Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Imagine how happy they must be that Covid-19 means today's AGM is closed door, and they just have to suffer 40 minutes of Q&A on IMC. In a normal year they would have got slaughtered today.
"Our proactive approach to cost management during the year", says Mike. Like giving Jason an 85% pay rise?
KSA - "Building on our long history in the region", 10 years and still no trial, and they're trying to paint that as a positive, like trying to polish a t*rd really.
"Mike is spending more time on PR and adding a Spanish language site"
They've already got the Spanish website up -
https://www.quadrisefuels.com/es/
I'm expecting Theresa May to be appointed as our PR guru soon, she could be the missing piece of the jigsaw. As well as Green MSAR, they'll soon be launching a Red, White and Blue MSAR.
"MSAR means MSAR - and we're going to make a damn good success of it"
Just two and a half months ago, in the Sept 9th presentation (19 minutes in roughly), Jason said they were looking at starting LONO trials before the end of the year, probably early Q1 2021.
https://www.investormeetcompany.com/investor/meeting/business-update
Now it's been kicked down the road until H2 2021. Another 6 month delay, par for the course with this company, the same old story, what an absolute disgrace.
They should change the name of this company to Hartley's Emulsion Fuel, because they've produced more jam than Hartley's in the last 15 years. It's never jam today though.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/817862968/jam_tomorrow_400x400.jpg
My questions are in, they're not very pretty, it will be interesting to see his response, if they are asked in the first place. I presume the volume received might be much larger than previous Q&As, so they might have no choice but to pick a selection, otherwise the meeting would go on until Sunday. A lot of them will be repetitions in any case, there's not much point in asking 84 almost identical questions about their over-inflated salaries.
A missing link? I have no problem criticising this company and the BoD, they do deserve a lot of it, but they're like angels compared to TOM and PQE, supremely competent angels at that. When they RNS'd their share options back in August, the exercise price was 7.5p, a more than 100% premium to what the share price was at that time. If they had gone the PQE route, the options would have been priced at 2p, and they would also have changed the price of all the previous options to 2p.
I really hope we can get these LONO contracts signed followed up by something from KSA. Not just because of what it would do to the share price, but these Utah cowboys would go right to the bottom of our In-Tray.
"Quadrise is aiming to initiate at least one letter of no objection (LONO) project with at least one of these shipping line operators by Christmas as these trials are lengthy, typically involving 4,000 operating hours and lasting six to nine months."
Just over 4 weeks until Christmas, if they are hopeful of this happening then I presume they will wait until after those potential announcements before doing a placing, if Res. 6 is passed at the AGM. Surely not even Kirk would be dumb enough to do it the week before a significant RNS.
It appeared here at 8am with the QFI ticker symbol, not an RNS but an EQS.
https://www.investegate.co.uk/Index.aspx?sector=AIM&date=20201124
Poor old MBS, gotta laugh.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Saudi-Aramcos-Landmark-IPO-Is-Costing-The-Kingdom-Billions.html
"In essence, Aramco has been left to take on debt to pay the people who bought it shares, which is akin to a family who decides that it has to sell the precious family silver to pay off debts but then ending up having to take out more debts to pay people to buy the silver."
Regarding this 33% in Resolution 6, the pessimistic and sceptical view would be they want to use this to do a placing to ensure their ridiculous wages are paid for the next 2 years, 350 million new shares at 1.4p added to the current kitty would almost be enough to do that.
With a rose-tinted spectacle view, could they want the 33% to fund potential projects next year? AFC Energy did a massive placing in the summer, raising about £30 million, which they will need for scaling up manufacturing as they finally start commercial roll-out. If, and it's a very big if, we got the share price here back into double figures on the back of 2 LONO trial contracts, let's say 12p, 350 million new shares at around 10p would give them the potential to raise £35 million. Exhibit 9 in that Edison report shows the Capex for a standard refinery project in tolling model would be $53.5m, around £40m. Although I always thought the Capex would come in the form of debt.
I suppose it boils down to how much you can trust Kirk, I've got too many of his quotes engraved in my head from the last 3 or 4 years which turned out to be a complete load of tosh, so I do now find it very difficult.
One other strange thing I noticed in that report, Pacific Green Technologies are listed as a partner in Ecuador, maybe for the Esmeraldas power plant? I'm sure we've never been told of that connection before.
Courtesy of Quorum on twitter -
https://www.edisongroup.com/publication/the-clean-solution-to-a-global-problem/28303
Paid for by QFI obviously, another clue that a massive placing is on its way if Resolution 6 is passed on Friday?
https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Chief_Executive_Officer_(CEO)/Salary
Average Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Salary in United Kingdom = £81,744
So why is Jason being paid 4.5 times the national average, a ludicrous £370,000? Especially considering his record and the company's past performance, 15 years of complete failure, they have achieved absolutely nothing, apart from ****ing £50m of our money up against a wall.
Even if you add in the extra for being employed in London, it's still way over the top.
Ceo Salaries in London, UK Area - Average Base Pay £119,891 / yr
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/london-ceo-salary-SRCH_IL.0,6_IM1035_KO7,10.htm
Let's also not forget, the first thing he had to do after promotion was book himself on a leadership training course, because by his very own admission, his leadership and communication skills weren't up to scratch!! You couldn't make it up. I wonder who paid for the course, probably us, add it to his expenses.
The resolutions and proxy form are here -
https://www.quadrisefuels.com/investor-relations/documents-circulars/#circulars
I would suggest you call your broker first thing tomorrow morning regarding voting, they should be able to help you. Depending on which broker you use, it might be possible to do it online, or you might be able to send them a secure message on their platform.
