Member Info for dickupham

https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5188709&span=1

its..........not it's

269m shares in issue @7p p/s = c.£19m.

SQZ should have £200m+ in the bank, n'est pas? And with more rolling in daily. What's your estimate, NK?

7p? They were due to pay out 5p (I reckon) before Covid came along and it was decided to be ultra cautious. Then they stayed ultra cautious when there was no need for it. Directors love cash in the bank and all options open to them, including helping themselves. SQZ's directors no longer seem to me to be focused on what shareholders want. If they're trying to find another BKR to increase production and reserves, they might do well to think again, because it ain't gonna happen. BKR was a one-off, never to be repeated. SQZ was chosen; we got to benefit in spades. My concern is that if they do manage to make an acquisition (perhaps in the process blowing a lot of the cash that's been accumulating for a while now - and is set to continue or even increase if Russia carries on as it is) it will dilute margins and weaken the model. Acquisitions rarely manage to deliver the synergies projected in advance. It's just what happens (or rather 'doesn't happen')

Great returns have been produced for shareholders over the last 5 or 6 years but nothing carries on forever. My preference would be for the directors to take a good offer and leave future growth to someone bigger. I have concerns about the market failing to ascribe what many existing shareholders would see as a fair price to the shares moving forward. The facts are all very well (production massively increased now that BKR's complete, great extraction cost per boe etc) but there are many factors outside the company's and the directors' control, not least the wildly fluctuating price of gas. However good things might look, oil & gas investment always involves above average risk. Period.

All the above might conspire to make future SP growth slower than anticipated by many. I hope it won't happen but it might.

In the meantime let's at least have a decent dividend PLEASE. 10p is minimum afaic - preferably more. It doesn't have to be inked in for the future - sensible directors acting in everyone's best interests would find it easy to offer guidance about future expectations. I'm no longer sure that what the directors have planned would match up with what I and others would prefer SQZ to look like. Greed always seems to rear it's ugly head at some stage, which has become an increasing concern of late.

GL whatever your aspirations for the Co

jmofwiw
always dyor

.........one for you, ten for me
.........one for you, ten for me

No - let's make it one for you, fifteen for me, shall we? And we don't want to pay out all that money in dividends, do we? Might take the price down and make our well-deserved awards to ourselves less valuable.

Oink, oink

dyor

......... highest ppb since Oct 2014

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/brent-crude-oil

Greener101 - the message to take is that an eternal optimist evidently spent £10k buying more shares in JOG yesterday @ 134.5p a pop. Can't think who it might have been, but he's probably almost completely bald, somewhat overweight and deluded enough to at one stage earlier today have believed that England's cricketers (if indeed they justifiably fit that description) might scrape a meaningless win out of the 5th test.

I'll start to get seriously impatient if there's no positive news by the end of February (I'm talking this year btw). Have to allow the NKOTB enough time to put together a deal that's fair to both sides. Haven't heard any chinese whispers but activity levels are probably a lot higher than they have been for some time. There's been a marked change of sentiment in the industry since the dark days of early 2020 when BC fell to the high $20s. Even our beloved Government now seems to recognise that the North Sea needs nurturing, not shutting down. Oilcos' capex plans have been rekindled so the outlook to me looks a lot more positive.

Do the opposite of what I'm hinting at and you might make some money. My personal holding is at its highest level ever.

It might be worth looking back to late 2019 and earlier presentations and checking out who JOG's near neighbours are in the CNS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMjwb13TFCo

dyor

https://www.aquis.eu/aquis-stock-exchange/member?securityidaqse=JOG.GB

As I wrote: investing isn't about feeling holy.

Ref Ms Miggins, very few people's fathers were either lords or landed gentry and a relatively low % of children are or were privately educated. I chose to send my two kids to independent schools, but it was more about the sports and other opportunities (music, challenging extra curricular activities etc) than about academic achievement. They didn't board because we ourselves, as parents, wanted to instil in them the values we believed were important. Successive governments have sought to destroy the notion that children are far more likely to prosper in life - and hold what would be seen by most as decent values - if they are raised in traditional two parent (generally not of the same sex) families, where the parents are seen as role models and children feel secure, loved and valued. Nowadays anyone and everyone is encouraged to have children regardless of age, status or circumstance; single, multiple or no partner/spouse/gender. It is a recipe for disaster and the disasters have been flooding in for some time now. Gangs are substituted for families - simply to give the child born into loveless chaos a sense of belonging. I'm no sociologist and don't need to be. It isn't rocket science. Kids need to be loved and feel secure.

