Is there any downside for a CEO repeatedly acting to deny value to investors? Even now when there actually is value, to snatch it away posthaste - what I'm asking is, would Art now do a placing to net high-worth comrades and as you say wonga-lenders for tens of millions diluting to a ridiculous degree for high-risk or ill-defined goals. Would there be anything that would give him pause?
On the Canadian forum a poster said:
'@VictoriousSecret Placees don't need value added -- they just need to buy discounted shares at 25 cents or whatever (post consolidation) and sell them for 30 cents. They could give a **** what oil wells were bought with their money. Because they will be gone.
It's only retails like us who are sitting here hoping that the SP will rise.
But the BOD has every incentive to leave the SP nailed to the floor, as they have done, and just keep milking debt and equity markets to fund their next acquisition adventure.
It's not a good look IMO'
I have to say, so far on every single stock I've followed, every single one, when investors say 'the market won't take it badly', the market takes it badly.
When investors say 'there might be good news to coincide with and counteract the bad news', there is not.
When investors say 'it may be a misunderstanding, we might not be getting screwed by the CEO', it's not a misunderstanding...
However, this stock has enough going for it, and seems undervalued enough, that we may hope it becomes an exception to the above. For the CEO to act to knock the sp down from here, after all that's happened... I'm not sure I can see it making sense strategically even in the most ruthless mind, and I don't think the Zak Mir interview was acting, I think, as he said, that they expected the share price to reflect the value. Hope so anyway.
I just listened to the interview with Zak Mir again. If there's forward selling going on that Art knows about, he is very, very convincing when feigning incomprehension regarding the share price. Might not be that at all.
I can imagine some CEOs, on the verge of success, aim to share out the spoils with as many cronies as possible at the lowest possible cost to them, leaving as little as possible for private investors. I really hope it's not like that.
Though on the Canadian XOP board a regular poster, usually positive, is saying worst case it will fall to .2 in London. Which worries me.
https://ceo.ca/xop?77107c4aae18
Essentially anything that happens at this stage seems to me part of an attempted transformation from a sketchy to a solid company.
Hopefully there won't be short term pain for us though, but as hopingforbags says, the share price is a function of the market cap, and the market cap shouldn't be diminished if based on production, assets and so on, rather than purely speculative potential as I expect is the case with companies whose share value is damaged by consolidation. And even an acquisition and dilution might actually be well received by the market if it's of good value... the messed up way we found out might not be received well however, but I suppose we will see.
Please correct me if you do know of examples where the market cap reflected the consolidation rather than the company's good health?
I am new yes, but learning fast at the deep end, it would seem.
The only disaster I can see is diluting by half to pay off CUDA's debt... that sounds a bit ridiculous even to me and I doubt that will happen. Getting Cuda's assets if at a very good price might work out pretty well.
Haha maybe its for another Nigerian Prince's oil prospect?
So you are saying this recent selling was not just to do with past placing shares, it was a lot of favoured investors who have been told about an upcoming placing?
Now I'm as pessimistic as the rest of you.
But is there a simpler scenario where Art talks to institutions and they say we'd like to invest but not with 16 billion shares, get things looking a bit more respectable?
It does all sound more probable than not. If we have a decent comercial discovery plus Nigeria, plus production increases continuing, then clearly this is going to make shareholders a lot of money. Really we just need one of those to work out well.
I'm hugely pessimistic about stocks though! 9 out of 10 companies I've followed, and some I've invested in, have disappointed despite seeming to have everything going for them, but still, I'm glad I added today at 0.32, thought I'd missed that chance.
Despite the churn, it feels as if the company at least is on fairly solid ground compared to most small-caps out there.
I assume people on here may have an agenda, and I realised that these boards will be far more useful if I neither trust them nor resent them for it.
I do wish I'd sold out at 0.6 on relist, then bought back in lower. But thinking about it, no one would advise this message board to do that even if they foresaw the dumping, which in hindsight was perhaps foreseeable at the time. These boards will never be so altruistic, because if everyone tried that trade, no one could. So there's maybe a limit to how helpful even the most helpful people are going to be!
Wait, wait.
I thought it was a discovery but not confirmed as commercial? And I've seen enough to know discoveries often are not. Are you confident it will be, Tiburn, and for what reasons? Not questioning your view, just fishing for detail.
Because I really do want it to be, because that would be a gamechanger upon a gamechanger.