Member Info for MudPump

Sarge, if it's lined up for the end of the month why doesn't he say it? It would add 10% to the share price instantly.....or is he waiting until he can buy a few shares first?

Ezhik, nobody is asking for the 180 to be on-site before the prep work is finished. But what does it mean the "the tender process is not yet complete"? I think they have a choice of one rig provider! Is AC putting off a commitment in case the prep works go wrong? Even in that case there should be no shortage of work for the 180 with MOC-1 and the Z's , which should be drill-ready. You would expect the rig to have a expected arrival date by now, and that to have been communicated to the market. Oil investors are used to dealing with uncertainty concerning drilling results, but the uncertainty caused by illogical management comments or actions is more difficult to deal with....

Good effort at communication from AC, but leaves unanswered the only question all investors are asking - when is the drilling rig expected on-site?......

If I heard correctly they are still "awaiting the results of the 180 tender".......

From the RNS Oct15 "The Company will provide an update once the preparatory work is concluded and a 180-ton rig, contracted from a local service company, is mobilised to the well location in order to commence drilling activities."
OK, now I see it! Good, let's hope it's ready to go by month-end, that will cheer up the shareholders.....

No mention of a 180 in the october presentation either. The 260 is expected "prior to year end". The plan looks straightforward to me: Following prep work by A80 the 260 will go C37 for January start, then to MOC-1, then onto ZEN-1.
Zardab is "undergoing further geological study".....maybe they'll see if the A120 can do better than the 80, if not it'll have to wait.

kellsbells - did you hear from the company that the 180 will be on site at the end of november? Or are you just speculating?

I don't see any mention of the 180 in the Norway prospectus, and ZEN never confirmed the tender process so I would forget about that. Bits of the 260 started transportation in Sep if you read the rns from then, but lets hope the rest doesn't take too long. The 500 is on perma-hold. The 100/120 should be operational in December, (subject to the usual ZEN timeline accuracy).

Well done to Orion for finding a buyer for new shares at 3.2p while the bid in London was 3.5p, I trust they have been well remunerated for their efforts......

In my opinion back in August AC was totally convinced that ZEN would be drilling and finding oil by now (he has demonstrated some over-optimism in the past...) so he never really thought through the consequences of the conversion terms. Obviously he should have set a minimum price/max number of shares limit. He was sure that the share price would be way north of 5p so no big deal, just 29.55m shares inc warrants issued or about 13% dilution - expensive but that's life for a small company. Unfortunately the lender was way smarter - they have locked in a minimum return of 10% over 4 months, and in the worst (for us) scenario will have control of over half the company for $1,5mil. In that case I'm not sure whether they would fire AC or keep him on as a jester......

Reading the release again, it's a "facility" not bonds, but it changes nothing since any sophisticated lender will have a range of different legal entities they can use. And the terms are worse than I thought - 10% below the lowest VWAP in the 10 day period prior to the convert request. The facility is 0% interest so they will convert asap, ie dec31 2018. And they will get shares at 10% below the lowest VWAP they manage to achieve over the 10 days prior ie. the thinnest volume days of the year! Either AC is in on this or he's an utter mug, the question is whether he had the authority to sign a deal that could result in virtually infinite dilution without a shareholders vote.

Sarge, you can't tell who the current holders of the CB are, bonds can change hands OTC. But $1.5m is small change for the typical CB buyer, so the issue could have been placed with a "consortium" precisely to avoid the 9.9% share-holding limit getting in the way since it applies to the individual holders not the holders as a group. So assuming GBPUSD 0.76, if the £1.14mil issue is converted at the upper limit of 0.0505 then 22.574m new shares will be issued, a dilution of 9.52%. But the CB holders simply need to borrow say 50mil. shares and start dumping some in the market in January. if that forces the price down to say 2.2p they will convert into 57mil shares at 2p, a dilution of 24%. And no-one will breach 9.9% if the holding is split between at least 3 custody accounts..

Mudstud, yes I hold shares, and like everybody else I'm running out of money to average down and getting frustrated at the lack of progress, the missed deadlines, the constant changes in tactics, the dilution.......