Education is as important as anything in determining an individual's life chances, many parents who educate their kids privately do so out of love for their children. They make sacrifices to afford the fees. What should be blindly obvious to anyone with any sense (which doesn't include politicians) is that a child's formative years inevitably determine that child's future life chances. Life doesn't have to be all about money. And not everyone makes the accumulation of wealth their main aim. There's nothing to prevent anyone (particularly if they have a reasonable educational background - being able to read and write is a start) from, for instance, establishing and running their own plumbing business. But hard work is needed, and sacrifices have to be made if a business is to grow and become successful. All sorts of help is given to aspiring entrepreneurs of all types and sizes. What a lot of people who choose employment instead don't do is save for the future. They are the overwhelming majority and their wages, except in the public sector, are paid by businesses created by the people I refer to above, who were prepared to make sacrifices and take risks. Many workers think it's ok to spend their wages on things that provide immediate enjoyment or are fashionable to own. T'was always thus. Then, when they come to retirement age, they expect their OAP to provide fully for their needs, which it never will because the UK Government is as bust as a rat. The link is to the national debt. Add on unfunded public sector index linked pensions, unfunded OAPs and onerous PFI leases and you're closer to the real picture
https://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

dyor

Maybe Mrs Miggins down the road should have put something aside for a rainy day instead of spending (probably on herself) whatever money passed through her hands when she was working, which is what others will have done - it might be called: "saving for a rainy day". Then then she wouldn't be bleating: "I've spent all my vouchers, now it's fair you should be giving me some of yours".

Investing isn't about feeling holy.

A 10p dividend (for instance) would cost the company shareholders own (not the directors or anyone else) around £27m, which is peanuts in light of the cash presently sitting in SQZ's bank accounts (unless something very untoward has happened which the directors haven't told us about) and is accumulating daily at a ferocious rate. There a precious few times I can recall from the past when events in investee companies have been strongly in investors' favour. A well-executed once in a lifetime deal (BKR) combined with a rapid rise in gas prices has put SQZ in a very favourable position.

And you seem to think Mrs Miggins down the road should be catered for first? I don't. As I write the directors are probably searching frantically for an investment opportunity to take a few hundred million out of shareholders' reach, with the promise of "very significant rewards in the future", when the only certainty is "very significant rewards for the directors in the present".

Please pay me a very worthwhile dividend, at which point I'll be able to decide whether I want to lob half of it in Mrs Miggins's directions

dyor

.....not my most eloquent offering - apologies. I was in rant mode, but hopefully you get where I'm coming from.

https://www.ft.com/content/740f8f3a-114f-4d58-ab74-a7221d64643f

Johnson will go for whatever makes him most popular (with voters, not his fellow MPs, who'll also go for what makes them the most popular). They just don't learn. The Treasury had nil tax revenue from the North Sea for several years from about 2013 onwards until very recently. Oil prices had been incredibly volatile for several years, before it became clear the OGA was doing a pretty good job at restoring the situation to something approaching normal (if there is a "normal" in this industry). The whole industry had been throw into turmoil when the Brent Crude price fell off a cliff in 2014, then continued to fall for two years thereafter. I, along with many other investors in the sector, lost an absolute packet. Where was the Government then to help the industry recover from a situation not of the UK's or any individual O&G co's making? The industry had to dig itself out of the hole it was in only with the "help" of a corporation and petroleum tax reduction to a level that was still twice the rate charged on every non O&G co's profits.

After a modest industry recovery from early 2016 onwards, the BC price then again fell off a cliff when Covid struck in 2019. When combined with the anti oil & gas movement championed by people like Miss Ugly-Swede and her populist political followers, the effect on the O&G industry, which most people are too thick to realise can't just be shut down because it would be sheer folly. To these thickos it's a worthy cause - and that's all that counts. Investment in the NS has been and and remains extremely unpredictable simply because the future of oil & gas in these strange times is is uncertain at best. Conventional measures of value are out of the window. The actions of the "save the planet NOW" brigade will in all probability cause Britain to become even more reliant on imported oil & gas (with a much greater carbon footprint) if it is to meet it's needs for the next few decades at least.

I say again, where were the Government subsidies (the opposite of windfall taxes) when oil prices were in the $20s and NS O&G companies were being sold for peanuts or going out of business? Were people complaining that fuel pump prices were too low and their heating bills should be higher to sustain tax revenue for the Treasury? I don't believe they were. Funny that.

