Member Info for LOTM-13

Sold my 3,700 shares late yesterday but it didn't go through the LSE this time at just under £1.615 so that was a net gain of £203.22 which only covers a fraction of my paper losses on those bought in the low £1.8's after the consolidation.

Still it gives me more to trade with until my special dividend finally gets paid !

At least Merrill started buying back shares earlier in the ay yesterday & 58K wasn't to bad all things considered, but would really like to se them step up the pace a bit more if they can.

LOTM

So Goldman Sach's acquired another 1.151602% of Capricorn (1,083,803 shares) between Thursday the 26th Oct & Friday 27th October, taking there holding to 14.18868% of the company.

Yet the total volume of shares traded on the LSE on those 2 days were just 114,924 shares on the 26th Oct & 247,323 shares on the 27th Oct. Which is all of 362,247 shares.

We know Capricorn acquired for the buy-back 22,762 on the 26th & 31,353 on the 27th Oct through the LSE. Which is a total of 54,115 shares.

So where did the other 775,671 shares come from ?

LOTM

The 3,700 trade shown as a sell at £1.5488 @ 14.49 is actually a limit order buy of mine. I had sold a small parcel last week of 3,500 at £1.6198

I'm still waiting on my dividend arriving by the way !

Hopefully Merrill's are getting a decent amount of stock today at these low prices for the buy-back, which would be lovely jubbly.

LOTM

Sorry the system limits the size of posts so I'm having to split this into 3 separate ones to get it all in. This is the start of it.

PART 1

Year End Prediction

30th June net cash position was $176M less the Roughly $100M special dividend that has now been paid.

Net receivables were $148M with $113M of it overdue.

2nd half capex in Egypt for development & production was put at $40 - $50M

G&A for the 2nd half I'm estimating as $30M weighted to Q3.

Share buy-back program $14M in the 2nd half (although I don't think it will be finished by year end).

Net interest payable on Egypt Loan $5M after allowing for interest receivable on Capricorn cash balances.

There is around $20.3M in the accounts due to be paid within 12 month's I'm guessing its payable around the end of the year / early Jan & is effectively offset by a matching cash balance, so all we'll see is a reduction in outstanding debt & a lower overall cash balance.

There is also $25M payable to Shell in Jan 2024.

The only other cash cost will be OPEX - I've calculate that at $13 per net boe. So on 6,000 bopd & 7,000 boed nat gas & 184 days that works out at $31.1M (1st half cost was $27.5M for comparison in the accounts)

Only other thing on the subtraction side is depletion of reserves, but that's an accounting number affecting the assets of the company not a cash number. The 1st half was down as $55.1M so I'll be using $60M as my number for this.

So total 2nd half cash expenditure is expected to be between $120.1M & $130.1M depending on the actual D&P number.

On the income side, I've estimated Brent oil to average $88 per barrel for the half & the discount for Egypt to be $2 per barrel taking it down to $86.

Thus oil income will be $95M (86 x 6000 x 184).

Working out the nat gas number is sadly more complex. Capricorn use a number of 5.6 to convert there gas to boe rather than the standard figure of 6. Which means it has a higher BTU number than 1055 per MCF. After much debate I've decided to price it at 6x$2.95 rather than 5.6x$2.95 although it doesn't really matter that much as the difference over the 6 months is only $1.5M

So nat gas income will be @ $22.75M

This gives us a total income on paper of $117.75M

I say on paper because although its earned in the current half year, payments are always in arrears. So for Oil production in Oct the cash isn't actually due to be paid until 1st Dec & Gas not until the following month. So the easiest way to think about it is payment being a quarter behind actual production.

So the 2nd half would normal get the income earned in Q2 & Q3 which in this case means the lowest oil prices for the year so far in May & June being in the calculation from a cash received perspective.

Bearing this in mind I'm going to use an overall number of $100M from the cash side of things with regard to income.

PART 2

The next important question that needs to be addressed regards the overdue amounts, has this got worse/better/or stayed the same from what happened in the 1st half of the year.

I don't think they will have improved yet, so I've gone with a similar deterioration to that of the 1st half, ie a $50M increase in both net receivables & overdue amounts. Offset by a $20M increase in payables (the figures were $51M, $47M & $21M in the half year accounts). So effectively a further $30M deterioration.

Now to put it all together............

Cash of $76M + income in cash of $70M ($100M - $30M) = $146M

Less expenditure of between $120.1M to $130.1M

Leaving us with a net cash balance of between $15.9M & $25.9M

Plus net receivables of $215.75M ($148M + $50M + $17.75M) with $163M of it overdue ($113M + $50M) & net payables of $56M ($36M + $20M)

Now there is a scenario on these numbers where the company doesn't have the physical cash to pay the $25M to Shell in Jan 2024 although there should be payments coming into us on 1st of Jan (or close to then) of over $20M which would alleviate the problem. However that scenario only exists if Capricorn hasn't taken mitigating action before then like reducing the D&P spend / suspending the rest of what's left of the buy-back for a few weeks etc, or borrowing $15M max for 3 month's.

