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Hi KO,
Yes I'm going this year. I see it starts at 2.00pm.
Would be happy to meet up before for lunch/drink. Equally can stay on after too.
What's your thoughts ?
Romaron ?
Anyone going to the AGM ? Jan, R ?
Pint or 4 afterwards?
With the remaining trading days left this year we still have about £70k per day to spend on buybacks.
Edit that to April
Sell in May
Todays share trades are beginning to resemble the Red Wall.
Russia hasn’t helped by threatening to go against their agreement with OPEC and raise production.
Over $10 lower than this time last month, currently hovering around support.
Ok now i got you Kraken
The terms used there are legalise to protect enq from any claims of conflict of interest (they are in all buy back agreements) - and when it refers to trading decisions thats within the framework that ENQ will have agreed with them in regard to the tranches they have set MLs to buy (ie say 750k blocks every specific period which will defintely have big days like msci factored in) - the confusing terminology is down to ‘trading decisions’ which is actually more about the nuts and bolts of each days specific trades not what you might think is a more broad sign off to give MLs carte blanche (best execution rules now are super detailed)
But i have talked to an old colleague who does this stuff - he confirmed for buy backs they 100% follow the schedule the company set them - granted he aint MLs but just google that term about trading decisions and buybacks and should come up with loads of examples with different brokers
Appears 583k at mid.. Buyback??
The first phase of the Programme will be carried out through an agreement with Merrill Lynch International ("Merrill Lynch"), pursuant to which Merrill Lynch shall purchase Ordinary Shares as principal (and not as agent of the Company) for the subsequent sale on to, and purchase by, the Company. This agreement will initially run from 29 April 2024 to 30 June 2024 (subject to no regulatory objections or concerns arising), for an aggregate consideration of up to, but no greater than, $15 million. Merrill Lynch will make its trading decisions in relation to the Ordinary Shares independently of, and uninfluenced by, the Company. While the Company has launched the Programme, there is no certainty on the volume of ordinary shares that may be purchased or any certainty on the pace and quantum of purchases.
Hey Kraken, thats a really weird set up if true - i read the rns quickly but didnt see specifics being mentioned that ML decided timing and benchmarks as that is not a normal broker activity (sets you up for client saying ‘you bought at wrong time’ )
Its normally completely decided in consultation at beginning of agreement and then the broker (mls in this case) just chucks x shares per day or per schedule into the algos to execute dispassionately to the agreed benchmark
In short it wont be decided on a specific day - ‘we’ll buy this much today’ - it’ll all be preplanned and automated
Voice just wondering if you read the RNS regarding ML on the buybacks, Enq don't have any influence on when stock will be bought or how much, its down to ML to make all the decisions.
Kraken - i cant be 100% clearly but normal buybacks are directed by the company ie ENQ not ML - so ML will simply buy the specified amount to the specified benchmark (normally spread over day) as ENQ direct them to.
Maybe AB wants to push more into short period although that opens ENQ to pushing stock up - using cash to buy at ‘pushed’ prices then the stock reverts - no-one likes to see that. There is an Msci rebalance day at End of may (31st) so normally volumes will be elevated anyway there and might be their aim to get a load done then
ML bought £71.5k worth of stock on Friday the highest daily amount so far.
Still nowhere near enough if they still plan on using up the entire amount in this first phase
Is this the return of Mr Ed the talking horse?
I expect Ed to use his veto in cabinet. He is supported by powerful friends from the climate lobby. It could be a little uncomfortable for him as he will be using them to overturn collective actions deemed good for the country in favour of ideology and expensive renewable energy that has driven most of our industry offshore, mainly to China. Dominic Lawson wrote an interesting article in the ST warning that "The electric car crash will rival the dotcom bubble".
He finished with this: "And groups such as Friends of the Earth are highly experienced litigants in such matters. Indeed, only last Friday the High Court found in FoE’s favour, and against the government, over the Green lobby group’s claim that ministers had not provided sufficient evidence that their existing policies would achieve net zero by 2050, as they are legally required to do so.
So whenever a minister suggests a policy change that might be viewed as in breach of the net zero commitment, the civil servants involved immediately warn that it may be open to legal challenge or judicial review.
Not that such a scene is ever likely to take place when, as is generally expected, Ed Miliband takes over Coutinho’s job in a Labour government. Then we will see the “net zero leviathan of central planning” she warned against. My money is on consumers, all the same. Because they are also known as “voters”."