IF, and that IF is in bold with the largest available font, they still plan to commence this Morocco trial in January, and they also hope to start the LONO trials in early 2021, they have to start the installation of an MMU in the next week or so. I am presuming that the fuel for both will be produced at the same location, Cepsa being the obvious favourite. January is now less than 6 weeks away and there is also the holiday period coming up before that.
The BOD have had a strange habit of releasing news in the days before or even on the morning of an AGM in the preceding years, either by design or complete coincidence. I don't know if the fact the AGM is closed this year will make a difference, but let's see what the next week brings. We're also due this Green MSAR launch, Jason said in the last presentation that it should only be weeks away once the patent application had been lodged, that was almost 6 weeks ago.
My faith, trust and confidence in this lot has never ever been lower, another step down from here and I'll be calling them snake-oil salesmen and moving over to ADV** to join the gang of loonies there. That faith will of course be restored significantly if they actually managed to deliver something, so over to you Captain Kirk. If you don't pull something from a hat this week, you might be in for a bit of a roasting on Friday lunchtime. You can try your best to only answer the nice, easy questions, but there might not be too many of them.
Oh yeah it's all down to the current share price Amur, if we could get a share placing away at 5p after good news, 5% would allow almost 54 million new shares to be issued, so £2.69m could be raised. That would see them until the end of 2021 easily. 54 million new shares at 1.5p however would only give them £810k, that probably wouldn't even cover 4 months. Even the 8% authorised back in 2015 would only give them 6 months cash at 1.5p. Hence the reason they're probably asking for 33% this year.
Unless we get some news coming out of left field, so much is now riding on us getting the contracts signed for these 2 LONO trials in the next month or so. To avoid another massive dilution, it's an absolute must. We were at 11 - 12p when the Maersk trials were underway, if we can get 2 shipping companies signed up, 10p could be a possibility, even with the larger number of shares now in circulation compared to 2016.
I just did a quick check to see how this year's Resolution 6 compared against previous years. In 2016 there wasn't one, but I guess we had just done a fundraise so it wasn't necessary. For the other years we had -
2014 - 5%
2015 - 8%
2017 - 5%
2018 - 5.79%
2019 - 5%
2020 - 33.3%
So that must give you a good clue to what their plans are for future funding. It might also suggest they're not too hopeful of getting the 2 LONO trials signed soon. News of that magnitude should get us back to 5p a share minimum, maybe even 10p, so the standard 5% of previous years would probably have sufficed. 33.3% is only really needed if we are going to be stuck with a shareprice close to 1p. Not particularly reassuring.
Of course it might only be a safety net, a last resort, but coming from Kirk's gob you've always got to fear the worst. I wouldn't believe anything the man says and personally I think he makes Chris Grayling look seriously competent. He's got the cheek to try and sell this to us as giving them "the maximum flexibility to respond to market opportunities in 2021". What a load of old tosh, he must think we were all born yesterday. It's a bit of an insult really.
It's performance related pay 46G, plain and simple, as you alluded to earlier. Ronaldo and Messi are currently paid a hell of a lot more than the strikers of Wycombe Wanderers and Burton Albion. Not many people would disagree with that, they generate much more value for their respective clubs and bring a lot of success while entertaining the fans in the process. Our lot seem to think they are worth Premiership striker level of remuneration while playing for a Sunday pub team who have yet to have a shot on target. We have hit the post a few times though to be fair, and the occasional buoy as well.
Another Kirk classic from the Notice of AGM, under Resolution 6 -
"The Directors have NO PRESENT INTENTION to use this authority but consider that the proposed disapplication of pre-emption rights is desirable, in the current circumstances "
So hands up anybody who believes him. Anyone? Given his previous form?
Spot on playtime, I hadn't realised until I was looking again at last year's Annual Report a few days ago that Jason had been given such a massive pay rise in February for his promotion to CEO. £370,000 a year he must be on now, not £270k as you stated, up from the £200k he was on as COO. The £71k extra compared to last year only included 5 months as CEO. That's just his salary, when you add in social security costs, pension and other benefits, by my calculations it will cost us £437,000 to employ him for the next 12 months. Not including his flights (business class obviously, wouldn't want him slumming it in premium economy), 4-star hotels and a generous expense account, let's call it a round £500,000.
WTF has he done in the last 15 years to deserve that? One of the world's worst salesmen and he gets paid more than twice the prime minister. Mind you, Boris is just as useless as this lot, and it's the same hot air that comes out all of their mouths, they just tell you what you want to hear.
If they think they're getting away with a fundraise of 300 million shares at around 1p a go to fund their lavish lifestyles for another year, they can go and take a run and jump. Unless these LONO trials get signed off in the next month, the whole lot of them can reduce their salaries to £60k a year until we've got something in the bag. Enough is enough of this gravy train. The LONO trials are probably the only thing which might move the share price in the near term, it is now absolutely imperative that these progress ASAP, it might be the only way to get funding away at a decent price. Utah has been delayed again and that consortium of companies is a basket case anyway, and Morocco won't be going commercial until at least H2 2021, a trial in progress there won't move the share price one iota.
It made me laugh reading something in the Annual Report, Bryan Sanderson left in July this year "to assist the Company with its cost reduction initiatives." He was only on £28k a year, that's not even enough to pay Jason's wages for a month now!!!! How about they all take their snouts out the trough to assist with their "cost reduction initiatives." Until they actually achieve something material with this company, by which time they might deserve it.