Member Info for JonnyGee

@ mr Picky: Nice to meet a fellow pro. Good luck with stop loss, though - I had some of mine set at 132 which only crystallised at 90p, which makes it a bit irrelevant on illiquid stocks. Am curious about your thoughts on Hoad vs France. I wasnt tracking TTG in Hoad's day though have seen some comments that he was well respected and a bit of a hard act to follow. The project Dynamo comments I was hearing from France at the last earnings call implied there was a fair bit of work to do to get the company moving ahead, but am now starting to wonder whether this was the New Guy overselling himself vs Hoad, and is now being brought short by reality. Were there underlying problems/ headwinds you thought you were seeing pre France?

@Mr Picky: Its a tough call re "good money after bad". Ill stick with my management assessment from the last earnings call that Peter France sounded like he knew what he was talking about - and FWIW I am a former PE manager and am pretty focused on what Im hearing from management and whether they are talking sense or not. I would put France in the talking sense category, though i think he has had something of a wake up call with these events which clearly unsettled him as he has to now be questioning whether he does have a proper grip on the business issues, and if he has the right people in place to fix things - it was interesting to hear his comment about new management in place in North America. All that being said, I think he is pretty motivated to get this all fixed and suspect there are some harsh words going on behind the scenes. I agree with you that the November update will be important and buying in now is quite a speculative punt, but one Ive done. Thats my own personal take of course (and believe me, I do have reservations), and everyone has to come to their own conclusion on whether management can turn this around.

2023 EBIT £52.8mio; Updated 2024 range £37-52mio - a 25% forecast decline at midpoint versus the 36% SP decline - so maybe a little oversold, but I think you may need to revisit your understanding of mathematics.

@ Mr Picky: I just listened too it too. Have to say there were definitely some woolly responses by management and I was rather disappointed by their lack of clarity. It was a very different dynamic to the last earnings call where management sounded on top of the business and was a reason I bought in. I'll concede that some of the reticence may have been due to this being a public company and having to be careful about what they say when there are clearly still quite a few moving pieces, but what I was hearing as that these were pre-existing issues they were aware of but clearly not on top of which makes me question their future trajectory. What was also unclear was that their press release put all the blame on the US operational issues which they stated as not being anything to do with the components side of the business, yet in the call they were stating that component order flow is also softer than desired. All of this being said, I do think its oversold at current levels so scooped up some in the low 90's to average down my price.

This shows the continuing operating issues at JSE which are frankly my main concern with JSE. Unless I missed it, (and someone please correct me if this is the case), they STILL have not appointed a proper COO, which they desperately need and now seem to have gone quiet on that whole initiative. Yes, there are contractor issues with the installation, but a properly competent operator should also be ensuring that this kind of thing is minimised. This smells badly of Blakeley desperately hanging on and blocking a potential successor and the board should frankly be fired for acquiescing.

Thank you - informative report and one that confirms my long term pessimism on PGM's courtesy of the EV transition, even if it is slowing down. Certainly no demand/ price catalysts on the horizon so not sure I would even buy SLP in the 30's.

@Bangrak Yes - ~40p seems about right. This was a 40p stock pre Covid/ PGM spike and hard to see why it shouldn't be there now. Lower end of production guidance for FY25 is around FY24 actual production , despite last years strike stoppages, which tells me their grades are generally declining. Given what therefore looks like flat volumes (admittedly ex Thaba, though thats really a 26ff story) this is purely dependent on the PGM basket price.

On that subject Im struggling to find any quality guidance on where that is going 24/25 - Bangrak, any decent quality sources you've come across for a steer on that?

You're looking at the wrong country. PRU is essentially a China play which causes two problems - (a) China is economically in the toilet with contracting consumer and business spending for the forseeable and (b) if you dont like the direction of the CCP, China per se is uninvestable, which I think is probably PRU's bigger underlying problem as a Western listed stock. It is notable that PRU is trying to increase the proportion of none-Chinese/HK business, but its still very much a minority sport at ~40% of its business. If things go south over Taiwan, you are therefore looking at a company that could lose 60% of it business, and thats what the market doesnt like.

Somewhat frustrating and slightly mystifying though oil is indeed a bit soft and the oil majors are also trading down. Must admit Ive also been a bit more cautious on JSE despite Akatara coming on stream since Jeffries posted a 40p SP target in May. Would love to see their report in order to understand why - anyone have access?

The audience is waiting for them to actually start increasing their sales instead of shrinking them and probably wasnt amused at the H1 £25mio write-down and exceptional. UBS' recent "sell" call with a £10 target sounds about right until that happens. If it drifts down to the 900-950 range I might be tempted at a small position, but jury is definitely currently out on when the bottom of this falling knife is reached

This. There are a couple of sad individuals around these boards who are best just ignored and best not to respond to since it derails otherwise potentially useful content.

