The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
Just noticed a delayed trade for half a million shares from yesterday pop up.
21-Dec-23 12:36:00 13.98 4,500 Buy* 13.85 14.05 629.10 O
20-Dec-23 16:23:29 14.06 500,000 Unknown* 13.85 14.00 70.30k O
21-Dec-23 11:47:27 13.9475 12,500 Buy* 13.85 14.00 1,743 O
At 16:23 yesterday the Bid was around 13.85 and the Ask was 14:15 - so it was probably a buy?? Curious why it was delayed??
Any thoughts??
The SP is currently back to roughly where it was on the 27th Nov when Helikon increased their short position from 1.43% on Fri 24th to 1.73% on Mon 27th Nov. Since then they have increased their position to 3.01% - as of yesterday (be interesting to see tomorrow if they closed any today). The increase from 1.43 to 3.01 equals 1.58% of the company stock, or roughly 8.8 m shares - all of which is now deeply under water - lol, lol, lol, lol.
On the 22nd and the 28th Nov Astaris reduced their exposure to 1.17% from 2.09% on the 21st Nov - thus taking some profit. Then from early December they increased again and as of yesterday had 2.34 % shorted, that's an increase of 1.17% or 6.5 million shares - again all deeply under water. :)
Astaris started to significantly increase their short positions from mid Oct, when the SP was in the 50's (remember those days?) so they have some cushion and could well come out of this with a profit. Helikon on the other had pilled in later and much more aggressively so hopefully they lose a lot of money - that would make me smile.
Hopefully the shorts will start to close in the coming days and we can then get back to something less stressful.
@Bro-ken
Looks like none of the shorts reduced on Friday, and there is nothing in todays volume of less than 6m traded shares that suggests anyone is significantly closing now either. Unfortunately the 300k trade at the end of the day was the 'uncrossing trade' rather than a buy .
The 9.45 declared as being short is around 53 million shares - add to that some less than 0.5% declared players - and there are a lot of shares that need to be covered.
The last TR-1 issued about PFC was back at the end of July 23. So although the information on major shareholders on the Petrofrac website might not be totally up to date (there is no date on it) it's also very unlikely that the major share holders have massively dumped PFC - otherwise there should have be a slew of TR-1 notifications.
The four major holders as per PFC website hold 45% of the shares, so that leaves 55% in play, or 250m shares - of which 53+m have been shorted. That's a very interesting position, and IF they have to start to cover quickly it could get even more interesting.
It's going to be an interesting day tomorrow - last change for shorters to begin covering before the RMS on Wed, or do they already know exactly what's in the RNS.........
This is not good news, but after such a long radio silence from the BoD is news and confirms that things are not going well at PFC but it's not necessary the end.
They are talking about possible fire sale of assets, and have not (yet) breached the requirements of the convents.
With a bit of luck this will stop the continued head long slide in the SP, without this RNS I would have expected an opening price closer to 10p , now I thing we might get a slight bounce and the drift around the 20p level until more details are revealed.
And, at some point those shares that have been shorted will need to be bought back, probably after yet another dilution.
@SuperMoose
It all depends upon what happens at 07:00 on Monday morning. IF there is a RNS that says 'anything' then it could go up or down. IF there is a RNS that says 'we no of no reason blah, blah' then it will go up significantly, but if there is a continued radio silence and our BoD say nothing - then your probably looking at the opening price on Monday morning.
What a cluster f**k our BoD have utterly failed in their duty of care to shareholders, to say nothing allows all the rumours and worst fears to play directly into the market. Even if the RNS is really bad I would prefer to know.
A quick look at Shortracker shows that PFC is currently, as of 28th Nov, the most shorted stock with 7% of the shares shorted, and only positions above 0.5% have to be reported, so it's likely that the true figure is well north of 7%. But, even at 7%, with 522m shares available, that is more than 36m shares that have been shorted and will need to be bought back at some point, unless the company goes to zero.
Yesterday, 28th Nov.
Astaris Capital started to reduce their exposure and reduced the short by 0.45% or 2.3m shares, to 1.17% or 6.1m shares shorted.
While three other players made modest additions to their exposure.
Helikon Investments added 0.09% or a bit less than half a million shares to 1.79% or 9.1m shares shorted.
Whitebox Advisors added 0.09% to 0.72% or 3.75m shares shorted.
Tages Capital added 0.10% or half a million shares to 0.69% or 3.3m shares shorted.
These are extraordinary amounts that need to be covered and it's interesting to see that at least one of the major players is starting to reduce their risk.
It's also curious that during the carnage of todays 17% decline, the 9.75% bond actually continued to rise - up 1.38% on the day, all be it from a low base but it was the seventh straight day in a row that it's gone up.
This has the potential for a monster rally IF the shorts all try to close out their exposure, all it would take is a few words from the BoD to say that they know of no reasons for the rapid decline, etc, etc IF they did that there would a rush of PI jumping in and carnage in short land. The fact that they have not said that, in fact have said nothing - adds exponentially to the problem.
I picked up 10000 at around 23.5 this afternoon in the hope that the BoD will actually say something, anything. It's not investing, it's gambling and I know I could loose my shirt (again), it's binary. BoD does their job, happy days, BoD do nothing and shorts continue to trash the stock - 20th Dec is an eternity.
Good luck folks.
Hi folks, to understand the current SP it might be interesting to look back at the past history of PFC. They have not made any real money since 2019, have had problems with SFO, legacy contracts and inflation. And while winning contacts is often suggested as a reason the SP should go up - any muppet can win a contract, it's the execution of that contract that counts - literally.