This is modern Britain with modern politicians (people without moral principle who'll do anything for votes) at the helm. The Treasury exists to support failure. I doubt many of those making the most noise about energy bills that are £20pw higher are cancelling their SKY TV subs, reducing their excessive junk food consumption, cancelling holidays or reducing the number of pints they sink in a week.

As for BP's disastrous CEO, Looney and his looney outbursts that have halved BP's market worth since he took over, he'd do well to stfu. So far his recipes have halved BP's value.

dyor

Unlikely, I'd have thought, MP. Shell has been divesting from the UKCS in latter years and recently suffered a setback in Shetland that must have shaken its confidence moving forward. What interest Shell has shown over the past few years has been in gas, as far I can tell.

PE might be the answer (or at least a part of it) in JOG's case.

Everything is just guessing as this is all we can do. I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of clear guidance provided by JOG as to how it expects to move forward so as to create real value, instead of just talking about it in riddles.

JOG had a market cap of £40m back in 2017. Since then £40m has been raised from shareholders and largely spent. And today's market cap?£46m.

So where's the value certain people tell us they've been great at adding? As far as I can tell the market reckons the £40m raised since 2017 has produced value of £6m.

It must be a case of 'abracadabra'.

I haven't totally lost hope but it's waning fast............

all imo
dyor

https://www.investegate.co.uk/jersey-oil---38--gas-plc--jog-/rns/standard-form-for-notification-of-major-holdings/202201061354026837X/

Reduced by 52.119 (5.15%) shares to 4.99%. As an institutional investor there is now no obligation to notify the market of further reductions. The 3% threshold doesn't apply to IIs; 5% is the threshold on the way down.

That's if I understand the situation correctly.

dyor

Re: "Still, Deltic did ok today, (the next Serica :-) "...................

............had you been drinking when you made that statement?

Algy Cluff ducked out leaving the hapless Graham Swindells (an accountant it would be hard to describe as anything other than second rate - he had joined what was then called Cluff Natural Resources as CFO after failing to make partner in PwC & E&Y). I held about 1% of CLNR by the time Algy, with whom I had lunch on one occasion and was able to deduce he was no longer interested, abandoned ship. I was a bit slow to reduce as I already viewed Swindells as an arrogant ***** who wasn't worth backing. The result was that I and many other s/hs were subject to huge dilution, as Swindells embarked on an equity raise of £15m, increasing the shares in issue from about 550m to 1.4bn. He and Nunn shyly accepted 20m more options each, that nicely complemented the staggering pay rises they also found fit to accept. The terms of the farmout with Shell (which too nearly 2 years to find) were lousy, in that there is no carry on a Pensacola exploration drill and only a 75% carry (max USD25m) on Selene. More salary increases and options awards have followed such that Swindells and Nunn now hold c.50m options each, the vast majority exercisable at 2p or less. In the 2020 financial statements Swindells is shown as being paid £260k and Nunn £245k.

All this in a company that it seems to me doesn't have sufficient funds to pay its share of forthcoming exploration drills, let alone ongoing development costs that would follow successful drilling results. The above suggests to me that more funds will have to be raised if DELT is to survive and maybe prosper. One thing you can be sure of is that the directors - Swindells and Nunn in particular - will keep their own nests very well feathered with further salary increases and soft options awards.

On the positive side, the recent JV with Cairn might produce something worthwhile for s/hs. Cairn might decide it doesn't see much merit moving forward with a cash-strapped DELT around its neck and decide to make an offer? Who knows?

I'm happy enough with the action I took in selling the 5.5m shares in CLNR I held at a loss of about £30k, as I put 1/3rd of the proceeds into SQZ at c.110p and 2/3rds into JOG at c.65p

Deltic Energy ain't no Serica and Swindells ain't no Flegg.

The statement you made was irresponsible and dangerous to people's wealth. Other than that I found it quite amusing.

GL whatever
all imo. Dyor

.......... I suppose the question is when is enough, enough...........

.............."enough" is "more"

HNY to you too, NewK.

Fwiw my view is that it's a lot more likely SQZ's decision makers are looking to expand the business (by acquisition or buy-in to assets with promise) than sell the company. Such a strategy would undoubtedly put some very substantial paper gains made by existing shareholders at risk, but since when was what benefits shareholders ever a priority for listed company directors, if it clashes with what's best for them?