I'm sure they will take the appropriate action as needs be because Cheiron & Capricorn will simply not let the outstanding balances continue to build up without reducing there D&P spend or pushed it back until cash is coming in to match it, as its not in there interests to do so especially with Cherion being the largest Independent O&G in Egypt with many more licences than ours to deal with (fund) as well.

Our G&A expenses will be down to just $2M a month max by then as well & there will be a large incoming payment from Waldorf before April to make the cash bank balances look very rosy again.

Having dealt with the potential downside lets look at the upside of where things are.

I've used the max expenditure numbers in these calculations but I've not done so on the revenue side, oil production by late December should be nearer 7,000 bopd rather than the 6,000 I've used for example.

So our net position at the end of June was $186M ($76M cash + $112M net receivables [$148M - $36M of payables] ) of near liquid assets.

At the end of December we're looking at near liquid assets of between $175.65M & $185.65M ( with a minimum of $15.9M to $25.9M of it in cash + $159.75M net receivables [$215.75M - $56M of payables] ) Now obviously it would be preferable for the cash figure to be higher & the net receivables number lower by the corresponding amount.

PART 3

In other words we're literally back to where we were at the end of June, only having spent another $40 - 50M on D&P that has increased our production rates ahead of 2024, $14M on the share buy-back & a large chunk of the $30M on G&A right sizing the business for the future.

Which makes for a very bright outlook for 2024, even if we were to ignore the Waldorf payment completely.

We'll have higher production & lower G&A costs, & as some of those net receivables get paid to us, they'll be a lot of room for dividend payments.

In Q1 of 2024 Expense's for example will come to around $64.5M ($25M Shell, $15M D&P, $15.5M OPEX, $6M G&A, $3M Debt Int).

Yet using 7,000 bopd & 6,000 boe of nat gas, revenue will come to $65.5M ( $54.75M Oil, $9.75M gas) using the same average prices of $86 for Egypt oil & $2.95 for gas.

Now you're saying where's the spare cash for ordinary dividends on those numbers !

Well in Q2 Expense's will drop to $43.5M ($20M D&P, $15.5M OPEX, $5M G&A, $3M Debt Int) & that's with increasing D&P by another $5M for the quarter. While income should actually increase due to production increases from the cash invested in Q1, but even leaving it unchanged we'll be $22.5M better off, meaning that Capricorn should be able to pay an interim dividend in Sept/Oct of around $15M easily. Translating that into a per-share number depends on what happens to the Waldorf payment & whether that was used to give us another special dividend & share consolidation before then. If it was then we'd be looking at around $0.20 per share for the interim dividend rather than say $0.15

As for the final dividend for 2024, well that would all depend on what the oil price does during the year, but if it did average out at a price similar to this year's then I wouldn't be surprised to see $30M being paid out ie potentially $0.40 per share (in May 2025) & $0.60 in total in ordinary dividends for the year to 31st Dec 2024 & that's just the beginning of these significant payouts.

The potential 2025 payment's from Waldorf & Woodside ahead of that final dividend announcement could have a significant bearing on the per share amount's. It will depend on the share price at that time as to how many shares would be cancelled from another consolidation, but I can see the potential for Capricorn to have just 55M shares in issue by then (90.55M end of 2023 to 75M in 2024), thus the final dividend payout would be around $0.55 per share instead of $0.40 which is a massive difference.

LOTM

Capricorn must have one of the most active major shareholder registers out there !

Morgan Stanley have now joined the party.

I wonder how they got 6.3M shares so fast, given how little volume is trading through the LSE.

LOTM

I'm surprised no-one has picked up on the fact that Wilson & Sons have declared an interim dividend !

hxxps://api.mziq.com/mzfilemanager/v2/d/8284de4a-426a-465a-beab-92abeabafc97/5de1fc8d-a35b-0a55-ffb2-2bfff16399e9?origin=1

hTTps://ri.wilsonsons.com.br/en/terms-and-conditions/dividends/

------------------------------------------

Wilson & Sons seem to be doing very well when you look at the operational data for the 3Q

hxxps://api.mziq.com/mzfilemanager/v2/d/8284de4a-426a-465a-beab-92abeabafc97/31da1aac-f877-5cfb-52d1-99b338c99804?origin=1

The worry for me is how poorly the OCN investment portfolio will be doing in the meantime & what pathetic excuses they will be dreaming up to cover it & Hanseatic keeping control of it.

The Wilson & Sons interim dividend has been paid out yet OCN are totally silent on the matter, keeping shareholders in the dark as usual.

