped on Motley Fool:

http://www.fool.co.uk/news/investing/company-comment/2007/01/04/five-stocks-for-the-new-year.aspx?source=ioodftxt0010005

"Volvere (LSE: VLE)

Volvere is an illiquid stock market venture capital company which has acquired a number of businesses in recent years.

There is the downside protection through net asset value (NAV) equalling the current share price and cash representing over 80% of NAV.

Potential upside comes from an aggressive management and existing businesses which should move into profit in 2007. The key to success, however, will be future deals; the right one could see significant upward movement in the share price.

50-100% growth is my target and with that solid cash base I find it hard to see downside of more than 15%."

Having spoken to the directors I know that they've turned down a lot of acquisitions to make the right ones as listed above, and I believe they will eventually ensure the share price will be far higher than it is currently, especially if Stanley Kalms has anything given to do with it (given his personal 250k investment and Richard Kalms' additional 250k investment).

VLE are now at 167p, up a little today. The markets seems completely unaware of them - hopefully the results to 31/12/06 will change all that.

And VLE were tipped recently by Hargreaves Lansdown (thx to pachandl):

"HL Aim Insight - buy (Feb): (i) Basic summary, (ii) Acquisition experience of management, (iii) Shares more liquid after NMT buy-out, (iv) 5.7m net cash, (v) Convertible shares designed for management incentive (vi)Post NMT 200k additional shares not particularly dilutive, (vii) Cash-pile covers more than 50% of market cap - even after potential dilution, (viii) VLE's operating businesses are valued at just over 4m, (ix) Two divisions (safett/risk consulting (Vectra) & certification services (Sira) - they are capable of generating 13/14m of annual revenues (profitable even excluding negative goodwill as they were acquired for less than asset value - underlying profitability masked by group overheads), (x) Vectra benefitting from increasing nuclear decommissioning work, Sira made 250k profit in 1st half of 2006 (worth, in itself, more than 4m for an acquisitive rival testing/certification company), (xi) Clear acquisition strategy - with borrowing capacity for larger acquisitions. Basically: good management with eye for a good deal - 'could become much bigger over the next couple of years'. Consider as a speculative buy."

If Sira alone is worth 4m and you add in the 6m or so of cash that equates to more than the current m/cap on it's own - the Vectra Group with 10m of turnover is in for free!