Member Info for HeadInTheSand

It'll be a snowjob. Such things almost always are.

However in 12 months' time, if George has still manfully kept to his so far unwavering track record of utter non-delivery on anything at all, I'd seriously like to think he won't then be allowed yet another year of richly rewarded yet totally incompetent performance.

Baits and that's all fine and absolutely as it should be.

However to publicly spout major misinterpretations of an RNS (whether deliberately or through a lack of attention to detail) is another thing altogether.

Baits, seriously? Can you not read an RNS? Here... let me help.

Here's what ANGS said via RNS yesterday:

"Angus Energy plc (AIM: ANGS) is pleased to announce that, further to the commitments of between £8 and £9 million communicated on 22 February 2021..."

So, ANGS refers to the "commitments" it mentioned on the 22nd of February - so let's take a look at the wording of that RNS as well. Here's what the Feb RNS said (and I'll capitalise some rather important wording used therein just for you):

"Angus Energy plc (AIM: ANGS) is pleased to announce, further to the RNS of 19 January 2021 that the Company has received a "BEST EFFORTS" expression of commitment in the form of a CONDITIONAL Mandate Letter, for between £8 and £9 million toward the proposed £12 million Saltfleetby Equipment Finance and Field Development Loan Facility from a major multi-national institution (the "Mandate Letter"). The Mandate commitment is CONDITIONAL ALSO on the participation of other institutions and investors for the balance of £3 to £4 million."

So in fact, precisely no firm or confirmed financing commitments were announced by the company on 22nd February.

If ANGS was in a position yesterday to say that funding had in fact been secured, it would have said "We're pleased to announce that, further to the RNS of Feb 22nd, all commitments have now been confirmed". It did not say that - it just referred back to the nebulous state of play as expressed by itself on Feb 22nd.

Moreover and again looking at the no doubt carefully chosen language used in the Feb 22nd RNS as quoted above, any smart investor would have noted this:

"The Mandate commitment is CONDITIONAL ALSO on the participation of other institutions and investors..."

Not "solely conditional", but "conditional ALSO", i.e. amongst other things.

So - and only going by the words used by the company itself, rather than relying on wishful thinking or confirmation bias - we still have no newsof any confirmed funding as of yet, let alone the bizarre claim that the loan facility is "oversubscribed". To believe something is "oversubscribed" when all/some of the "commitments" remain "best efforts", "conditional", "indications" or "soft commitments" is naive in the extreme.

I'll go on to say that ANGS' track record of accuracy in its RNSed information is suspect in the extreme, given repeated examples of things it has announced that when measured against reality turned out not to be in the least accurate.

Finally, if I were you, I wouldn't go citing Ocelot as any sort of perceptive font of all knowledge on ANGS For weeks now, Ocelot has been maintaining that there was £20 million on the table just waiting for ANGS to sign on the dotted line. That of course was a quite deliberately disingenuous wild exaggeration - as its latest RNS shows, not even the company itself has dared to attempt spinning things that far.

Wake up - the devil is as always in the detail and the wording chosen.

Ocelot, do we really have to remind you of the actual truth of things yet again? Here's a statement that deals in nothing but reality:-

"Further meaningless words with precisely no commitments whatsoever to back them up mean that to date and in fact exactly none of the facility has been obtained, let alone it being oversubscribed."

When will you stop trying to deliberately mislead people? Anyone would think you're on the Angus board of directors, given you are so shamelessly and consistently economical with the truth.

Speaking of the potential registering of charges against assets, given that the only hope of any potential funding actually emerging now seems to be reliant on a motley collection of lenders, I imagine the biggest difficulty would be for those lenders to come to any agreement as to who would get first charge?

If I were planning to lend ANGS any funds, given both the company's effectively zero revenue state and the doubtful realisable value of any of its assets, I would absolutely want to ensure without fail that any charge I held had absolute first dibs preponderance, before advancing a single penny.

nhawan's problem is obvious. He's either looking to short term trade - and spiking others in the process. Or (and more tragically) he's bought in to the ANGS' fairytale for so long that he's by now literally incapable of facing up to the reality of things.

What he simply cannot make fit with his agenda is the existence of long-term holders who - to put it mildly - are less than impressed with the myths being spun by latest collection of pied pipers that form the ANGS board of directors.

nhawan, if today's RNS is something you consider to be positive - and of course making the not inconsiderable assumption that you are a genuine long-term shareholder, rather than a company PR mouthpiece or a short-term trader - then God help you.

