SP8 Oct 2019 13:34
The other key points are we were very keen to address some concerns we’ve seen in the market that people felt that we were running out of money or, for some reason, need to do an emergency placing. We disclosed we have cash balances in excess of £1 million as at the half year and we’ve also reminded investors that we have a number of performance bonds with three separate US states. They amount to $360,000 of which we have already received $60,000 back and we expect $140,000 back before the end of the year, we can obtain these refunds as we are moving out of the oil and gas business and focussing on CBD.
We also have done a deal with a company called Diversion which is a company part-owned by our current Chairman and also our former Chairman. Diversion has a small debt that it owes the company of $125,000 and we have, in return for part satisfaction of that debt, agreed to buy back 950,000 ordinary shares in our company from Diversion and also receive $65,000 in cash from Diversion which will go someway to extinguishing that debt. That tidies up the balance sheet and it just brings a little bit more cash into the company as well.
So, those are the main points that we’ve tried to get across in the announcement.
In addition to that, we’ve demonstrated that we’ve very significantly cut costs in the business compared to last year, we are now down to a run rate operating cost of about £2.5 million per annum. That reflects the cost cutting measures we announced in the AGM 6 weeks ago.