Share price weakness info.23 Jan 2025 10:13
Ok, so yesterday evening I decided to look up the 90 or so oil and gas explorers/developers on AIM, and then I pulled up a chart for a load of them. I then started to realise that just about every single one that I looked at followed exactly the same kind of pattern - ie a peak in spring to early summer, followed by a sharp sell off for the rest of 2024. Typically the peak was in May or June. They all ended the year significantly down relative to their 2024 peaks.
To give examples, I looked at ; Clontarf Energy, Block Energy, Jersey Oil and Gas, Chariot O&G, Ascent Resources, Angus Energy, ADM Energy, 88 Energy, Petrel Resources, Touchstone and Union Jack Oil. To take one example - Block Energy hit a peak of 1.8p on 25th April 2024 and is now 0.72p. Rockhopper's price action has been very much an exception to the norm - suddenly igniting in November.
Then if you look at a chart of the AIM index itself, this tells the same story - a peak on the 24th May 2024 of 3,936 and then a sharp sell off for the rest of 2024 to end the year on 3,464. It has way underperformed the major indices, which is part of the bigger picture regarding concerns of capital outflow out of AIM. Reeves isn't exactly helping this situation either with her raid on AIM tax breaks.
So IMO all the non-stop chat on here about how badly MATD is doing, as reflected in the share price takes no account whatsoever of the broader context. MATD reached a share price peak in 2024 in early June, and the sharp sell off since then simply reflects the index which it is listed in, plus the sharp sell off of the AIM oil and gas sector generally since early summer. I haven't checked yet whether other sectors on AIM have also been sharply sold off in line with the index.
This also explains why as milestones were reached later in the year, the share price didn't react positively. They were simply swimming against the tide. Otherwise it's likely that just as in 2023 after a 2.5p raise, the share price would have moved up sharply as these milestones were achieved - for example when Heron 1 came online in October.
A question to ask is whether the broad sell off in the oil and gas sector on AIM since early summer also reflects a typical share price seasonality of the sector as a whole, which was then enhanced by the very sharp sell off of the index which the companies are listed on. That's a possibility - I noticed that even Petro China listed in another country on a different exchange entirely had a decline in its share price from peaks in April and early July 2024 until the end of the year.
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