Precisely gkb.

The only reason that a motley collection of unidentified potential lenders had to be cobbled together like some bizarrely stitched up Frankenstein's monster can very obviously only be because no single entity wanting to take the whole high risk ball of wax on could be found.

And more to the point, even the collection of alleged lenders that George and Jason have managed to amass to scrape towards the £12 million have yet to issue a single firm commitment...

Oversubscribed? On the basis of adding together several mere "soft commitments" and "indications"? Don't make me laugh.

Oh Ocelot... where's mention of the £20 million that for weeks you've been deliberately disingenuously claiming was going to be available? Quells surprise... non-existent.

For those of us here who prefer to deal in the truth, all today's desperate stop-gap RNS says is that a piecemeal, multi-participant and yes, still utterly uncommitted and nebulous arrangement just reaching the £12 million has allegedly been scraped and cobbled together.

I'm utterly unsurprised that an RNS has been issued today - even such a substance-free one. George simply had to come up with something sounding vaguely positive, or he and his BoD would have been in for a torrid time at the AGM (as would the SP).

Nevertheless, despite how the cheerleaders will frantically try to spin this, it's just yet another can kick.

Pathetic, George. Still that no doubt won't stop you and your equally shameless fellow directors awarding yourselves another big, fat and utterly undeserved pay rise.

Someone spoke too soon.

Nope, the SP is is going nowhere prior to the AGM without news - just set to bounce around between say 0.72 and 0.82. Of course that's the sort of marginal swing that'll get the short-term traders (of whom there are a fair few on this BB masquerading as "committed long-term holders" while actually doing their utmost to get others spiked - hi guys) all excited.

Where the SP heads if the AGM comes and goes with no finance news? Who knows... but I personally suspect it won't be anywhere at all pleasant.

Tick tock. 4 and a 1/2 working days to go. Hey George... any risk of you and your BoD actually achieving anything to justify your obscenely large self-awarded pay rises?

One thing I've noticed from one or two of the more suspect cheerleaders is their apparent inability to reply normally to any post. Instead they create a new thread, thus pushing the thread with the content they dislike further down the list so others are less likely to read it in its entirety.

So on that basis... *bump*

I think maddog could well be right about the only likely day for encouraging news to come out of ANGS being April 1st...

...but of course tradition dictates that this would have to emerge before mid-day.

Ocelot... "WHEN the debt facility is finalised..."???

Do you have inside knowledge here or something? Or is that just yet more attempted PR spin and puff? I'd be interested in your answer.... (but won't hold my breath).

The truthful and accurate version of your statement above would in fact be:-

"***IF*** the debt facility is finalised, ***IF*** it fully meets the company's latest alleged funding needs and ***IF*** the terms of said facility (presuming it does materialise) are commercially supportable..."

Gotta hate reality, eh? How it always gets in the way of any attempts to spin a good story...

Re genuine long-term holders (and yes, there are some here... just very definitely not everyone who claims to be), I think pretty much all are by this stage totally, seriously and entirely justifiably hacked off following years of unfulfilled and empty promises assurances from ANGS BoDs, past and present. I suspect there'll be a race for the exit from many, as soon as the SP reaches a point where the pain of getting out just swings to the right side of bearable (which is exactly what I'm hoping for too).

IMV, the above is all that can be hoped for from ANGS. In terms of actual delivery, George has shown himself to be cut from the exact same cloth as previous incumbents - and his own history of issuing jaw-droppingly inaccurate timescale and funding estimates makes him and the company uninvestable. Add to that his more recent - and frankly utterly bizarre - waving of the Lidsey, Brockham and Cornish geothermal pixie dust pompoms - and to me, those are the most concerning signs of all. It was meant to be all and only about Poundland Gas - but the company's been busy over recent months frantically rattling other sets of allegedly shiny car keys... which begs the question as to why.

Five working days to the AGM... if no finance news hits before then, I don't expect there'll be any chance of a bearable SP exit point being reached on Tues 6th April or any time in the foreseeable future after that.

Tick tock - GL to the genuine... God but do we need it.

...and yet again (fortunately as people are starting to pick up on) ocelot comes forward trying to spin the £20 million myth.

