Member Info for DonkeyOatey

"hopeful of a successful conclusion" HOPEFUL?!?! As Warren Buffet says, "Hope is NOT an investment strategy!" What a bunch of overpaid clowns.

Why was there no announcement that in order to preserve cash, and in recognition of the complete failure of the BoD to get the sale finalized within anything resembling a reasonable time scale, they will all be losing a zero from the end of their salaries?

CHF, I love your thinking - I am now going to go and try to persuade my boss that we need to hire an extra full time team member to do the tasks I'm supposed to do; but don't worry, I'll tell him that I know someone really well qualified and capable and that he should view this request through the lens of me doing a great thing by persuading my highly capable colleague to join the team and get paid a salary to do the job which they will continue paying me to do!

In the event of bonuses being awarded by JOG to themselves for this farm out completion, if one were a skeptic, perhaps one might say:

"You've failed to deliver on the original premise of the company's founding - which was to buy late life producing assets to generate revenue, despite completing a dilutive raise to finance such an acquisition; you've had to bring on board a team of experienced oil men from the former Ithica to get these farm outs done; you've failed to deliver on every previous publically stated timeframe you've issued; you've achived only the lower end of your much publicized 20-25% free carry goal; you've rewarded yourself with easy options and trebled your salary in the process. Could you explain to us why existing shareholders should provide you with a bonus (be it cash or shares, when it comes, and I bet it WILL come) in the form of shareholder cash/dilution for delivering at the low end of expectations and for simply doing a job you've already been paid rather decently to do?

One has to laugh at the nonsense that this is going to be a massive company, worth a fortune, et cetera. The market knows this is just not going to happen, hence the share price so low. Personally, I think it has a lot lower that it could go - I'm not willing to put any money into this myself until we see the market cap in the 15-20m range (which would still be very generous for a company with not one oz of JORCed resource) and, most importantly, until the salaries are slashed. I sit much more on the side of Rothschild who made some pretty public statements about the unsuitability of a certain executive (currently at Arc, and at the time at Bumi) to run a company. All very easy to Google and check for yourself online.

R_T: RAFLMAO, ffs PLEASE tell me you are joking?! This is AIM! These people expect to be rewarded way beyond their salaries - on an annual basis - just for showing up in the office every day. Do you REALLY believe that there won't be huge bonuses for actually doing what they've all already been handsomely rewarded for doing? It's really sweet if you actually are that naive to believe that the options from past years will satisfy them, and I would be THRILLED to be proven wrong!

R_T: What does that have to do with anything? It's simply further evidence that they have already been given more than adequate compensation packages for what they have delivered, imo.

I think the fact that JT and colleagues took such a large chunk of a decent sized raise indicates that they have some plans to deliver decent shareholder value; it contrasts with firms like Thor Mining where Black-and-Decker Mick used to buy 5k's worth in a 100k placing (most of the proceeds of which were used to pay his salary!)

Funny you should mention that, Herron, I was just asking the same thing myself the other day - why do we need a lots of expensive executives when the deal is now basically done? I wouldn't be surprised to see AB and the team getting big bonuses for simply doing the job they were paid quite decently to do. Certainly if we DO see big bonuses, then I think we all need to demand an EGM to start handing out some pick slips to staff who have already been overly generously remunerated, imho.

As for the nice idea of we sell our stake in the FPSO, firstly I'm not entirely sure that we actually have any proprietary rights in the FPSO, we just aren't having to pay for the infrastructure, that's a rather different scenario to the JV partners gifting us ownership in the FPSO. Even if we did, I think you will find that HMRC reserve the right to determine substance over form, so it would be a non-starter as far as I can see.

But we would have to ask the Sage himself for a more definitive answer to that, as I don't deal with accounting or taxation issues in my line of work these days, and haven't dealt with corporate issues for what seems like a lifetime!

Oh my, it seems that the markets "just don't get" Arc!!! With the 2s on the horizon now, I wonder how low this will end up going? Fun times ahead :)

I'm not sure the BoD would be fixated on £10/share; it seems more likely to me that if there is a serious offer on the table, of save £6 or £7, then it would be the most sensible thing, imo, to retain an M&A law firm and investment bank (on a success fee only basis) and then put the company into an FSP under the aim rules, a bit like a slow motion auction, so that the best price can be achieved in a timely manner.

Yes, the tax losses are valuable, will they be a calculation in a potential takeover scenario, I doubt it; they may give a bit more wiggle room for a purchaser to offer at the higher end of what might be considered reasonable, but I highly doubt anyone will value Buchan and add on value for the tax losses.

Hostile bid, hmm not very likely in an industry where everyone works together and knows each other; although that's not to say that a recommended offer might not see some unexpected interest come out of the woodwork; but a low-ball offer which gets rejected by the BoD as materially undervaluing the company and its prospects is unlikely to get accepted by enough holders to make it happen, so seems unlikely.

As for EPL offset on a JOG acquisition, the answer is a pretty simple no! The JV partners will get (or should, unless the goal posts move again) full relief on all of the Buchan infrastructure spend, but it's not possible, as far as I can see, to offset a takeover bid against the EPL.

Stopthebs, perhaps learn some basic English before you come onto a public forum to impart your words of wisdom? "donkeys' life" oh dear- "donkeys' lives", or "donkey's life". I hope for your sake that your skills with the English language are not representative of your gambling, oops I meant investing, skills!

