Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Part of the problem is many PIs remember how the company destroyed the share price in the recent past with desperate refinancing , resulting in millions of new shares and warrants despite promises to the contrary. 2 out the 3 board members responsible remain as does Ebioss as the major shareholder. EQT is in a better place now but many long term holders were badly burnt.
There is one MOU outstanding for Vietnam, but the second Phoenix order should also be coming and hopefully use to.
CEO and management changes
The only change (a good one is the arrival of Ian Price) the others are still there
Financing
Shares have been diluted substantially in the last 12 month months with some desperate fundraising by the majority of the current board.EBIOSS who were majority shareholder were blamed but remain by far the biggest shareholder
Margin on the latest MOU will have suffered as the company has had to outsourced much of the engineering to a third party
This is still a high risk share - it is aim and there is a good chance that it’s the lenders who will be the main beneficiary
But this a growth area , the company has excellent commercial links and it could easily pick up several contracts in the next 12 months as Ian Price says could transform the company AND the share price. DYOR
Bought backin yesterday, guess this is local politics at play
The link with an engineering consultancy no doubt helped the Phoenix equipment contract over the line but at the cost of a sizeable chunk of the gross profit I expect. They need this expertise in-house to grow. Will be a buyer again if the SP drops much lower
Bought some today and immediately lost over £100 a good start plan on holding for a while
I will admit to being a day trader in this share having naively first bought at 6p when it was tipped in a share magazine due to the explosive growth in waste to power. Since effectively loosing my investment due to the financial manipulation and mismanagement of the board of directors who with the exception of Ian Price are still in place and EBIOSS and their Spanish colleagues remain the main shareholder. The company is in a better place now but only has one equipment order rather than the design and run contract that it seeks. Still haven’t recovered my loss yet but getting closer. Will buy back in if it drops further.
FYI Oscar Leiva, The non exec director mentioned as being director of two companies in liquidation is chair Of EBIOSS , EQT’s major shareholder. This shows properdue diligence by new nomad which I imagine will be announced Earlynext week. All good news.
Before we get carried away when Ian Price came aboard his review concluded there was to much emphasis on chasing work and they needed to focus the few opportunities they had and to this end they needed more engineering capability so he tied up an agreement with an engineering consultancy. This has cost hence further loan drawdowns but resulted in the first equipment contract to Phoenix. In my view talks of $30M revenue of 100M contracts is just talk. I doubt the first two Phoenix contracts will result in much retained revenue but it WILL give EQT proven commercial expertise in the small to medium MW waste to energy market and its this that will lead to growth in size of company and profit probably in 2020 agood medium term play.
I too have sold out most of my holding. Not worried about Nomad, More concerned about constant refinancing, our major shareholders remain the Spanish who were responsible for the financial mess that resulted in the loan companies getting involved in the first place with the millions of extra shares and warrants being issued.
The first contract is great news but it’s only for equipment say 20% on $4M , the cost of design was largely outsourced. So very little net profit after overheads and finance. I’m sure a nomad will be announced shortly but it will take several new contracts this year to make the SP jump IMO but as this is a possibility I will keep some skin in the game.
From a previous RNS
On the Conversion Date, Origen will be granted with warrants to subscribe for 95,833,333 Ordinary Shares at an exercise price of 0.75p per share, exercisable for two years from the date of grant.
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Capitalisation of interest
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The Company has also entered into arrangements with Altair and Ecofinance to capitalise interest payments due to them under existing debt facilities. The Company and Altair have agreed that £600,000 of interest payable to Altair pursuant to the convertible loan note instrument dated 14 July 2015 (as amended) for the period of 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2019 may be satisfied by the issue of 100,000,000 Ordinary Shares at 0.6 pence per share. Further, Ecofinance has agreed with the Company that interest of £93,168 payable under the secured loan agreement dated 14 July 2015 (as amended) may be satisfied by the issue of 15,528,000 Ordinary Shares at 0.6 pence per share. These arrangements have also been structured as unsecured loans on the same terms as Origen with automatic conversions on the Conversion Date.
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On the Conversion Date, Altair and Ecofinance will be granted with warrants over 50,000,000 Ordinary Shares and 7,764,000 Ordinary Shares respectively with an exercise price of 0.75 pence per share exercisable for two years from the date of grant.
Sold majority of holding when contract announced , having averaged down to break even over the last 9 months. Company has had to outsource engineering to get this contract home so my guess is that the contract revenue while good will not generate much GP. For a company that from a previous RNS was fully funded I’m concerned that they have had to rearrange the loan incurring further costs. Track record of fund raising has not be good for shareholders.
However glutton for punishment I will probably buy back in if price drops much further or when second contract confirmed.
Natural gas futures up 16% in the US this afternoon
So no nomad, still only two MOUs, further cash drawn down. Positive RNS about possibilities but still no signed contract. Yet shareprice has only dropped @5% which is not bad given the expected profit taking and market today. EQT has always been a punt after the disastrous financing last year , board saying no more shares Placing then a huge increase. I expect them to announce a contract signing soon which should see the share price double I hope and more importantly lead to more contracts. Or it could lead to another share placing keeping the share price in the 2-3p range.
At the moment comparing EQT with other established players with proven technology , funding and contracts is just wishful thinking . just because you say it over and over again doesn’t make it true. hopefully we will get a contract RNS announced with the new Nomad very soon and we can get the ball rolling.
The previous RNS suggested that the funding behind the MOU was expected to be in place around the end of 2018 with contract being signed shortly thereafter. They are using a third party consultancy for engineering support this costs and working capita lis no doubt tight until contracts are signed. Lenders would not have extended facilities without sight of a strong order book/revenue stream so this is a promising RNS and I expect to read of the first signed contract soon and the share price to move upward again. Difficult to see through the relentless ramping which I imagine puts a lot of PIs off.
We are now back around the level where we were when the last major lot of ramping started and Ian came in. I imagine there will be a fair bit of selling from those that have endured the pain in the interim that will see the share hover atthis level. Once they have gone we should crack on to around 2p after this very positive news.