Ocelot: "Nevertheless, £20m is £20m."

Reality: It's not £20 million. It's never been £20 million. IF it happens, it's either £8-9 million OR £11 million.

These are the facts according to the company's own last RNSed finance update. There's an utterly unconfirmed offer of between £8 and £9 million (so between £3 and £4 million short against what George has claimed is needed) OR there's an equally unconfirmed indication of £11 million (so £1 million short against what George has claimed is needed).

So if both offers ever materialise, only one can possibly be taken up... and NOT both.

Those damn pesky and inconvenient facts, eh Ocelot? Are you by now so desperate that you have to keep trying to blatantly mislead the unwary with the same old repeated "inaccuracies"? Didn't they teach you anything at PR school?

That'd be ***IF*** the funding comes through, I'm sorry to say.

Plus even if it does, I don't think that automatically leads to an instant doubling of SP/MCAP? You'll probably get a spike borne out of relief more than anything else - but there'll still be two things to keep in mind.

1. The pain level of the commercials of this funding (if it arrives). It'll have certainly not been easy to find and ANGS simply has to be seen as a high risk by any lender doing the merest modicum of due diligence... so I expect the commercials will be harsh.

2. All the funding allows is for ANGS to cover its various impairment/abandonment liabilities and also see if Poundland Gas can be monetised (its previous owner certainly thought that ship had sailed).

Having said that, ANGS with funding at least gives its BOD a chance to see if they are capable of JUST ONCE delivering on something, while of course still trousering their doubled and PI-funded salaries. ANGS without funding is as dead as the proverbial dodo.

And having said that, if George gets the funding but then wastes any more time and cash on farcical rainbows, such as Lidsey, Brockham, Balcombe or worst of all magic pixie dust in Cornwall, then PIs should do everything they can to force an entire board change. All regimes at ANGS, both old and new, have delivered absolutely nothing to date.

Tick tock. 9 working days left until the AGM (and the latest no doubt moveable deadline).

Playing the man instead of the ball... the last resort of those with no shred of justification left to their argument.

Which pretty much covers anyone still waving the pompoms for Angus - there's seemingly nothing left for them to spin?

Yes that is an interesting calculation, isn't it? According to maddog38, the company is worth roughly double its current market cap (so, presumably £14 million?) if there's no obtainable gas in its self-alleged "jewel in the crown" asset?

I too would love to know how he's come to that figure. By my reckoning, if there's no obtainable gas in Poundland, that goes along with there being no obtainable oil in Brockham, none (currently at least) in Lidsey and no permitted possibility of seeing if anything could be done with Balcombe. None of those "assets" would seem to be worth very much at all then - in fact, quite the reverse, since they all carry frighteningly large abandonment liabilities.

Maybe like Ocelot, maddog is ascribing a hefty value to ANGS's admittedly substantial and ever-growing accumulated tax losses? Or maybe, much like the BoD, he's putting a value on the continuing peddling of fairytales, like the hypothetical geothermal magic pixie dust project in Cornwall?

Who knows? But his statement makes absolutely no logical sense to me...

"We don't know exactly when the funding arrangements will be concluded.

What we do know is that every day brings us a day closer to their conclusion."

Ocelot, are you for real??? (Actually don't bother replying to that - the answer has been obvious for months).

The truthful version of your first statement would read:-

"We don't know if any funding arrangements will ever be concluded - but if Angus and its latest board keep to the same consistent track record of never once delivering on any promise or assurance made, it's not looking good."

Your second statement is actually (if only accidentally) a little more accurate - every day that goes by does indeed bring the whole flimsy house of cards closer to a conclusion - though sadly not one that any genuine PI would have hoped for.

Ocelot, if that's all you've got left in your barrel of spin, puff and misdirection, the bottom of that barrel really is being scraped.

"The FD should be sacked for a start Has he got any professional qualifications ?"

I have no idea - unless it's in picking PIs' pockets, because what both the FD and the Technical Director did get was a self-awarded 100% payrise kicking in last financial year. As MD, George was mildly less brazen, only awarding himself a 46% pay increase in 2020 - no doubt based upon the company's unparalleled track record of success in returning value to its shareholders. Worth every penny...

What we won't know for another year (or unless ANGS answers the relevant Investor Question) is how much more the board's salaries have been bumped up since that last jaw-dropping increase.