Thanks Sea7. Applied the Google translate to slide 31 to see what was going on. Looks like theyve had faulty compressors which need replacing and commissioning. Talks about July 2024 target completion:

Issue

There is a manufacturing defect in the engine bearing of 2 gas compressor inlet units based on Jadestone's letter of June 5, so it must be replaced before commissioning.

There was damage to the coupling on the inlet gas compressor B when it was about to start up based on Jadestone's letter of 14 June.

Gas compressor vendors take too long to give the green light for start up compressors.

Resolution

which occurred when the pre-comp inlet gas compressor B was being investigated for the cause. Replacement will be made, material is in the process of shipping with ETA site W4 June. As an alternative, bearings have been replaced on 2 gas compressor inlet units.

Coupling damage

commissioning with only 1 inlet compressor (Unit A).

A continuous expedition was carried out by Jadestone and JGC to NEA (gas compressor vendor) to get the green light.

Project onstream outlook in Jul 2024.

Yes, thats what I was figuring - some other chunky institutionals out there who could each have onboarded 5mio+ without triggering thresholds - JPM alone could take 17mio without triggering 10%

Thanks @shearclass. All clear now. They must have ended up with some fairly chunky block trades to get from the 5% disclosure threshold to 0 in just a few days, which does make me curious as to who they offloaded to. Might be an interesting few days ahead, but at at the very least , definitely cleared an overhang

Sorry if this got addressed here way back, but why has Telios been such a drag? They are (were) only a marginally larger shareholder than the next biggest (Artemis with 29mio shares). 34.3mio shares is admittedly a chunk (30 trading days' worth) and could cause some overhang if theyd said they would sell , but not totally unmanageable. Whats the story?

Wow, what a cluster f***. Was starting to sniff around this after the price drop then ran the transaction numbers. So they were trading at 8.9x trailing EBITDA pre announcement with a comfortable leverage ratio of 0.5x, then go and pay 13.8x EBITDA (ex synergies, which, as a former investment banker and private equity guy is the only way you should measure a transaction) and hey presto , post deal the market prices the pro forma entity back to....8.9x EBITDA, but more levered at 2.5x debt/EBITDA. Morons. No way I will be buying shares in a company "managed" by these idiots

Am with you. Am somewhat sceptical, though, about any meaningful SP recovery/direction until the market receives some proper visibility on whats going on with revenues. We know form H1 that their core business declined slightly, and can only assume that it got worse in H2, since they commented that GfK was on target, but how things look going into the new fiscal year is going to be super critical given the almighty snafu around their forecasts in the last earnings call. Until we get a proper sense of where they are really trading (which will come with a large pinch of salt given they got it so badly wrong in March), I dont think anyone should be making meaningful buy commitments. GLA indeed

@scored again: Yes, Im a bit surprised too, but the other comments maybe right - the market possibly wants to see actual flows and sales coming out of it to start to rebuild confidence.

Re the ARO liability, it was $604mio at 31/12/23, but has $215 of offset receivables in the cess funds, so net net they had a $389mio ARO liability at year end. Still a chunk of cash which needs funding but seems manageable in a couple of years after they've paid down bank debt

@Bridgedog: Yes, seems about right - the broker forecasts are gradually coming down, though clearly not finished. Even with current latest forecasts, their '26 p/e comes down to 10.7x which compares with IPSOS' 10.7x, which makes sense now the digital growth sheen has been blown up. Unfortunately puts me around 20% underwater at the current price, but will probably hold in case there is some recovery/ improvement in the coming quarters.

Dont disagree with you @theAccountant regarding the likely direction of price action over the coming weeks/ months and its a tough call. The nature/ trigger of the AAL/ WOSG drops was rather company specific so not necessarily comparable per se. That being said, the sheer scale of YOU management having got it so wrong at the end of March and the amount of egg on their face just two months on raises serious questions about them and the market is frankly in the dark about the direction of travel of their core (ex Gfk) sales, except that theyre headed down. H1 research and data sales were down ~2% YoY, but my (and the market's) read from their positive comments about Q2 orders was that they were turning the corner. That has clearly not materialised, so what we get is the trifecta from hell (a) a company with declining revenues for the first time in its history, which means (b) they miss their numbers and all projections can be scrapped and (c) their previously high flying growth multiples are also going to be history. Add to that that, the management has blown any credibility with investors by having portrayed strong H2 sales visibility and not delivering and I think this stock is going to drift/ deteriorate until a positive catalyst comes through. I also suspect the board must be seriously considering management changes at this point.