thoughts on GED20 Aug 2015 15:24
been looking at this company for a while. A few thoughts here:
- net cash is approx 53p/share by now. So clearly, the shares trade at a significant discount (45% discount).
- with hindsight, the Llanos sale was very good.
- quite good to see them appropriately writing down to zero one of their 2 remaning licences (Bocachico).
- the other licence (Bolivar) is still being valued at USD21mln (as of end-2014) using Brent oil at $57.3/bbl and assuming 3% annual price increase. We are now below $47/bbl with the fwd oil prices at 10y lows. So one can ask if this remaining licence is worth anything at the next impairment exercise. In any case, that's not a cash event so not a big deal really.
- in terms of cashburn/expenses. It sounds like the 2 licences might still costs a few hundred thousands a year due to compliance/environmental commitments. They said they stopped all drilling costs but I also hope they stop producing, because at those levels, they produce at a loss.
- Admin costs are high for such a small company. last year wages totaled over $ 3mln/year with CEO and chairman both taking over $400k/year. I think that's way too much.
They implied they are reducing staff thanks to the Llanos sale and cash conservation discipline.
So overall, I speculate that cash burn from operation & admin will be approx 3mln/year or USD 250k/month.
- This mean End-2015 net cash/share will be around 51p/share.
- By end2016, It would be 45p/share.
So by all means, 30p/share offers amazing discount and cushion for useless cashburn for a sustained period of time.
The major negative point is this:
62% of the company is owned by HKN/Lyford/Directors. They are one big family.
Which means they have complete control of the company as long as what they do (or don't do) is legal.
And this is then no surprise that the top managers pay themselves royally because no external shareholder can really challenge them. The best you can do is try to block Special resolutions by gathering 25% ownership to vote against special resolutions. Salaries and Directors renewal do not require special resolution.
So to conclude, this seems to be a situation whereby the share prices in a discount for the impossibility of control (same way that people pay a premium for gaining control).
I bought Fastnet at 2p (with net cash at 2.8p) a few days ago hoping for an event to monetize the cash pot. It is happening with the chairman buying more shares at 4p (33% premium to net cash) to effectively take control of the company, slash costs and use the cash for new ventures outside of O&G.
with GED, i'm tempted to play the same tactic. But the ownership structure suggest you leave it to mngt to do the right thing.
You can hope that the managers have indeed looked for O&G opportunities and decided it didn't make sense and would suggest paying a one/off dividend. Or you buy now, goes thru the useless cashburn and hope that by 2016, oil px recover & make the