Member Info for CaneToad

I'm continuing to watch from the sideline.

Thank God I had the sense to get out of big positions many months ago; all final trades being closed at a loss, but well up overall as a result.

I hope others have sell rules to protect their capital and haven't been averaging down into the abyss. It took Nasdaq 15y to recover from the dot com crash and all crypto is behaving like the most speculative stocks of that time.

Good luck. I hope it recovers soon for everybody here!

I'm guessing the £1,000 bill was picked up by Ince Group. I guess that's fair, given how much cash they have rolling from Arden. Good to see them spending the money wisely!

The following extract was taken from Twitter (4 May 2022), posted by the owner of the Cardiff resturant - Cora. According to the Telegraph, the post was addressed to John Biles.

====================================================
Dear Mr *****,

'I wanted to firstly thank you for choosing my restaurant for your meal tonight, and I understand you had the biggest bill we've ever had on one table'.

'Unfortunately througout the evening I was made aware that your party's behavior was inappropriate towards lily, who runs front of house.

'She has told me that- as a 22yr old girl- she was talked down to, disrespected, and touched unwantedly by members of your group'.
====================================================

What the heck is going on here? Are they trying to collapse the market cap so that the partners can take it private? It's become a total corpse of a company. Surely we're no longer in a quiet period? Are we expecting an update some time?

@NewKOTB: It's perhaps due to the gas price drop and terrible market sentiment as others have said.

I just wanted to highlight the fact that lots of good companies have suffered today. I'm at a loss to explain why.

I think SQZ is a profoundly mispriced company, which must surely rise significantly in the medium-long-term. It's definitely a wakeup call though, seeing so many good companies starting to drop like this.

Nothing unusual in Serica today:

Exxon: -7.13%
BP: -5.12%
Arc Resources: -10.43%
Baytex Energy: -9.04%
Birchcliff Energy: -7.27%
Centennial Resource Development: -12.47%
Cheniere Energy: -8.25%
Chevron: -6.17%
Crescent Point Energy: -11.01%
Enerplus: -10.5%
EOG Resources: -10.42%
Gulf Keystone: -9.12%
Ranger Oil: -12.2%
Serica Energy: -11.76%
Transocean: -13.47%
Tullow Oil: -11.62%
VBermilion Energy: -12.65%
Whitecap Resources: -11.15%

"All the hallmarks of accelerated drop due to leaked corporate action, hence bear attack."

Have a look at a larger selection of energy companies. If you follow US and CA energy companies, you'll see that there are lots that are down more than 10% today. SQZ is not unusual today.

Exxon itself is down 7% today (that's a drop of 7% of $330b).

Half of Eric Nuttall's top energy picks are down very heavily today.

It looks like a very sticky situation, with the regulator potentially grabbing the deal for themselves, but it's interesting to look at the date of the last director purchase of 31 Mar 2022, while I read that:

"the NNPC authorities were reportedly set to meet the management of Exxon Mobil Corporation on March 17, 2022, over the Seplat-MPUN deal. It cannot be confirmed if the meeting was held."

It looks very attractive, so long as the deal goes through. I'd be worried if the deal didn't go through, as the (diluted) EPS estimates for 2022 and 2023 look down on 2017, 2019, while the share price is already back at those levels.

Looking at the director buy by C. Okeahalam, he seemed to sell at the peak back in 2018 (marginally higher than the current price), but bought 204,752 @ 110.02p = £225,268 on 31 Mar 2022. He's been on the board since 2013 and is a professor of economics and founder of AGH Capital. He seems to be an independent director, lending some weight to his purchase.

@Seav, what chance do you see of the deal not going through? There seemed to be some questions about it back in March. I noticed that the CEO (or somebody) recently asserted that everything is on schedule. Obviously the market is discounting some geopolitical risk for Nigeria as well and I got a bit of an alarm at the emount of oil being lost to theft in Nigeria. Seems like the Wild West.

Needless to say. I was very wrong on this one. Only mistake was not getting out of it much earlier.

An even worse story over at Joules, who were already on forward PE of 8. Sadly, I can't see how Boohoo will maintain a forward PE of 14, when there's no growth. Happy that I took the painful loss here a while back. It's pretty clear that if spending continues, they'll need further funds. I don't see how spending can slow-down that much.

Looks very weak to me

- Almost out of cash
- 92% drop in profit before tax
- Negative diluted EPS on statutory level
- No end in sight to delivery problems
- Returns have risen unexpectedly

Very worrying.

So FFS, I want to see the dividend here increased to 10+% by year-end. Anything else is a joke, considering how much cash is being generated. Gulf Keystone is already multiples of that.

Rather than invest all of the money back into the North Sea, I'd prefer to see a good chunk of the profits transferred back to shareholders, i.e. "me". Energy is a cyclical business. Boom & Bust. At almost all points in the past, the profits have been invested back into the business, expanding production, etc. I have no interest in that, nor do many other energy investors in any part of the world. Will the Government come to help once prices turn down again as they inevitably will - eventually? did the Government help 2y ago, when a lot of companies were struggling to stay afloat? No!

Investing in energy companies is a high risk activity. Investors (the ones funding the whole thing, i.e. you/me) need to be paid when things are going well. FFS, most energy companies are still priced on a PE ratio of less than 10, while SQZ is on a forward PE ratio ratio of 2.2. Let that sink in. Amazon is on a forward PE of 47.9. Tesla is on a forward PE of 64.5. It's a joke.

As Eric Nuttall has said many times. We are not in Russia or China. Shareholders control the companies. The Government does not. Eric wants the money from his investments returned to shareholders via juicy dividends and buybacks. That's what I want. I fully understand that SQZ needs to currently be prudent in servicing margin calls on the hedges. After that - send us the money.

Maybe the copper price? most of the copper miners are down.

Some heavy selling; maybe JT again...

Net Gearing: I'm looking at Stockopedia. Some months back I calculated the figure myself and thought that 150% would be achievable if the leases are removed. Stocko is usually accurate for a company like this, so I've not checked it. It's not currently in the ballpark for me to punt as it looks too risky, unless some momentum develops and then I could be tempted to jump in.

No disrespect to Stuart, but I listened to him a year ago and all I see 1y later is Net Gearing = 336.21. How many shares does he own? I've no interest in hearing what Stuart has to say until I see that figure drop to 150%, nor I expect will any institutional investors.

I've been a CPI bull in the past, but I also see 15p as a possibility in the current market. Debt has not dropped anywhere like what management said it would a year ago and we're now within earshot of a vicous bear market. They have a long way to go before debt will be considered 'very small' as some have mentioned here. Net Gearing is 316.6%. That's huge; it's dangerous.