Member Info for Jiving

On 22 January MKB posted a response from IR that was apparently also received by a number of investors:
"“Arthur believes the elections shouldn’t interfere with the project . It has already been approved, but due to elections the Company has been asked to keep quiet. The contract is in good standing and as such not at risk.”

Well now the elections are over, no change in Govt & with minimal political strife. We were informed that the one condition stopping COPL announcing the NNPC approval was the election, that is now out of the way so surely Arthur can now at last (finally) announce something positive. Why no announcement?

https://www.independent.ng/appraisal-of-nigerias-noa-field-underway/

Jay very convincing summary of the company and its outlook. Agree with you on all main points, it about patience.

She should be, a major uncertainty/risk factor - the election - is now behind us.

I am surprised more longstanding posters aren't more publicly optimistic, normally I am dubbed 'negative' but not today.

It could be that, as with Anyala, the SPA will be announced once agreed (end 1st quarter?) and before final financial terms are contractually signed perhaps by end 2nd quarter?

We must hope that IF we are at the end of the horrendous (but necessary) bureaucratic/political process that has taken some 2 years, that Arthur will finally come into his own and start rapidly signing up SPA (s), locating & moving equipment and starting drilling. That after all is what Arthur most definitely has achieved multiple times in the North Sea, getting all the variables together, & successfully drilling offshore!

Rift. It appears that was a piece of fake news from the Nigerian Internet, COPL via IR denied it & said Kola made contributions to both sides (of course standard practice in developing countries, billionaires cant afford to be partisan). They received the critical PSC extension in October 2018 when Buhari was President, why do that if it were not going ahead? Arthur has always made clear there is no reason to suspect the project will fail due to party politics,

Pretty much all the results are in now and its a landslide for Buhari, with around 56% of the popular vote to Atiku's 41%. He also received more than 25% of the vote in 34 out of 37 states. So he has overwhelmingly met the two criteria of being elected in the first round of voting; namely a majority of the popular vote and over 25% of the vote in at least 24 states.

This spares us the nightmare of a second round Presidential election with all the delay & chaos that would involve. With such a vast margin its questionable what the point of any challenges would be, they may be made of course, but whats the point of Atiku trying to overcome a nearly 4 million vote margin?

So we will now be dealing with the exact same team at NNPC & DPR that we were before the election with no threat of personnel change hanging over them. If Arthur is telling us the truth, there is now no longer any reason to delay releasing the approval news & hopefully fast tracking licence approval. Details of the revised new FDA will hopefully be forthcoming as well.

The crunch point of course is the long awaited announcement of the SPA with finance. Looking back to see what precedent is regarding this, I see that in the Anyala/Madu developments the NNPC and First E & P announced the service & financial agreement with Schlumberger a year (June 2017) before final terms were agreed & announced (July 2018). So the announcement of the named SPA was not delayed until final terms were agreed, but a year beforehand when the selection of the SPA was first negotiated between the three parties involved.

This is the election reporting site recommended by CNN, set up by Nigerian LSE graduates and intended to be similar to the 538 election tracker site in the US:
https://nigeriaelections.stearsng.com

Dont forget the other 71 candidates, on the extra long ballot paper that includes 73 choices! I will wait till someone sensible reports results, Nigerian online 'news' seems v dodgy & grossly partisan.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47348900

As of 8.00 am Nigerian time BBC World radio reports polling stations opening across Nigeria on time.

Nigerian online media seems pretty dodgy, this site offers 'live updates':
https://www.legit.ng/1222057-live-updates-nigerias-2019-presidential-election.html

Thank for establishing the truth behind the Finncap claim Pettycash.

The Beaufort Securities reports were actually property written & constructed research by a named research analyst with a critical disclaimer explaining that due to the broker-client relationship that existed between Beaufort & NFX the reports could not be viewed as independent research but as marketing material. I have copies if anybody interested.

