Member Info for HeadInTheSand

OBZ, I'm clearly not one to ask here. My prediction back in March on Singhie's sweepstake was 1.6p on May 2nd, because sidetrack volumes would still not be known at that point. Although it still looks like I'll be the closest, I still got that price prediction wrong, then.

What's spooking the market (I think) is the radio silence. But I'm not sure that's justified... what we had for 2+ years was bucketsful of over-optimistic nonsense from George L, setting expectations that never once got met, but since just 8 days ago we've now got Richard Herbert who I think is quite possibly suffering from George's rose-tinted legacy in terms of knowing what to say.

I think it's unlikely that he'll be prone to issuing the same fairy dust BS, byut all that already spouted fairy dust BS does make it difficult for him to know what to say.

Crocq showing his usual common sense and objectivity. Most realistic post of the morning.

Hang on... are people now accepting that we'll need to wait for summer before the sidetrack starts delivering gas to the grid??? I mean, okay it doesn't make much difference from a long game point of view, but really?

Okay... and so the other side of that coin must also exist. Short-term traders looking to ramp stocks, exit with a quick buck and leaving others to catch the falling knife... aka pass the parcel bomb.

For all the argy-bargy, I think it can safely be said that rightly or wrongly and for whatever reason, the market does not currently believe that ANGS shares are worth what so many of the more positive brigade have spent the last several months repeatedly informing anyone who'd listen what they would be worth.

srk, looking at the SP right now, there's no need to be jealous.

I actually disagree that this is necessarily the case.

As per the earlier thread, what exactly is Richard Herbert the new CEO meant to say? His appointment only got finalised on 19th April, so he only got given the RNS "pen" (as George apparently recently put it) a week ago.

I suspect that George continued with his eternally opaque and over-optimistic outpourings right up until that point, so the "worst" that we're likely to hear (presuming RH decides on a way more transparent and truthful comms strategy, which please God he does) is for once a clear and realistic appraisal of when things are actually likely to happen.

And that would be no bad thing at all. The current radio silence doesn't inevitably mean that anything's gone wrong at all... but it does hint that George has been as usual up to his over-exaggerating self in terms of timescale projections.

I doubt that any PI would mind if shedloads of gas from the sidetrack didn't start hitting the grid till end of May for example), providing they do start hitting the grid sometime soon. The issue as ever with ANGS is that they have kept setting false expectations and so have kept setting themselves up for a fall. Hopefully RH will take a markedly different tack.

Did tell you...

Howey, if you could be bothered to trawl my history, you'd find that ANGS isn't the only share I've commented on (though you'd have to go a long way back). As I've said before, when I was keeping a closer eye on UKOG, it was literally impossible not to be aware of the endlessly posting ramptastic poster to whom you refer.

Not looked at today's shenanigans over there Howey, but as I am sure you're aware, there seems to have been one almighty P&D that's gone on there over the last week, with no doubt plenty of short-term traders having made an absolute fortune.

That tends to be the case all too regularly with UKOG in my sketchy experience of it - and especially when large Australian gentlemen resurface over there.

mwshep, you seem to have developed some sort of unhealthy obsession - and in so short a time too, which is quite an achievement.

After all, you've only (allegedly) been a member of this BB (under this ID at least) for 13 days... so it's a tad surprising that you apparently know so much about either my opinions or my posting history.

(One has to laugh...)

Singhie - "For there to be credibility there must be definitive evidence that no offer has been made to the business or the business is not in negotiations to sell,"

360Phil - "Er, no. You have that the wrong way round."

You have to laugh... does he ever, or what?

Might as well state that "for there to be credibility, there must be definitive evidence that the British Royal Family are categorically not in fact a race of telepathic alien lizard people from the 7th dimension in league with the Illuminati."

If only proving a negative was that easy, eh?

ANGS's problem is entirely self-caused. All it has ever needed to do in its investor comms is to adopt a much more conservative approach when it comes to predicting timescales and costs. Everyone knows that by far the best way to build confidence is to underpromise and then overdeliver - but sadly ANGS has invariably always done the entire reverse... and has no doubt pulled in a meaningful amount of investor funds based on highly over-optimistic projections that simply didn't come true (well, at least not in the timescales and budgets that ANGS claimed). The classic curtrent example is that we're now into week 29 of a sidetrack that George L vehemently assured would only take a maximum of 7 weeks. Stuff like that's simply bound to severely dent trust and cause entirely justifiable anger.

