Member Info for Artji

DougB, you stated, "so a possible buy-out of the remaining 20%, which IF it occurred would then likely miss the last 12 months high of 100p (August 2022 due to the estimate of September 2023 for finalising a deal) which then gives a 12 month high of 70p as per March this year."

I think you're misinterpreting the takeover code. Rule 9 states, "An offer made under Rule 9 must, in respect of each class of share capital involved, be in cash or be accompanied by a cash alternative at not less than the highest price paid by the offeror or any person acting in concert with it for any interest in shares of that class during the 12 months prior to the announcement of that offer."

Note. highest price paid by the offeror or person acting in concert, not highest price paid by anyone. I think it's unlikely that the "potential new equity investor" has made any purchases of this stock in the last 12 months. So any offer made would have to be at a minimum of 1.7p per share. However, I doubt that this is likely to happen, at least in the short term, as a stock market listing will be useful when they come to raise further funds (this fund raising, if it goes ahead, only sees them through the next 2 months).

What's coming next? Another fund raising? And at what price? Existing share holders aren't going to have much equity left in the company if that happens.

From Dr Anomaly

3. **Company reported revenue for the year of £380,277 and Gross profit for the year of £84,365.**

- Despite challenging conditions, the company has maintained positive revenue and gross profit figures. This demonstrates the underlying resilience of the company's business model.

I'm surprised nobody has pointed out that in actual fact GBP341,293 of this was billings to the SPV, which they have since taken full control of, and they've written off the bill as it meant they were just billing themselves. So real income in 2022 was just the GBP38,984 from HUI. Not so impressive.

Running to standstill? Don't agree. Turnover up 10%, after tax profit up 176%. Seems like good progress to me. Still room for improvement though. After tax profit still low relative to turnover mainly due to admin expenses of £14.25m. Continued growth with static or reducing admin costs will hopefully improve this in future.

Operating cashflow up 110% to £5.3m, very acceptable. Still an overall outflow of cash but if we discount the one-off payment of the deferred consideration on acquisition of subsidiary then it's only £324k. Borrowings fallen from £2.4m to £2m but higher interest costs will probably mean servicing costs relatively unchanged going forward. Cash and cash equivalents £5m so they should have the resources to continue to execute their growth plan especially considering the cash now being generated by operations.

More than happy to keep holding here although the rest of the year may be quite bumpy if the world and US economies keep struggling. I'm not here for the short term so not worried by day to day share price movements as long as the company keeps progressing. Looking forward very much to tomorrows investor presentation.

Hi Harry Caul

Yeah, still 235m held by Miles Pelham but not converted yet or we would have been informed by RNS. I assume the share trades listed on web sites including this one are only voting shares.

Thanks buzby, I missed your post earlier. It does confirm MP could well be in financial difficulties and explain why he's selling. That's what I was asking for and your reply is very much appreciated.

Re HUR, Pelham Capital is the seller, not Miles Pelham. It's an investment fund which manages money that other people have invested with it.

So Lombard have been selling shares in a few small cap companies! It's a company with $61b of assets under active management so I'm sure it will have been selling some of it's other positions as well. It will also have been buying positions in companies. That's what active asset managers do and it's a far cry from claiming that it's liquidating most of it's assets.

Why they and MP are selling WBI, I don't know, but perpetuating rumours and fantasies helps nobody.

HUR on this website? Only 9 posts going back to 2020 and no mention of MP or Lombard. I think your reply has confirmed my suspicions, nothing but rumours.

Moneysponge, where do you get the information from that MP & Lombard are liquidating most of their portfolios? Lombard Odier is a Swiss bank with $61 billion of assets under management, that's an awful lot of assets to sell. And I've asked the question before about MP and not got an answer. I think this is just rumours, stated once and repeated enough times so that people start to believe it, but I would be happy for you to prove me wrong.

I've been following this company since 2017, back when it was Obtala and had just bought Woodbois. Miles Pelham was chairman then and held a very large interest in the company. He still holds 235m non-voting shares, which can be converted to voting shares at his request. So, effectively he still holds 8.5% of the company. He last converted some in June of last year. Whether he intends to convert & sell the rest, I don't know, but think the possibility may be helping to keep the share price subdued.

Lombard Odier first announced a 12.9% holding in January 2019 and by April of that year they held 25%. They had a board representative in Henry Turcan, a Non-Executive Director until his resignation in October of last year. I think it's a bit naive to suggest they may have been taken in by "naughty tipsters". Large institutional investors don't buy on the strength of unsubstantiated ramps.

On carbon credits, in last years AGM the timeline was given as no credits receivable until years 4-45 from the date of the AGM. The earlier years in this timeline are likely to earn low levels of carbon credits. And that's if the program progresses as WBI hope. Any carbon credits due from their existing concessions will belong to the Gabonese government. WBI's program involves planting from scratch on leased land. So I think it's best to discount this at this stage when valuing the company. In another year or two, if things progress as planned, then it will probably be worth factoring it in.

I do hope all continues to go as planned in this and the logging/trading sides of the business as I like very much what this company is doing. I'm looking forward to the full 12m results release and updates as provided by WBI, which will hopefully confirm progress on all fronts. I'm still not a holder and am not ready to buy in yet. This does mean I may miss the bottom which, I agree, may be here now, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. A big possible downer may be the current global (and particularly USA) economic problems. If things do go badly wrong then WBI isn't going to be immune.