So we'll end up with Ed having the backing of the ideological extremists and the "law". He won't have the "voters" and he never has had them imo. Many people blame Liz Truss for our woes. Theresa May caused far more damage with the declarative piece of legislation she left behind as her "legacy".
“It is the uncertainty that is the real killer of enthusiasm for making a long-term investment.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/06/labour-will-boost-london-stock-market-says-city-broker/
Which warrants the kind of involvement and planning to benefit the state and workers.”
He continued: “We’re not going to do that with this mish-mash of political point scoring, it’s got disaster written all over it.”
To achieve a transition that will benefit workers and the country as a whole, Jake Molloy says there need to be stability in oil and gas tax policy.
The UK’s windfall tax created a headline tax rate of 75% on the oil and gas sector, since this policy was introduced 90% of North Sea operators have cut spending.
Following this, UK operators such as Harbour Energy and Serica have laid out plans to acquire firms operating overseas to diversify their portfolios with the former picking up Wintershall Dea as part of an $11.2 billion deal.
Mr Molloy explained: “To do the transition, we’ve got to get stability into that as a mainstream, which we have for decades.
“We’ve got to do it in a way which dispels the myths and becomes clear and transparent and is understandable to the public.”
The former union boss said that confusion around decommissioning and “what was paid tax and how they can get refunds” needs to be clear to the public alongside “petroleum revenue tax.”
There are currently investment incentives laid out in the UK’s windfall tax that allow firms to cut their tax bill by putting money towards UK projects.
However, the Labour Party –which is polled to win this year’s general election – has set aside plans to hike the headline rate of tax to be in line with Norway’s while closing what it calls “loopholes”.
The Labour policy has been unpopular with oil and gas firms that have pointed out that despite Norway having a high taxation rate, the country heavily incentivises firms to spend money within its waters.
Recently, Serica Energy’s chief financial officer Martin Copeland told Energy Voice: “The Labour Party is fond of saying they want to put a Norway tax in, but they’re not proposing a Norway tax. They’re proposing a worse than Norway tax.
“There’s an element to which you think, if we’re going to have Norway, we might as well have the full-fat version of Norway and actually go to Norway, right?”
The Just Transition Commission member that he is not a fan of “the idea of this whole transition becoming a political football.”
Jake Molloy shared his belief that slashing carbon emissions is in service of stemming a “global crisis”.
He continued: “Within the transition is necessary to address the climate crisis. It’s not about scoring political points.
“I think we should really be putting all of that to one side, the whole point scoring process, and instead working collaboratively to achieve transition for the benefit of Scotland, for the benefit of the UK and the wider global crisis that we quite obviously now face.”
For Mr Molloy, softening targets is not necessarily a bad thing, what he wants to see is policy that addresses the crisis and moves the country closer to net zero. Not a man to point out a problem without offering up a solution, the Just Transition Commission member gave his two cents on how to stabilise the energy transition and move away from a low carbon policy penalty shootout in the looming general election.
Late last year the Just Transition Commission claimed that Scotland was not on track to deliver, and that “significant” further action is needed to support the workforce.
In its second annual report, the Commission said the country’s ability to deliver a just transition hinges on a “genuine whole-of-government approach to delivery.”
The report outlined: “Use of just transition as a ‘fix-all’ term without specific policies and actions to actually realise it must be avoided from now on.”
Taking this further, Molloy agrees with policies suggested by the trade body Offshore Energies UK and Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce.
Both groups have previously argued for a cross-party regulator for the UK’s energy transition to ensure stability in the market while enabling green jobs to flourish.
The trade body called for an independent statutory body with the powers and resource to oversee the delivery of UK energy objectives and net zero commitments, ahead of this year’s Spring Budget that delivered an extended windfall tax for oil and gas operators. In November, Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce called for a similar body in its 38th Energy Transition Survey.
Both groups have likened the new regulator to the Bank of England, which has maintaining monetary and fiscal stability as its central mission.
On this topic, Jake Molloy said he “absolutely” backs this idea and that it is important to move forward while the country is at a “tipping point.”
He said: “If we don’t get something sorted now in terms of an actual plan that the country, governments and workers can look to as the future then we risk losing.
“For me, this is an industrial revolution on a scale we’ve never previously seen.”
Looking “way, way back” to the 1900s through the transitions to steam and coal and then into gas, Mr Molloy said that “this is a transition which warrants th
N the past few weeks, the people of Scotland have witnessed just how important energy policy is as the UK looks ahead to a general election.
The Holyrood government rolled back Scotland’s climate goals in April, leading to the Greens and the SNP resolving their coalition and Humza Yousaf vacating the first minister job.