I believe that PFC has a real shot at starting to make money in the near future, as some of the legacy issues continue to recede, but the market is not currently betting on PFC doing that. What I do find very encouraging is that our BoD continue to stick their hands in their pockets and buy shares, even as the price goes down. They have done that five times this year and continue to add to sizable holdings - nothing like having your own money on the table to focus minds!
And yes, I topped again today at 45p - keep the faith good people.
The current market cap for GEMD is now less than £16m - for all of the shares. Maybe we should have a 'whip-round' and buy the company - then we can give the current BoD and our illustrious looser their marching orders.
What a bargain this is! If anyone had the slightest interest in developing a diamond mine, they can currently pick up GEMD for less than the engineering consultations and appraisal drilling costs. It's all there for the taking.
I do hope one, or both of the following things happen; that the proposed ban on Russian diamonds is implemented and has a positive impact on the rough diamond price (it should), and/or that someone starts to build a stake in GEMD - but given the current volumes being traded this does appear unlikely.
Dave, et al, winning contracts is good - up to a point.
The real valve to the company, and us share holders, is the successful execution of those contracts both operationally and financially. Winning a contract is an opportunity but it is also a risk.
I fear we will have to wait a while to see the valve of the contract wins reflected in the SP.
When I worked for SLB in the 90's they went, very briefly, on a spree of buying work - any idiot can win a contract, you just have to be the cheapest bidder! They didn't do that for very long!
Not sure if anyone has already posted this as it's a few months old - my apologies if they have. Just another avenue of investigation.
https://www.nasa.gov/aeroresearch/nasa-solid-state-battery-research-exceeds-initial-goals-draws-interest
There have been some interesting discussions here about the potential equity raise of £2.5m
There is another possibility...
147m shares at 1.7p is currently a discount of 82% to the current share price of 9.5p - that's a MASSIVE discount and a huge dilution.
The possibility also exists that 36.4m shares @ 9.5p becomes 36.4m shares at 1.7p = £620k
There will not be two groups of shares, with most trading at 1.7p and a few at 9.5p - whatever the final value is it will apply to all shares equally.
It's difficult to tell where the SP will eventually settle but in my experience it's always closer to the discounted price than the trading price before dilution. Those who have calculated a final value of around 3p per share maybe correct, but they might still end up being too optimistic.
I for one will sit this out and see where it settles, if you have real money in this right now - good luck to you.
That's a VERY good question 4C.
There are certainly more buys than sells in the few weeks, and from what I can see many of them look like most PI buys, with a few chunkier sales in the range of 500k -1m shares, so it looks like real buying and the spread has come down in the last few days too.
But as to why? I'm not sure. Maybe it was just the very low valuation, but I have a few other stocks with similar valuations and none of them are showing any signs of waking up.
Do you have a target for next 12 months 4C?
Hi Mac - welcome back to project Tortoise we missed you - the board has been very quiet over the last few months - just like the SP.
I'm curious. What grounds do you have for thinking that it's up, up and away for the SP??
The only way I can see that the SP will sky rocket is if a rival party starts to make a bid, then it could get interesting. BUT with the two partners holding more than 55% of the stock someone is going to have to be able to drive a wedge between them. That's the only way we'll get rich. But I do agree that the value is there, the rigs are almost certainly worth more than the debt at the moment and the market vale of £61m is very low.
And, the current SP is above the warrant price of 5.75p , so it's possible that some 137m shares might soon be available. Would the bank hold on to them, or sell them, and to whom? Now those are good questions :)
Well it's good to see the shorters get there fingers burned today and their losses will hurt - but it's not in the £100's of millions.
Astaris is the largest short holder listed on shortracker with 1.26% of the equity as of the close yesterday 29th. There are 522.05 million shares of PFC in issue, 1.26% is 6.578 million shares - assuming they are down 30p a share it's only a £2m loss. Still hurts but not end of the world stuff.
As for the future of PFC, I'm a lot more relaxed today than I was yesterday. Keep the faith.
Thanks Blinker, and that's just one of many, many articles along similar lines.
There has been a chronic lack of investment in oil and gas exploration over many years and at some point it will be 'crunch time' when demand exceeds supply. Exactly when is debatable but it is inevitable. We are currently using about 100 million barrels of oil per day - that's a lot of oil supply to have to replace just to stand still and it's not being replaced at anything like that rate.
So, while I'm currently sitting on some paper losses right now, I'm also taking the opportunity on days like today to selectively top-up on oil and gas and especially field service companies.
I'm curious, no one else has commented on the difference between the 'warrant calculation' back in Dec and the issue info from Jan. In the original calculation it was 7.11p for the warrants and 110m were to issued, it's now 5.75 p and 137m were issued. That's a significant increase in dilution, now almost 13.5% ..... :( And, yes I know it's because the SP tanked in Dec.
About the only possible upside is that COULD be 137m shares that someone outside of the two partners could get hold of, if only...
Happy New Year folks, let's hope The Mac is right about his rocket theories, mind you - that did not go so well off Cornwall on Monday evening!! I still think this more of a tortoise but at least one unknown is now out of the way with the issue of the warrants.
Well it looks like we finally know what the next move is, warrants at £0.0711 or 7.11p on a roughly 10% dilution, now that's a lot better than it could have been - no $50m raised at fire sale prices. Or, am I been too optimistic here?