Rktech. Thats an interesting article and confirms a number of othres I have seen that actually Atiku is substantially ahead of Buhari & the delay is a desperate attempt to postpone (& alter) the result. What an Atiku victory means for our 'approvals' and everything else God knows.

Scaryone. Those challenging the nonsense Aim is proposing - that a company currently valued at £10m is 'worth' £50m with absolutely no supporting arguments - are actually challenging 'ramping' not being de-rampers.

If you look at the history of these wild unsubstantiated claims in 2018, typically the reverse happens and we go from 3p to 2.5p, then next ramp we fall from 2.5p to 2p. After all the misery in the aftermath of the positive RNS's in December where the share price went down instead of up, that we are back to this mindless ramping nonsense is very depressing - there is seemingly no learning curve with these rampers.

Apologies got my sums wrong. £1000 of COPL bought at the peak, became worth £2 at the bottom and is now worth £2.25.

OK well whatever the expression for a share trading down to 1/500th of its previous value? COPL has gone from a high equiv to approx 100p to a low of 0.2p. Is that a minus 500x bagger? Whatever you want to call it, an investor who bought at the peak would have seen a reduction in value to 0.2% of the amount he paid. £1000 became worth £20 at the bottom & is now worth slightly more at £22.50 but I doubt many original holders would be celebrating the uptick.

NoEasy. You are completely correct about Arthurs need to keep a team going in order to gain the confidence of other players in the oil industry - governments, prospective JV partners, oil service companies. But there are a number of basic things Arthur could have done to improve the COPL cash flow and just as crucially the COPL share price.

Arthur has been in charge of COPL for nearly 10 years, over that period it has been an 'oil' company that has produced no oil as in zero. The company share price has fallen peak to trough some 500 fold - I would have thought a record for a company that has not actually gone bankrupt. It does not seem crazy to me for shareholders to expect the CEO of such a company to make an effort - even a token effort - to cut costs, lets say aim for 10%. Every budget has 10% in it you could cut - for COPL here are some examples. Arthur should lead by example and have taken one third of his huge (for a £5m mkt cap co) salary paid as shares not cash, the Board should have their grossly generous fees cut, we do not need 2 sets of IR people, could the Canadian office be part sub-let? I reckon anybody who actually tried could save 10%, over two years that would be $960k or some 2.66 months adjusted running costs - sure would be useful to have that money now right!

De-ramping. A number of posters have criticised Berta, myself and others on the vexed issue of deramping. I don't think any postings on this Board have more than a temporary marginal impact on the share price, at most. But I can identify one individual whose consistently appalling behaviour has led to a dramatically negative impact on the COPL share price, reducing it IMO to around a quarter of where it would be with different management behaviour. That individual of course is Arthur Millholland - his appalling, deliberate disregard for updating us on any & every aspect of the Company has had a massively negative impact on shareholders, many just give up not simply because of the stress of holding COPL but because they have point blank had enough of being treated like dirt into the bargain. All complaints regarding deramping should be addressed to the primary culprit: amillholland@canoverseas.com

Is the effect of the cancellation then to force genuine registered voters (who have returned to their home provinces) back to their jobs in the cities, leaving behind all the 'new' fake voters?

And they only worked out the vote registration fiddle hours before polling was to begin....

What a total absolute shambles:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47263122

Rktech. I would have thought Buhari would be best for us - that would mean no regime change, no change of personnel or Ministers, no uncertainty at NNPC, everything already in the bureaucratic pipeline would continue as pre-election.

R_Dunc. To a rational person with even a fleeting acknowledgement of shareholder value they would not pursue a placing to finance an acquisition at the current share price. But Arthur is ego driven not shareholder driven.

Back in September 2017 he was only spinning the OPL226 story in the podcast but he still raised funds on the back of a blatant spike in October 2017 to finance a totally different, unannounced acquisition in Canada - not even Africa. Sorry, Arthur's record is that he has precisely zero concern for shareholder value it is all about an ego-driven perception of himself as an oil industry player & wheeler dealer. Why even mention (twice) an acquisition in 2019 if that were not at the forefront of his thinking ?