RE: Investors Chronicle19 May 2022 18:26
chariot (CHAR:19.55p), an African-focused energy group, has announced a $29.5mn (£23.6mn) fundraising, at 18p a share, to advance its low-cost flagship Anchois Gas development, offshore of Morocco.
Pitched at a tiny 2 per cent discount to the market price, the placing and subscription element of the equity raise completed in double quick time, a sign of strong investor support. Existing shareholders have until 8 June to submit their open offer applications. I would advise doing so for multiple reasons.
Firstly, at the start of the year, Chariot announced a major gas discovery at its Anchois-2 well. Having encountered multiple high-quality gas reservoirs, net pay estimates – a key parameter in reservoir evaluation – have been raised from 100m to 150m. This has a positive impact on the size of the resource, and on the project economics, too.
A post-drill reserves report is in the process of being updated, but on a base case development with a 70mn standard cubic feet (scf) per day plateau production rate from the 2C contingent resource (pre-drill), Anchois has a net present value of $900mn (applying a 10 per cent discount rate) and is expected to generate an eye-catching 45 per cent internal rate of return for its project owners.
Secondly, Chariot’s board is looking to advance the Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) project to reach the Final Investment Decision (FID) as quickly as possible, whilst progressing the development of the group’s wider portfolio. Around $15mn of the fundraising proceeds will help accelerate this process while a further $5mn has been earmarked to progress Chariot’s renewable power pipeline, strategic partnering and new venture opportunities.
The partnering process is already underway as Chariot looks for long term, strategically aligned partners in both upstream and downstream capacities. The next commercial steps will be negotiating and completing gas sales agreements, and securing project finance. At the end of April, investment bank Societe Generale was appointed to lead the project financing.
Chariot already has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a leading international energy group for future gas sales agreements for 40mn scf per day for up to 20 years on a take or pay principle, thus anchoring the development whilst retaining the opportunity to sell surplus production into the gas hungry European market which is in urgent need of alternative sources of gas supply.
Simon Thompson's 2017 Bargain shares portfolio performance
Company name TIDM Opening offer price on 03.02.17 (p) Bid price on 19.05.22 (p) or exit price (see notes) Dividends Total return (%)
Kape Technologies (formerly Crossrider) KAPE 47.9 338 3.55 613.0
Chariot Oil & Gas (see note one) CHAR 8.29 19.5 0 543.6
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