Agreed completely, Takenorisk, and as the share price continues its slide into the 2s, no doubt the usual suspects will be telling everyone that the market just doesn't get Arc! I suspect the reality is that the market gets Arc completely, hence noone wants to take a risk here, especially after researching the past history of the Executive Chairman at Bumi where he was shown the door by Rothschild who made comments in public to the effect that NvS is not leadership material. All in the public domain, and easily verifiable (despite the attempts to the rampers to paint this as a good thing!!!)

Yes, it's true that shares are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. I suspect however that anyone wanting a stake in JOG will face another problem - the major holders would only be willing to sell at a price which reflects the value they place on JOG. It's not always a buyer's market (nor a buyers' market!) If a small percentage of people are daft enough to sell their shares for 1/3rd of what NEO and Serica have been willing to effectively pay for the same barrels, that's their look out. I suppose it might be possible to sneakily accumulate 5-10% of the company without following the declaration rules (there's no penalty of any kind for non-compliance, after all.) But noone would be able to amass enough shares to do what has happened in Serica, without driving the price up enormously (at which point, I would be happy, since there are strict rules about offer premiums by parties, or concert parties, as a percentage of the highest price paid for their recent purchases.)

The upshot of it all is that, if the market doesn't more accurately value what JOG has - reflected in the share price - then I suspect a bid will come from an industry player or even private equity looking for a decent return, especially if one believes the talk that the PoO will be dramatically higher in the future.

I'm not willing to vote for a deal under £7 myself, I've held this long and passed on the opportunity to sell in the £3 level (a mistake with hindsight, since I could've bought them back under £2 if I'd had the b4lls.) I'm happy to keep waiting - with the lowest carbon footprint of any NS oil project, and fully funded through to first oil, I will wait either for a sensible buyout price or for dividends from 2027 onwards, I'm satisfied either way.

With all good wishes to the Sage of Buckfastleigh for all of his insight and wisdom over the years.

What are you talking about CHF? Why would AB or JOG have any say in what price SQZ accept, be it low ball or otherwise? Neither JOG nor AB have any holding in Serica!

As for why would Serica get taken out on the cheap - why don't you look at the net result of the reverse takeover with Tailwind? They now have a sufficiently large shareholder who can basically dictate any terms since their holding is too high to enable a hostile takeover by anyone else. Ie they have enough of a holding to block any other offers, such that their offer will be a mafia type offer, one which cannot be refused (unless SQZ shareholders want to end up with illiquid shares in an unlisted company!)

Yes, I think Serica has great assets, but I share DU's concerns about a low ball offer from the new largest shareholder brought in via the reverse takeover.

As for the value of our 20%, I would think the very bare minimum is a pro-rata amount of the amount the farm-in partners are paying for their shares of the project, which makes me think it is absolutely worth - absolutely no less than - c$220m for JOG's share of the project (assuming the $1B total infrastructure projections are about right, NEO has paid something like $540m for a 50% share of JOG's assets, so we should be worth no less than 40% of that amount.)

It seems that the entire market is of completely ignorant and stupid by only valuing Arc shares at 3.5p and a select few of Arc rampers, oops I meant holders, realize that the company is really worth billions! lol what an absolute joke of a company this is. Paying six figure salaries to each of the management to spend 3 years arranging a joint venture for drilling which the market has rightly seen through as not being such a company maker for Arc. And on top of it all, their only real (formerly) liquid asset - the Tingo shares - now appear to be worthless as Tingo is investigated as a possible fraud! When will the individual responsible for the DD on this debacle be releaved and when will he be resigned as a result of this massive failure?

Sewingmachine: I think perhaps you need to call the sewing machine factory and order a service, since it appears you've malfunctioned and started spewing random, misleading information! As far as Tingo share values being irrelevant, allow me to quote you a fact (I know you rampers hate those) it's taken from Arc's own Dec 2022 Annual Report released to the market via RNS in July of this year:

"In addition, Arc held a US$5m secured loan note dated 19 March 2020 issued by Golden Square (“Loan Note”).

The Loan Note has since been replaced by the issuance to Arc of 3 million shares in a US listed company, Tingo

Inc. (OTC: TMNA) (“Security Shares”), a agri-fintech business in Africa, in full and final settlement of the Loan

Note."

So, as far as being irrelevant, what it actually shows is that they've accepted 3m shares in what now looks like a worthless entity which has been suspended by the SEC in the USA pending investigations into fraudulent misstatement. So with the shares valued around a couple of dollars, that's a $6m loss to Arc's held-for-sale securities, ie as good as cash (or was!)

Main question: who was responsible for the due diligence for this debacle, and will he be resigning?

The "Executive Chairman", Nick von Schirnding, has accepted millions of shares in Tingo in consideration for Arc's gold project. That's simply a fact. For months now, some of us have been pointing out that Tingo is being questioned as a complete fraud; the SEC has now suspended Tingo shares, that's also a fact. So when are we going to see NvS come clean about i) who was responsible for the due diligence in accepting these now suspended shares in return for Arc's gold assets; ii) whether he will be taking accountability for this major loss of liquidity for Arc (since the value of the shares represented more than the Anglo cash consideration due in the first year) and will he be finally doing the decent thing and resigning given he has been head of the company during the entire Tingo debacle?