----------------------------------------

Interesting presentation regarding the future at Tecon RG

hxxps://api.mziq.com/mzfilemanager/v2/d/8284de4a-426a-465a-beab-92abeabafc97/8ac2e68e-1c10-55f8-1a7d-e625a2c3a8ed?origin=1

LOTM

I'm not entirely sure how they are doing it but Goldman Sach's continues to increase its voting interest in Capricorn week by week.

There overall ownership of shares has decreased yet again, but at the same time they've increased the indirect voting rights by an even bigger number.

Split has gone from 2.343998% of shares owned down to 2.067665% & indirect interest up from 10.437694% to 10.940662%

Which is an overall rise from 12.781692% to 13.008327%.

So that is an overall increase of 1% since the share consolidation on 6th October

-------------------------------------

So the current know longs are

Goldman Sach's 10.94662% (24th Oct)

Bank of America Merrill Lynch 10.187023% (5th Sept)

Centiva Capital, LP - 3.05% (22nd Sept)

Palliser Capital (UK) Ltd 2.35% (10th Oct)

Which is a total of over 26.5%

The other 6 major institutional investors only own 38.57% of the company's shares !

Therefore on the face of it at least 4 of them have "lent out" there Capricorn voting rights.

I don't think there can be many similar situations out there if at all.

Which is why they can move the share price around to there hearts content to flush out weak holders & get stock on the cheap, even with the buy-back acting in competition to them.

LOTM

I'm busy doing some calculations as to my end of year numbers regarding cash / net receivables due / over due amount etc & I'll publish them in due course

Hopefully the 30th Nov update on Egypt will provide some of the actual figures to the end of Oct, so that we can see the trends.

I believe we are currently getting net revenue from oil & liquids of $362,000 per day ( after OPEX costs & putting G&A costs at $100K per day [$3M a month] ) using 6,000 bopd.

I estimate depletion costs to be around $126,000 per day but that's money already invested, so isn't a cash figure but still needs to used to reduce the outstanding value of the assets accordingly in my calculations of true value.

Now that $362,000 per day won't be coming to us anytime soon. Its not due for payment until 1st December & it won't fall into the overdue category until at least 1st Jan 2024. I'm guessing it will be after 1st April before Capricorn gets its hands on it.

Still its a significant sum of money & if oil prices average the same to the end of the year it equates to over $27M net in just 75 days.

LOTM

Hi Bigbas2all,

I'm glad to hear you've got your dividend :)

I'm sadly still waiting on mine :( otherwise it would have been re-invested by now !

Good luck to you to.

Wow what's going on today ?

Lots of early morning trades & broken below £2.50 all of a sudden.

I guess it might be caught up in the general market turmoil.

LOTM

Sadly the directors of Dec need to go back & read there share buy-back announcement & then follow the instructions within it.

"Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited will purchase Shares under the Programme on behalf of the Company. The Company will provide instructions to buy back Shares as and when its management believes that, at the time of instruction, these repurchases will enhance earnings per Share and would be in the best interests of shareholders generally. From time to time, the Company may also provide one or more time-limited, irrevocable, non-discretionary instructions to Stifel to make trading decisions and repurchase Shares within those instructions independently of the Company. Any purchases of shares made during closed periods pursuant to the Programme shall be made independently of and uninfluenced by the Company. "

That should have applied when the share price was in the 60's & should still be occurring every single day in the low 70's.

As I have stated multiple times before set a price above which you don't buy-in stock, when the price is below that level you start to buy-in stock in smallish numbers, the further it falls the more you increase the rate of purchase.

That is in the best interest of all shareholders, not this on / off rubbish at someone's whim within DEC.

At the next AGM or shareholder discussion shareholders should be demanding to know who is in charge of the share buy-back & why they're still in a job.

There is another EX-DIVIDEND coming up soon, so get buying bigtime ASAP its going to save a fortune in the long run. The current $ / £ rate is an added tailwind bonus.

LOTM

From Woodside today

""At Sangomar in Senegal, another two of the 23 planned wells were drilled, taking the total now completed to 14. Pre-commissioning work at the floating production storage and offloading vessel continued in Singapore. Overall, the Sangomar project is 90% complete and we remain on track for targeted first oil in mid-2024."

"Sangomar Field Development Phase 1

· FPSO topsides integration and pre-commissioning works continued in Singapore.

· The development drilling program continued with 14 of 23 wells completed.

· The subsea installation campaign was 80% complete, with the overall subsea work scope 96% complete at the end of the period.

· The project was 90% complete at the end of the period and first oil is targeted for mid-2024."

LOTM

Hat's of to you Mr.kioto,

You've called the share price movement far better than me.

LOTM

So far they've bought in just over 0.50% of the stock in 9 days (478,044 shares) & spent £834,105 doing so at an average price of £1.7488

That works out at just over 10% of the $10M having been spent thus far.