However, given the company's track record, the new CEO does have a tricky comms strategy to decide upon, as kind of hinted upon by Push2. Sure, saying nothing is better than issuing any more wildly over-optimistic nonsense... but all of a sudden going into radio silence is also not meeting already created investor expectations and creating its own level of disquiet.

That's a difficult circle for ANGS to now square in terms of what it should and shouldn't say.

Singhie's understanding has amusingly gone through a 180 degree u-turn. However, at least and at last, the penny seems to have dropped for him - and I guess one ought to be thankful for small mercies.

FFS and for the love of God... ANGS DOES NOT NEED to meet the secondary hedge in order to be due the net gain differential on that hedge.

And on that note, I'll give up.

Singhie, you will note in BOTH my examples given below, ANGS nets £2 million of revenue for its 2 million therms. For a producer of a commodity, that's what a hedge fixes... the revenue that a hedged production quantity will deliver.

Literally the ONLY relevance in ANGS's case about "producing enough to meet the hedge" is cash-based. One last example to make this point.

Again presume that gas producing company A has hedged 2 million therms with derivatives company B at 100p per therm in May.

3) The May spot price for gas turns out to be 200p per therm. Company A then owes Company B £2 million on that individual hedge swap contract. It owes cash, not gas. BUT Company A has only managed to produce 1 therm in the month of May to sell to Shell at 200p per therm. Its May revenues are then only £2.... but it still owes Company B £2 million. That's going to put a kink in anyone's cashflow.

Finally and at the risk of blowing your mind entirely, one doesn't need to be a producer of anything at all to get oneself on one side or the other of a hedged contract. That's effectively what futures and derivative traders spend all day doing.

Singhie, yet again, no gas exchanges hands re the hedges. It's purely a financial liability (or gain).

In one last attempt to make this clear, here's two hypothetical examples:-

Presume that gas producing company A has hedged 2 million therms with derivatives company B at 100p per therm in May.

1) The May spot price for gas turns out to be 200p per therm. Company A then owes Company B £2 million on that individual hedge swap contract. It owes cash, not gas.

or

2) The May spot price for gas turns out to be 50p per therm. Company B then owes Company A £1 million on that individual hedge swap contract. Again, it owes cash, not gas.

ANGS is not handing over gas to Mercuria - it's handing over cash if on the wrong side of the hedge. And vice versa.

ANGS sells ALL its produced gas to Shell, regardless of how much it produces or doesn't. The monthly revenues that ASNGS receives from Shell need to cover off any liability incurred from being on the wrong side of the hedge, plus any other current costs and liabilities.

To claim that, if short on a hedged volume, ANGS would have to "buy in" gas at market rates to "give to" Mercuria shows zero understanding of derivative contracts.

Off topic, but how many times has UKOG run the exact same schtick??? And how on earth can it keep working for those ramptastic short-term spivs that have magically appeared over its BB for the last couple of weeks?

And yet it does... it's literally unbelievable.

I do wish people would get their heads around the hedge agreements having precisely nothing directly to do with production volumes.

As has been pointed out many times by those who do have a clue about such things, they are purely financial instruments or swap contracts and don't involve the supply of gas from ANGS to Mercuria at all. ANGS doesn't sell any gas to Mercuria at any price and Mercuria doesn't buy any gas at all from ANGS at any price.

The only relevance that ANGS's production volumes have to the hedge contracts lies in the cash generated by ANGS's sales of gas to Shell (NB the only party actually paying ANGS for produced gas).

It is obviously beneficial if the revenues generated by those gas sales are sufficient to cover any losses that may have been made on the hedge contracts, with enough spare to at least also cover off any other live commitments and liabilities.

mwshep, presuming your assumption is correct, you'd be absolutely right from a balance point of view. Otherwise almost all opinion posted would be monotone in nature, emanating solely from the hopeful or the disingenuous.

As anyone who's ever spent any time on any share BB should know, these are invariably riddled with short-term traders and other pied pipers, who tend to do all they can to dominate any discussion.

So... you're welcome.