Firering Strategic Minerals: From explorer to producer. Watch the video here.
Just done a few rough calculations based on possible reserves for Phase I and targeted flow rates - I’d imagine that even allowing for that rate dropping off, the IRR of the project should be quite attractive for potential lenders? 20000bopd equates to over 7 million barrels per annum (although obviously initial flow rate won’t be maintained throughout the life of this field). Just a thought anyway!
No great surprise, has looked screwed for a couple of years now and has delivered nothing of any substance - even tried to con investors by setting up the Brazil and China subsidiaries of MFDevCo (just before a placing, literally a day or two), amongst other things!
Whilst layering is illegal it is almost impossible to prove, same goes for spoofing. Although it goes on all the time! I actually don’t bother with L2 any more as you tend to only see what they want you to see and very easy to get a false impression from an order book which can turn around in seconds - even on shares I watched closely and could see the games, actually benefitting from them wasn’t possible most of the time anyway. It’s all just part of algo driven trading and doubt it will ever stop.
They still managed to miss the target and didn’t intersect the upper Captain sands, so whatever way you try to spin it, it wasn’t good news. But I personally don’t think it was anywhere near as bad as the market reaction suggested - although that is always the problem when expectations amongst PIs are too high, and in hindsight it was never going to live up to that anyway, given it was a pilot well! Will be interesting to see if there has been any further selling by LO - the TR1 today related to sales up to the previous day when the SP was in the 50s.
I don't think there is a lot that they can say until they have run further tests and know whether the geology is slightly different to what they interpreted and that led to them drilling the pilot in the wrong location (they may not have missed the edge of the reservoir by much but only testing will be able to confirm or otherwise) - or it is more of a major issue and the previous seismics have been confused between the upper Captain and the lower Captain (which is below OWC), which would question this 'fairway' part of the field. But it shouldn't impact on the phase two area where A3 is to be drilled, nor of course the separate Serenity prospect.
The outcome of this drill is far from ideal - I think part of the problem is that people didn't really understand the purpose of this drill in the first place (not helped by some deliberately giving the impression that the well would be used for future production!). It is far better to encounter issues on a relatively cheap pilot well than it is to run into them at a later date on a horizontal well that turns out not to be optimally positioned. It is certainly a setback, but the oil hasn't all just suddenly disappeared! It also shouldn't impact on the other two upcoming drills either - the A3 one is on the Liberator area earmarked for phase two anyway. Still plenty of risk, but I've added at 30p as compared to the market cap, I see it as being relatively cheap given that it offers two funded appraisal drills in the near term.
How on earth can it sell these given how instrumental the gas is to the cannabis operation (at least according to the RNS back in March justifying why they were getting into this business anyway!)
They’ve had the technology for 2.5 years now (and the private co had it before that) so if it was really likely to make a huge difference it wouldn’t have taken them this long to test it. The tech itself dates back to the 1980s! Yet very little oil is produced in Utah (less than 1% of US output) despite on paper it having large resources in the ground. It’s a good story to string investors along for a few years though...
The problem here is that it isn't a shell and depends what costs are involved with shutting down the existing businesses, in order for it to potentially become a shell. Given that the market cap is only £100k or so, it doesn't look likely that it would be able to raise the cash that it would need in order to get to a cash shell situation.
Just watching at the moment as too many factors which could cause further downside and all coming at the same time - remaining shares still to be sold by FMR (could have still had 8.5 million on Aug 16, so won't be totally out yet as not enough volume since then to churn that along with the other selling/shorting); the Brexit situation, which certainly isn't helping; plus an exit from the FTSE250 will also likely add to the downwards pressure. When things do finally turn though I see good recovery potential here (assuming no sudden sizeable decline in deposits), but I'd prefer to wait and confirm that it has turned, rather than guessing the bottom, as any trend reversal could take weeks/months to play out, so will still be plenty of profit to be made once any such reversal is confirmed.
A possible exit from the FTSE250 at the end of today probably won't be helping here - if that does happen, as looks likely especially with the extra drop today, then it will mean that tracker funds will have to sell (in addition to the current seller). To me it looks cheap already, but that doesn't mean that it can't get cheaper if sentiment remains against it and selling persists.
Britain is not going to fund mining projects outside of the UK where all of the benefit goes to the country where that mine is based (the UK will receive corporation tax and that is it)
Company has stated that it won’t raise equity to refinance the bond. Also worth noting that based on the last accounts, up to the end of 2018, NAV stood at circa $500 million and the shares are now trading at a significant discount to that (not even at 20% of NAV!)
Yes saw that over at GEMD, increased to 17% or something like that. Have seen this sort of thing before on less liquid stocks where they just keep on dropping whilst the selling goes on - but then can have a good bounce (a certain nickel stock that I'm in from sub 2p had similar and is now up over 100%).
Not sure about it being good if those blocks get taken out on the bid though - removing big buy orders like that could see it slide, especially if they are there to provide support rather than necessarily looking to get filled.
Nearly 200 million shares traded since July 25 when Rowe reduced their holding, and would have had around 43 million left at that stage. So it is conceivable that they could have churned most of that by now? Especially as I doubt there have been many other sellers down here and the shorts haven't increased by any significant amount during that period.
Also worth noting that the NAV here as at the end of 2018 was around $500 million - so the current market cap of £70 million is trading at more than an 80% discount to that. This to me seems extreme regardless of concerns over the diamond market and the ability of the company to repay its debts from 2022 onwards as they become due. Most of that NAV is contained in property, plant and machinery as well - so things that could physically be sold (not stuff like goodwill which you see forming the bulk of the assets for some cos!)
Westie, strange that none of them were posting back when the share price dropped to around 1.7p, sentiment was terrible and there was a persistent seller! Anyone would think they'd only just bought in ( the posting history of some certainly looks that way!). The board has gone from being informative to post after post talking about what the MMs had for breakfast and how high the share price is going to 'boom'! Thankfully it is the operational side of things here which will ultimately do the talking!
The original 2020 bonds were repaid early and had a 1% higher interest rate than the 2022 bonds which it now has. Looking at the covenants and likely ratios, I'd be surprised if consolidated net debt to EBITDA is much above 3x, if it is even that high (debt is slightly up on last year, but given how revenue is often weighted then EBITDA should be similar I'd expect). Net finance charge cover should also come within the covenants - plus the fact that the company is generating enough free cash flow to meet these payments anyway, and will gradually be reducing the BEE loan outstanding. Even if things don't improve then it should be at least next June before it come sin any danger of breaching covenants - and as long as the life of mine remains at a decent level then it wouldn't surprise me to see the bonds renegotiated at some point anyway. If there were any real problems relating to the debt holders, the bonds would also be trading at a significant discount to par value.