My model show's that at the current average price to date (£1.75) they will get to buy-in a further 4.11M shares. If it averages £1.70 from now on it will be another 4.23M instead.

The strength of the $ against the £ is also aiding the cause. I'm using $1.25 to be on the high side & thus understate the total number of shares they actually purchase.

So the total buy-in is currently headed for just over 5% of the company & at the same time its substantially adding to the NAV of the remaining shares.

Hopefully they shake out a lot of stock & get volume up so the company can munch away at these prices. As its hard to see them completing the buy-back by the end of 2023 currently.

Hopefully this sort of price is still available by the time my dividend arrives ( I'm guessing Monday at best knowing my broker, but they messed it up the last time & it took 2 weeks to get it)

LOTM

Bigbas2all,

No problem :)

You're last post made me go & look at something in more detail .......... the trades themselves.

https://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/6658P_1-2023-10-10.pdf

Is a good one to view, what it tell's us is that the buy-back trades are all marked AT on the LSE, Merrill Lynch are not usually the 1st trade in a sequence of trades all with the same time stamp, only part of the bunch turns out to be for the buy-back & they are literally all on the sell side register.

So anything with an O isn't them, nor is anything on the buy side either, which means I now know what to look for much more clearly from now on :)

So the AT buy's are likely to be the insto's who are trying to build-up there positions like Goldman Sach's etc. Trying to make hay while they can.

There was hardly an O trade today, I think 20 in total Bigbas2all inside normal trading hours & the largest of those was a 2,000 buy with only 3 other trades above 1,000 shares in size. So virtually no PI involvement/interest.

LOTM

When we look at all those trades late in the day & you look at tomorrow morning's RNS on the buy-back & open the link contained within it, to see the actual trades themselves, we'll find most of these late trades were manufactured by Merrill Lynch in order to get stock for the buy-back.

They have very rarely tried to buy-back stock early in the morning even on the few day's there actually been reasonable volume to go on.

We also have to remember that 94.5K is currently 0.1% of the company & although $10M doesn't sound a lot it equates to around 4.7% of the company's value & a buy-back of that size is quite large even although we're only talking of 4.5M shares.

Trading volumes are probably also subdue due to the $100M not being in shareholders hands yet so they aren't able to re-invest it in buying the shares they lost to the consolidation !!! volume = more shares bought back.

LOTM

Hi Bigbas2all,

I'm sorry I can't really answer your question because I don't actually know the answer, all I can possibly give is some of my own thought's on it.

They stopped the buy-back on 5th August & it didn't start again until after the special dividend & share consolidation were done. I have found no reason why it was stopped other than the fact that Bank of America suddenly at that point took an active interest in acquiring a significant voting stake in the company. I assumed that this was causing a conflict of interest on there behalf & that was the reason for the halt. Now that might be true it might be totally wrong or it might be part of the reason.

Why are they not buying in large chunks at these prices, well its all to do with the volume of stock traded on a particular day, particularly the amount being sold into the market. Bank of America are meant to mop that up & then sell it on to Capricorn.

So on days of mainly purchases very little stock gets bought-in on days of lots of sales they should acquire lots more stock. The closing auctions are also a very important part of the process & a large % of the daily buy-back's occur there.

I would love them to be buying in 100's of thousands of shares a day at these prices, but sadly the volume is simply not there for it to happen.

News event's usually create much more trading than normal & therefore allow much more stock to be bought-in because of the higher volume. Sadly Capricorn isn't going to have any news event in the coming month's ( they don't do drilling results etc) the only focal point I can see is around this webcast on Egypt around the end of November.

I should say just to be clear I don't think the company can use a buy-back to push up the price of its shares by buying stock directly in the market, it can only soak-up what's coming to market & going through it.

I have even been considering acting as a sort of conduit to increasing trading volume, by that I mean selling some of my stock & then buying it back from other market makers at roughly the same price (given daily market moves) & that way my "sales" could effectively be bought by the company because of the higher volume etc. But that carry's risks to me as the price could jump against me.

As you know I'm all for having as few shares in issue as possible, especially when the assets of the company are worth so much more than the current share price, which is very much the case with Capricorn, as I have the assets currently worth over £4 per share now & rising with each passing buy-back.

LOTM

Continuing from my post's of 8th October ......

Bilgin Grup Doğalgaz A.Ş. latest purchase of 2,976,747 brings there total holding to 68.304M shares or 24.372% of the company.

It also takes there average purchase price for all the 5,782, 146 shares they've bought in 2023 to £0.978

It's also close to what I was suggesting they do in my last post on this thread!

"I'm a little surprised Bilgin Grup Doğalgaz A.Ş. hasn't been buying any more in the past few days to average down on those 6 decent sized buy's ! I mean 3 Million more would bring the average to under £1 but at the same time put them close to 25%"

LOTM