This is not just an issue in Scotland, the whole UK is seeing energy policy become a “political football” as parties hope to score points with those for or against oil and gas.
However, Jake Molloy, a member of the Just Transition Commission and a former trade union boss, has argued that transitioning to cleaner energy should “not be about scoring political points.” Recently, the Scottish government’s Cabinet secretary for net zero and just transition Màiri McAllan announced that it plans to abandon its ambitious climate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030.
In return, Ms McAllan revealed that there would be a string of moves made to cut carbon emissions from heating, transport and agriculture.
The suite of measures related to electric vehicle charging ports, the rollout of zero emission vans and other vehicles, shifts in agriculture policy and moves to roll out low carbon heating in Scotland.
This came as Scotland looks to summer for the publication of the government’s draft energy plan.
After these announcements, Mr Molloy said: “What they could be doing and should be doing is setting clear policy ambitions.”
The move sees the Holyrood government move away from legally binding annual targets – which it has missed for eight out of 12 years.
To this, Molloy commented: “I’ve never been a great supporter of the idea of setting yourself up to fail, in terms of ambitious targets which at the outset might appear achievable but in reality, everybody around them at the time was suggesting that was a pretty tough deadline.”
When the energy transition and the jobs it sets out to create become politicised the workforce within Scotland’s energy sector feel the impacts, Molloy shared.
He said: “There’s still some doubts, as to whether or not we’re going to see the jobs created which have been muted by all parties, not just the Scottish Government in, it’s the British Government in that respect as well.
“I think therein lies another problem with the targets they set themselves because they politicise them.”
Try in “Private mode”. If that does not work I can C&P it.
Paywall
Worth a read: https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/552506/is-uk-energy-policy-becoming-a-political-football/
The former union boss (RMT Regional Organiser) and member of the Just Transition Commission (??) quoted extensively talks sense and must have the ear, directly or indirectly, of Labour’s Bigwigs.
Part 3
Australia-listed Hartshead Resources, one of the smallest producers in the UK North Sea, said earlier this year that it had cut jobs on a gas project in the North Sea because of uncertainty about taxes. Chris Lewis, chief executive, told the Financial Times the company had delayed awarding contracts for the project.
“That has a direct impact on jobs, on supply chain companies in the UK, and on receipts to the exchequer because if you delay our gas production, you delay us paying tax on it.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ceb1d4af-c1c5-4909-aba4-f967aaaba1c3#comments-anchor
Part 2
estimated that £16bn in potential investment could be lost because of uncertainty about tax policy.
The Labour party, which is currently favourite to win the next general election, has proposed increasing the total tax rate to 78 per cent and removing tax relief on new projects.
The industry is likely to feature in election campaigning in Scotland as a weakened Scottish National party seeks to ward off challenges to its dominance.
In one of the few major deals in the UK North Sea since the introduction of the windfall tax, London-listed Ithaca Energy last month agreed to buy almost all of the UK upstream operations of Italian major ENI for about £750mn. This includes the UK assets of Neptune Energy, which ENI agreed to buy last year for $4.9bn.
Under the deal, ENI will receive a 38 per cent stake in the enlarged group.
Chris Wheaton, oil and gas analyst at Stifel, said consolidation in the sector was an essential “defensive move” that would allow companies to combine resources and fund the decommissioning of old assets.
“The UK needs a national champion to manage the decline [in oil and gas production],” he said, adding that while two Norwegian groups — Equinor and Aker BP — accounted for about four-fifths of production in Norway, the top five in the UK were responsible for 45 per cent.
While Labour’s proposed tax rate is the same as that in Norway, analysts argue that Norway has a less mature basin, which makes is cheaper to exploit, generous investment allowances and a tax regime that has not changed for more than three decades.
“After four tax changes in two years . . . the appetite for investment in the UK continental shelf is in a worrying place,” said Ryan Crighton, policy director at Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce.
UK-focused producers are trailing a 30 per cent rise in the MSCI World Energy Sector Index since the start of Russia’s Ukraine invasion. Shares in Serica Energy are down 37 per cent, while Harbour Energy, the biggest independent UK producer, has lost 23 per cent.
Gilad Myerson, executive chair of Ithaca, said the prospect of unexpected changes in taxation meant it was “easier to do mergers” than pursue acquisitions that are funded with cash.
Before you consolidate, you have to put a value on the assets, and it’s very difficult to do that if you don’t know what the fiscal regime is going to be,” said Mitch Flegg, the former chief executive of Serica, who has become an adviser to the company.