Actually AJ is right, as usual. ZEN are consistently missing every deadline they set themselves, and constantly changing plans. This, together with the constant trickle of dilution, is eroding investor interest. The shit will hit the fan come Dec30th if there is no progress by then as the CB investor can collapse the stock and force conversion at a very low price causing massive dilution. With this hanging over investor's heads AJ is right to question AC's competence. And now the company has exchange and advisor fees to pay in 3 separate markets.......let's hope we have 1000 bpd by December!

Let's hope there's a Norwegian buying frenzy because AC has 6 weeks to get pumping before the death spiral kicks in........

"The Facility is wholly or partly convertible into Common Shares at the lower of £0.0505 per Common Share and 90% of the lowest daily volume weighted average price on the London Stock Exchange of the Common Shares during the 10 trading days immediately prior to the request for conversion, subject to maximum total shareholding restrictions from each Lender of 9.99% ("Conversion"). The Lenders have the right to request Conversion between December 30, 2018 and the expiry of the Facility."

The company has requested a trading halt in Canada pending an announcement. A further placing at 1p perhaps?

"I would like to thank Arctic Securities AS who has acted as Merkur Advisor to the Company, Orion Securities who has acted as manager for the Private Placement, and Arntzen de Besche Advokatfirma AS who has acted as legal advisor to the Company in connection with the Private Placement and the admission to trading on Merkur Market."

Does anyone know what proportion of the £668,300 raised went on adviser/management fees?

I think there has been a big change of strategy in the last 18months. Originally AC planned to pick up bits and pieces of existing oilfields all over the place, keeps them going on the cheap and then sell the whole package when overall production had reached a meaningful number. In my opinion this was a crap strategy and he now realises it - because there is no natural buyer for a hodge-podge mix of declining fields, and because each project he bought into cheap would be cheap for a reason - because it needed a huge amount of time and effort, or capital, or the upside simply wasn't there. Now I think he starts to see things more clearly. Italy will never be more than a distraction for anyone other than a small private Italian company, so adds nothing to his plan to hit the big time. Azerbaijan has huge potential, but needs 100% laser focus, time and all the capital he'll be able to raise. There is zero shareholder support for another adventure on the other side of the world with it's own problems, requirements entirely unconnected to the Azerbaijan project. Someone once reported that AC said there was a member of the ZEN team dedicated to analysing new ventures - ridiculous; that ought to be an immediate redundancy. Italy needs to be sold. There are plenty of examples of successful companies that focus on a single asset eg Eland - and they are the ones which will attract an industry buy-out at a good price, which is supposedly AC's exit strategy.

From Align: Zenith has been working hard on complex workovers on its huge 642.4km2
Muradhkanli Block. With quite small sums of money available to fund operations this has meant that the
company has been limping along. This is the largest onshore oil/gas concession in Azerbaijan
and really needs a budget to match its potential. So, it is good news that the bulk of the £10
million anticipated fund raise will be employed on this flagship asset. These funds will allow
management to be able to purchase new equipment, re-interpret seismic logs and probably
have a proper dedicated team of geologists. All of these are important elements which will
allow Zenith to be able to properly unlock the value here in a highly systematic fashion. This
sort of budget does give the company a good chance of being able to match previous levels
of production of 15,000 bopd, which have not been seen since Soviet times and were
achieved with inferior technology.

Interesting fund raising dilemma, if the Indonesia purchase is going ahead. Need $3.3m at least (maybe more if work is needed immediately) but shares at a low. Equity raise would explain the level of detail in the last RNS as that would be given as part of the marketing so had to be RNS'd as well. The board will get diluted, but can participate so not a problem for them if they have the cash. If the majority is equity I assume they will need share-holder approval (?). Difficult to see a bank getting involved, but bonds would qualify as junk as income stream is uncertain, more funds needed for investment and assets are not readily marketable, so difficult to see them pulling it off. If the seller of Indonesia takes a big chunk of equity he would have diversified his investment and selling cheap would not be such a problem as he would be on both sides of the trade, so seems a possibility. The right thing to do of course would be to sell Italy, as the potential upside there is dwarfed by Azer/Indo...but I wonder if AC is emotionally attached to it?