Member Info for 1eyedman

Thank you for the link. The guy sure loves a metaphor!. Good update, a little bit ‘jam tomorrow’ but goes with the territory. I’m slight unclear whether the suggestion is dividend to be paid in April or declared. I’m thinking the latter.

I must admit when I bought my shares I did not check the spread although I would have noticed had it been particularly adverse. I'm so accustomed to immediately being a few % down due to costs and spread that I didn't take particular note. I'll look more closely if I buy more :). I deal through Halifax who probably aren't the cheapest.

Thank you Highveld for that informative post. I confess to some degree of ignorance in the way AIM runs. To be honest if a share doesn't behave as I hope I simply consider that I have made a poor investment decision and walk away without worrying over any background babble about 'MM games etc.' which regularly appear on various boards. Companies on AIM are in the 'fun zone' of investment for me and are a bit of a flutter that do not form a real part in my financial planning, however I'm always more than happy to learn something useful. I'm reasonably happy with my buy into SHG thus far. My last dabble in gold was HGM which was ticking along rather well dividend and all until it was bought back into private ownership. No complaints I made a few quid. My rational for SHG was simply that it is already producing as opposed to exploring, has further possibilities on the horizon and there is a possibility of a dividend which might give a small re-rate in itself. Plus its fun (sort of).

A dividend even small as a show of future intent would indeed be great news. There is however some reasonably heavy selling today which can be a little concerning prior to results. I'd be very happy to be wrong though!

I am similarly disappointed. Its difficult to imagine there will be a great deal of retail investor buying at the current price. My own view before the recent placing was that was a likelihood of a further placing just prior or during commissioning. Unfortunately I still believe this to be the case. Something of a shame but that's AIM for you. Nonetheless a lot of work is already done towards producing product and my guess (which is worth nothing whatsoever) is that SO4 will bring product to market but there will be significant debt to pay off/service at quite a punitive rate . Still my investment decisions are mine alone so no complaints on that score. I'm interested enough to monitor this, I might be tempted to buy back in if we hit 20p or less. A speculative gamble rather than an investment as such companies always are!.

Thanks for posting the link. It is a high quality bit of work, not sure that a corporate video really warrants an RNS but its nice to see the line of communication is working so well. At least we are well above the issue price now so fingers crossed we all make a few quid.

Great advantage here is that we know the product is there to be had so it’s really a race to get the infrastructure in place. Looking good so far

Slimbo79: Hopefully you will be correct on the latter two points. Its impossible to know but I wonder if some of the larger sells going through are from the underwriters. Although at face value it would not seem to make sense that they would sell below the offer price they can probably still turn a profit once the fees charged are taken into account
Despite the fact that the share price has not been exactly stellar, personally I remain pretty optimistic unless we get some hard facts that burst my bubble :). Which frankly would not be the first time but nothing ventured............

If I have worked this out correctly, at the point of completion of the retail offering the underwriters would have held around 33m shares (60% approx. of the close to 55M issued). This values at around 9 Million quid's worth at current share price. That's a fair quantity of shares to offload. I'm happy to be corrected on this if I have miscalculated?.

Yep funding should be there in theory to get us to initial production. I guess it’s possible that a top up may be required closer to the time but the company seems to be hitting benchmarks pretty well to be fair. Sometimes AIM companies have a habit of springing a surprise issue to buy,seemingly at random some small company or patch of land but no sign if that here thus far. Only downside here for me at the moment is the drag on share price due to the recent underwritten rights issue. Won’t last forever though hopefully!

Nice to see how our money is being spent. Difficult to fault the apparent progress towards production so far.

With reference to the possible valuations: Concise post and difficult to disagree with on the information we have. At least we don't have to wait that long (relatively speaking) to see if things shape up the way we hope and expect.

Obviously this is a highly speculative punt. I always regard this sort of share as more of a complete gamble rather than an investment. Most share purchases are a gamble on some level but some are nearer to a bet on the horses than a balance of probabilities. I don't think we should be too surprised at the drop (disappointing though it may seem) after the pretty weak retail response and the fact that the underwriter is holding a lot of shares they probably don't actually want. Also the current market cap is relatively high for a company that is producing absolutely nothing at the present time. Still a bit of fun in the portfolio and I remain pretty optimistic unless we don't look like selling product in second quarter 2021 or have significant cost overruns. Obviously I would love to see everyone make some decent money (especially me! :)) . Some good news on progress towards the project via RNS will hopefully help things along if/when the time comes. All the best.

"but the "which comes straight off the hard won balance sheet." needs to be balanced by profits surely......... :)"

Ah what I was trying to say was, the positive side of current balance sheet exists only due to the rights issues and some of that will evaporate immediately in fees. Roll on profits!. And very best of luck yourself!

I tend to agree that it could be a bit of a problem for the short-medium term share price that the underwriters will be looking to offload sooner rather than later. Also remember that such underwriting comes with quite a significant fee (in the low % of the underwritten sum) which comes straight off the hard won balance sheet. I'd say that the rights issue has been pretty good for SO4 as they now have the capital to move forward but not great for the shareholder. This is alas so often the case, particularly on AIM but as investors we obviously hope that this all translates into shareholder value moving forward. I am encouraged that members of the board have quite a significant holding in SO4. This shows belief in the project and the company. Some AIM listed companies have little such commitment from the top and are often just used as vehicles to pay the executives large salaries often for little success that translates as shareholder value. Whilst selling into the market is a fact of life if the share price does go well it could be a pretty significant red flag if the guys at the top start to sell out prematurely in a significant way.
Just one further thing. Commissioning of pretty much any chemical plant can throw up a good number of unexpected problems which cause delays. However the apparent relative simplicity of the process here (compared to multistage chemical reactions) ought to mean this phase of the project (when we get there in early 2021) should not be too problematical. Fingers crossed!

Personally I find it a little concerning that the take up rate was only 40%. Although the issue was underwritten this could indicate a distinct lack of enthusiasm among the retail shareholders which would not suggest much appetite to invest further at the current levels. Its possible that (unlike myself!) they correctly guessed that the share price would fall to or even below the discounted offer price.
Like so many AIM companies SO4 is effectively in a race to generate income before running out of cash and going under or facing further highly dilute rights issues which from unpleasant first hand experience I know can quickly get out of hand. In my personal opinion this company does have a chance (or else why would I be invested) and I find the idea of harvesting a natural product to help improve food security quite intriguing. To make real progress with the share price its pretty obvious that the first project needs to hit key benchmarks along the way with respect to time and costs. So good luck all!