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Forest, that might well be the ‘strategy’, but that just hardens my opinion that HARL is being run like a playground outfit rather than an org with FTSE 250 potential.

4mcs - this is a point that has been troubling me too. Every day without a new finance deal is costing the company a lot of money in accrued interest. If we are to believe reports that the Scilly venture is the sticking point as to why Government hasn’t signed off on UKEF, we need to look at island ferries as a (huge)cost, not a revenue generator. Some on this board have said words to the effect of ‘soon the money will start rolling in from the ferries’. Well I would imagine they’re not cheap to run and staff. IF we make any revenue it’ll be peanuts and it’ll take a long time to claw back the Riverstone debt we’ve accrued because of it. UKEF could and should have been signed off in Q1 as indicated by the December RNS and the business would’ve been away - happy days. As I’ve said before, the company needs to come clean about the business plan for ferries and how it helps shareholders or the wider business one iota.

On the (latest) non appearance of accounts, I see two options. Either the agreement with auditors wasn’t as solid as was stated in the RNS, or they are holding back because they thought Labour would roll over on the deal. Others have said they’re not connected, I think they are. What we’ve had on accounts is no more than back of a f@g packet. The devil is always in the detail.

It’s always ‘next week’ isn’t it… 🙄

We were promised the accounts this week though. Why would anyone trust it’ll be next week given the repeated broken promises of the BoD?

Bubble, they’re trying their best in the same way that Arun tried his best to publish accounts within six months. If you look at the Facebook page it is post after post of disgruntled customers. Why they have allowed themselves to set up for a fail is totally beyond me. Get the service in place and then sell tickets. Under promise and over deliver, it’s not that hard. And what evidence do you have that they’re trying their best to fix it? All the evidence I’ve seen is that they’re doing sud-all.

I hope you’re right forest, but evidence and past performance would suggest otherwise.

Forest, I did mention yesterday that the booking site saying you can travel on the 20th July is exactly the same as the booking site saying you could travel on 1st May. If you have confidence they’ll come good this time around, I dare you to book a seat.

Bubble, I think we’ve established they are no further forward that when they were taking bookings for May or June that they were unable to fulfil. Taking bookings is not a guarantee of fulfilling a service as this venture has demonstrated. So they’ll be putting more people on expensive helicopters and shareholders still don’t know what revenue (or dare I mention it profit) will be from this. It’s interesting to hear people on this bird predict that this will make the company money. It will have cost HARL hundreds of thousands of pounds getting to this point and what they have at this point is no more than a white (yellow) elephant sat on a quayside in Portsmouth. The only saving grace is that this folly won’t need to be reported until the accounts that are due summer 2025, so the waste will be masked for now.

Now onto what’s important, show us the accounts and a finance deal JW / AR!

It wasn’t really a dig but in hindsight perhaps the ‘try again’ comment was a little childish, for which I apologise. No hard feelings. 🙏

Try again FG. They were ‘taking bookings’ for May and June as well. Unless they are actually taking payment now, which I very much doubt, we’re no further forward with that particular dastardly plan.

You caught me out, yes, I work for the Guardian… well done Poirot.

You have given me cause to re-read the article though, which does raise some questions.

1. “[Labour’s strategic defence] review would look in detail at every large contract, including the fleet solid support ships, a party source said. This will take time because security classifications mean opposition politicians, like the general public, see only the bare minimum of information about any defence deal.” - will be interesting / crucial to hear what Labour has to say on this.

2. “The situation is urgent because H&W is carrying massive liabilities. These include $115m (£91m) in loans agreed from March 2022 with Riverstone Credit Management, a private US lender, which is charging it interest of more than 14% a year. H&W said it had made repayments, and reported debt costs of £18m for 2023. The loan must be repaid by 31 December.” - HARL now saying it has made repayments. This is new information is it not? I thought it had been agreed with Riverstone that interest would be accrued?

3. “Wood joined InfraStrata in 2018, having previously been a director of MSC Europe, a Southampton ship refitter that collapsed in 2007, reportedly owing suppliers £3m. (The company said that Wood had since then “delivered multibillion contracts and run businesses delivering major programmes”.)” - are they talking about FSS when they say JW has “delivered multibillion contracts”? Has he? There is one contract worth more than a billion, but to claim JW has delivered it isn’t correct. The consortium won it (no one has delivered anything). And HARL will get in the region of 700m from it.

The open relationship with the truth continues.

Because these things take time. It isn’t just a case of picking up the baton from where the last Government left off. Civil servants have to provide non-prejudicial information to ministers to come to their own conclusions. Only hope of a quick decision is if Labour is forced to act because of imminent demise, but even then it’s not just a ‘sign on the dotted line’ job.

Bubble my friend, you’re deluded I’m afraid. The new Government has many priorities, getting Harland’s shares back trading is not one of them. As I’ve said previously, September earliest for a UKEF decision. In the meantime, we wait the (audited) numbers that were promised this week.

Says the man who has racked up 815 posts in two months 😅

The current deal has taken from December until now, do you really think an incoming government are going to look at something even the tories wouldn’t sign off and just say ‘ yeah, looks legit’? If so, I have a gas cavern to sell you.

financial results on the back of a *** packet. good luck all.

I’m sure he is chuffed to bits! Book a cheap ferry and get an expensive helicopter!

Np bubble.

It was a customer’s post on their Facebook page, as below:

After finally receiving a reply from chasing up my previous unanswered email, we now find ourselves 2 weeks out from our holiday with no transport, no alternative offered and not even a hint of an apology. Do you think this is an acceptable way to treat customers who put their faith in your new service many months ago?

EDIT: To update and credit to Scillies Ferries, our reservation has been transferred to the helicopter. Fully get there will be teething problems with any new service, just frustrating that the communication has been poor this late in the day. Pleased with the resolution though.

Sorry to break up your little squabble Consuela and BC, it’s very fun and all, but if I may just inject a little bit of company talk into the chat…

I’ve just seen they’re shelling out for helicopter tickets again. I’d really like to know from the board, how much has been wasted because they’ve over-promised on this ferry service and under delivered. Irrespective of throwing money down the drain, it’s making the company look amateurish.

Yes, but add into that my point about talking to auditors about when revenue is logged and all bets are off again.