Think about what lands them the most and you'll probably have a good steer on what the future holds for small fry like us. I sold 1/8th of my holding when gas prices peaked in the run up to Christmas (I managed to get 266p). This was so I wouldn't feel a complete idiot if a new year update or other news fails to impress the market - and we perhaps also find out hedging opportunities were passed over.

In hope rather than expectation I've bought a few more JOG (where something has to happen soon - I just hope it's something that benefits s/hs rather than just the Board) and will leave the rest in the bank. The usual wisdom is to listen to what I have to say, then do the opposite, so make of my recent activity what you will. The way I view it is that there's no such thing as a bad profit, let alone one of 1100%.

In my book SQZ is still very good value at present levels. But unexpected things can sometimes happen, which is why de-risking has been applied (to a limited extent)

dyor

Good stuff NewK - thanks for sharing your thoughts.

moorlaner - is it really you after all this time?!! If it is, you may recall I used to post on ii as 'eagle51' and was positive about TRAP's future in new hands. I averaged down at favourable prices to the tune of about 12x after JOG reversed in and then added more (I should have put more money into Serica Energy instead). have always believed there would be a successful outcome in the hands of AB & RL and was very disappointed to see RL depart recently. I expect it was for sound reasons. Although he looks a good deal older than me, in fact he is slightly younger at nearly 71 - clearly he hasn't looked after himself as carefully as I've done over the years. Everything in moderation and all that, eh? He probably deserves a rest, assuming he wants one.

Not sure about the timing of anything going on (or not going on) here anymore. It's pure guesswork. What a state to be in after all the spin that's been put to us over such a long period. People can generally handle the truth, whereas talking in riddles causes uncertainty and destroys trust. It isn't rocket science.

HNY to all. I'm not going to talk about 2022 and what it might bring for shareholders. Wolf has been cried too often in the past.

One day, Rodney.............

dyor

I omitted the end of an important sentence:

..........."I wish I could truthfully state I had great confidence in SQZ's in-house finance team to make sure the cash profits that are currently flowing in as a result of concerns about future supplies will continue to flow in well into the future as a direct result of a very carefully thought-out approach to hedging" .

The following was stated in the operations update on 9 December: "Serica continues to maintain a modest gas price hedging programme with approximately 20% of retained gas and liquids production covered in the second half of 2021, thereby allowing the company to benefit from full market prices on around 80% of its production. A similar percentage of gas hedging is projected for 2022".

Strikes me that instead of (or perhaps in addition to) recruiting whoever they tweeted recently they'd hired, they urgently need to appoint someone who has proven expertise in all forms of futures. The amounts at stake are astronomical and the potential for serious error is huge. If I was in charge at SQZ I'd be hedging a darned sight more than 20% of future production with gas prices at all-time highs. The world won't put up with ever-increasing gas prices forever; at some point there'll be compromise.

What cannot be disputed is that SQZ, given the unique space it occupies, is making a fortune. The risk relating to a sharp and sudden fall in gas prices per therm has to be taken very seriously indeed. I wish I could truthfully state I had great confidence in SQZ's in-house finance team to make sure the cash profits that are currently flowing in as a result of concerns about future supplies. As I understand the situation, oil & gas futures contracts can be settled for cash (ie they aren't necessarily settled by delivery or uptake of the volumes being traded). Thus basic prices seriously affected by speculation (supply v demand sets prices). The balloon might burst - it's all in the future. The last time I did any research on the subject (in relation to oil futures) I discovered that only 1 in about 25 forward contracts were actually settled by the delivery or uptake of the oil subject to all the bets.

How would holders of SQZ shares feel if it became apparent in due course that only 20% of production had been hedged at the kind of prices we're currently seeing, when spot prices had fallen to half or less of what they are today? Take the risks out of play, I say.

NKOTB - Capex attracts 100% initial allowances. You rightly remind us of the additional 25% relief introduced to encourage investment. I can't say how much tax SQZ will pay on its profits as I don't have any reliable numbers to work with. My (educated) guess, however, is that the effective rate of tax will be a good deal less than 40%. Push me further? 30%??? Profits in H2 2021 and throughout 2022 should be substantial, but much in 2022 will depend on gas prices. Hedge sensibly and we should be in clover. Hedging shouldn't be viewed as an accounting policy (which is what was implied in the 9 Dec RNS). It's a separate industry altogether.

Just my thoughts on the subject. I don't say they're right, but I do wonder if Messrs CW and Flegg and the ever so safe new CFO have their eyes firmly fixed on the ball. Someone who knows how to contact MF might ask some questions.......

dyor