So for now, for me, it's a wait and see. But best wishes to all holders here.

"Because he has margin call issues and he’s fallen out with the CEO who was his mate"

Xpublican, where does this information come from please?

I think he may have sold out completely, not just below 3%. One entry in the RNS states:

Notified details of the resulting situation on the date on which the threshold was crossed or reached
Voting rights attached to shares 0 <3.00%

Zero is certainly less than 3%

However he still has 235,000,000 non-voting shares. Will he now start converting these and selling them - seems likely. Also have other sellers such as Lombard Odier and MCM Investment Partners finished yet?

Year end results were out 1st April last year. Are they any closer to becoming profitable. Lumber prices have pretty well lost all the gains they'd made in early 2023 so it will be interesting to see how WBI see things financially going forward. I like this company but still happy to sit on the sidelines and watch for now.

Qd22, the RNS you quote from was released on the 31st October, not 2 days ago.

Certainly no cash gain, so if that's what you mean by real terms then yes. The gain has only increased their assets. In fact you could argue that there was a cash loss as they paid $1.5m to buy the company. But to pay $1.5m to get an asset estimated to return close to $90m of top line income over the next 5 years strikes me as a pretty good piece of business, even if the estimates prove to be optimistic. The seller had to get what they could for the business as they didn't have the finance to develop it, and presumably these concessions have conditions attached including one that causes forfeit if the concession isn't worked within a set period of time. Obviously the government wants them worked as this brings in tax and probably royalty income, and also creates employment.

Yes also to your second point. Accounts can often be somewhat misleading if a person just looks at the headline numbers. Anything unusual is worth looking into in more depth and explanations can usually be found, generally in the notes to the accounts.

Velo, they haven't sold it. They bought LGFIB, a Gabonese company, and by doing so got 71,000 hectares of forestry concession land in that country (of which 56,000 hectares has an existing approved management plan in place for harvesting). That means they have the right to harvest timber from that concession, same as they had been been harvesting from their existing concessions. The bargain purchase amount of $88m arose due to the difference in accounting frameworks applied by the Company and LGFIB, the Gabonese company it acquired. Specifically, the difference relates to the measurement of Biological Assets. The Company applies IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards - which they have to use, nothing dodgy about it) which stipulates that acquired assets and liabilities be recognised, at the date of acquisition, at its fair value. LGFIB, who applied Gabonese accounting standards, did not carry Biological Assets on its Balance Sheet, but instead expensed the cost of acquiring them over time and no fair value assessment was made for accounting purposes.

The $88m reflects the value of the timber they expect to be able to extract from that concession. In the notes to the accounts they define it thus: "The fair value of the standing timber is determined using models based on expected yields, market prices for the saleable produce, over 5 years, after allowing for harvesting costs and other costs yet to be incurred in getting the produce to maturity." Notes 5 and 11 in the accounts give further details. The gain was included under biological assets on the balance sheet, which went from $204m to $336m so I'm not sure where you got the idea from that the asset had been sold.

I hope this helps.

And 235,000,000 non-voting shares which at some point will be converted to voting ones. MCM Investment Partners and Lombard Odier have also been selling down their holdings this year and still hold 400,000,000 between them.

So I'm happy to sit on the sidelines and watch this one for now. If the results keep showing good progress and the selling appears to have finished then I may well take a small stake.

I'm not invested here but watching closely. I hope for investors sakes that you're wrong about MP selling his non-voting shares to the party who bought the 325m in April, as they have since converted that 325m, which would give them around 14.5% of the company if they'd held on to them. No declaration has been forthcoming so presumably they've been selling the shares as they were converted, causing another serious drag on the share price.

I also share the earlier posters concerns re Lombardier selling down, and to a lesser extent MP, as I expect him to convert the rest of his non-voting shares. But if he continues selling then that's another worry. So I'll sit on the sidelines for now and see what happens.

I've contacted the company and asked them why the options have been extended again, and if they can give me more detail regarding the "practical reasons" that they justify these extensions with. I'll let this board know if I get a reply (don't hold your breath).

RNS 24/02/22
The Company had previously granted options to purchase 11,941,500 ordinary shares of 1p each in the Company of which 10,191,500 were to certain directors of the Company (the "Options"). The Options are due to expire during March 2022 and have been extended for practical reasons to 31 December 2022. The exercise period of the Options will not be further extended beyond 31 December 2022.

RNS today
Symphony Environmental Technologies Plc announces a limited extension to the exercise period of options held by the directors of the Company (the "Directors") and certain other option holders. The Company had previously granted options to purchase 12,691,500 ordinary shares of 1p each in the Company (the "Options") of which 10,941,500 were to certain directors of the Company. The Options were due to expire on 31 December 2022 and 6 April 2023 but have been extended for practical reasons to 31 December 2023

This is the third extension (4th in the case of M. Stephen) and makes the RNS of February an absolute joke. I'm getting more and more convinced that the whole BOD is an absolute joke.

Very happy with the company. In it for the medium to long term and may even buy more, but...

...I think oldbutnowisa is living up to his name and should stop making predictions :-)