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They aren’t after hours buys but late reported trades that executed during the day

I think this is the fall out from the windfall tax. There’s too much uncertainty for any meaningful buying to support the shares. It’s going to be a bumpy ride until the tax details are finalised and HBR can respond to it at results time in August.
My understanding is that the tax is already in place, offsetting isn’t allowed against decom spend and previous losses can’t be utilised. What a mess it’s made.

I still think the WT is not going to be too bad for HBR as the relief seems to provide for the opportunity to progress North Sea development with a potential 30% tax saving on the existing rate.
The August investor presentation suggested plenty of scope to develop the J area and Beryl. Then there’s east Tolmount to consider. All these projects just need to be brought forward to benefit from the tax rebate and may end up being beneficial to the bottom line. I guess HBr are still trying to work out how to rejig all the projects to get the maximum from the rebate but we should know more by results time.

There are no market makers on SETS traded stocks

If you have access to the “level two” data on this site then you are effectively looking at each side of the order book which SETS then matches and reports as AT trades. These are both a buy and a sell at the same time and not as some on advfn have suggested only shorting algorithms. Only the O trades can give you an indication of what was a buy or a sell.

https://www.lseg.com/sites/default/files/content/documents/LSEG_CM_LSE_TRADING_SERVICES_GUIDE_03.pdf

@kayel. Hbr trades on SETS which matches buys and sells automatically without a market maker so the reporting of what was a buy or a sell is often inaccurate.

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/amp/news/81

An interesting snippet from IOGs announcement today on gas prices:

UK Day-ahead gas pricing remains extremely volatile, trading in a 10p to 224p/therm range this month. Our average realised price to date is 135p/therm and forward prices for this winter are increasingly elevated, closing at over 300p/therm last Friday. We expect 2022 opex to be 10-15p/therm.

It’s a shame to think Tolmount might have had to sell gas a 10p a therm. 300p a therm this winter is going to have a positive impact though surely.

If you look at the Hbr one month chart on advfn the volume shows two blocks for 25m - one today and one yesterday. Don’t know how reliable that info is though

Huge trades reported 25m today and it looks like 25m yesterday as well. These have probably taken quite a while to work through, maybe weeks. Hopefully that’s the downward pressure gone now

Perhaps a reason for the recent weakness is that the dividend buyback may have become more expensive? If the profits that HBR would have used to buy back shares are now taxed at 25% more than before then maybe any legacy holder hoping to sell into the buyback has thought better of waiting and decided to sell now? Conversely I guess maybe a North Sea company buying it’s own shares may be qualifiable for the 90% tax relief given that it is I suppose investing in the North Sea albeit in themselves?

Each time the shares have gathered any momentum, it seems that the strength has been sold into by the legacy holders.
EIG Global still seem to hold 36.73% and have not disclosed any sales since their lock up expired in March. Maybe they have further plans for HBR but I guess they will sell one day.
The former pmo share holders held around 5% and pmo debt holders ended up with around 18%. This 18% will almost certainly be sold as debt holders are not natural equity holders.
The rest was a mixture of chrysoar and legacy investors such as GIC and amounted about 40%. Some of this we know has been sold. The question is how much is left to go and how much of the overhang has already cleared. To answer this someone needs to have a look at the share register data from one of the data providers such as Citywatch (now part of computershare). There were a few others and even a Bloomberg terminal has basic share register data.
The effect is akin to a slow motion IPO over the past year and will end sooner or later but until it does, I think we have to expect that the share price will bob along stuck in a range until this lot have cleared out. I wouldn’t want to be out of this share when the brakes come off so can put up with the ebbs and flows for the time being. I expect the next set of results will provide the next leg up for the final rinse.

EIG are clearly up to something

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/exclusive-spains-repsol-talks-sell-25-oil-gas-unit-eig-sources-say-2022-06-07/

25% of Repsol upstream business is about the size of HBR and they would make an interesting combination particularly in light of the WT, providing diversification away from the North Sea.

@infor - HBr trades on SETS which works in mysterious ways. I think what we are seeing is the exchrysoar investors putting large sell orders on the book and then seeing lots of much smaller trades executing against them. It’s unlikely any investor that bought in the last year or so would be selling as the investment case has yet to play out. But the exchrysoar guys want to realise their investments. My guess is most of the big orders will be sells but due to the way SETS works it’s nearly impossible to determine what is a buy or a sell so I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the reporting. The exchrysoar have been selling for some time and soon enough they will be clear. GIC have offloaded two thirds. There are going to be many other smaller exchrysoar that will be selling as well. When it stops we should be off to the races but no one can be sure when that will be.

I don’t believe HBr is being shorted as there is no one on the fca list. There is too much history here for anyone to consider the risk of not reporting a short position!
The reporting threshold is low (0.2% I think) so anyone shorting soon comes into the markets radar. I guess the stock out on loan is being used as collateral for an investor to raise cash to spend elsewhere. It could quite likely be EIG who seem to not want to sell at the moment but maybe could use some cash for other things. Just a guess though.

The purpose of the RNS is to distribute regulated information and inside information to market participants at the same time. The rule books (dtrs, Mad) specifically say what regulated information actually is and when it should be announced. I guess that the reason that HBr have not announced anything about the WT is because it is presumably public information that anyone can use to apply the impact on HBRs financials just as many analysts have already done. Therefore an announcement specifically on this subject is probably not within scope of the rules. The SQZ announcement is cleverly formulated as it mixes all sorts of other non public information into its announcement in attempt to reach the benchmark of regulated information that would warrant an announcement. The RNS is not to be used to provide a running commentary of the company’s operations just to try and support the shareprice. This has been a topic on the IOG board a month or so ago and I posted a link about the mess Autonomy got into when they allegedly used the RNS inappropriately. I expect HBr are doing everything they can to minimise implications from the WT and will address it at the HY results.
I think the big news we are all waiting for is the Andaman results which can’t be far away. That will almost certainly warrant an announcement on RNS.

It’s just SETS working it’s magic. Large orders on the order book are matched all day long against all sorts of other sized orders and then reported when closed which can be different to the prevailing price.
https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/amp/news/81

With SETS there are no market makers, tree shakers or market manipulators or other such nonsense that gets routinely posted on these boards. It’s straight forward matching algos.

Of the 65% tax, isn’t the 40% part offset against PMO historical tax credits? So that part is wiped out. The new 25% is the only part that is payable and accounts for the approx 100m this year. This rises next year and thereafter but is more than offset by the vastly improving hedging situation. I think the 10% so fall is due to the effect of the tax making existing producers look less attractive as takeover targets as the tax encourages new exploration

For longer term investors the story here is still compelling. Oil hedges reduce from 19mmbls down to 7 in just 6 months time. That’s 30kb per day coming off hedges and realising hopefully $120 instead of $61. That’s an extra $657m in extra cashflow for 2023 alone.
The overhang of exchrysoar investors which has been a huge drag on the shareprice is, I estimate, about 75% cleared. The share buyback will if executed will add good support.
I guess the WT makes consolidation of mature fields cheaper given they probably don’t qualify as “investment” for the 90% tax relief. Therefore this is probably the reason for the 10% fall in HBR shareprice and not the 100m in extra tax Hbr will have to pay this year which is just a drop in the ocean.
Worst case scenario is the share price bobs along at this level of 380 until HY results in August but for those of us with averages lower then this isn’t much of a concern. There is still a big potential catalyst from Indonesia and news from this area could come anytime. Unless there are better opportunities elsewhere (and I don’t see many right now) then this is a firm hold steady and wait. 6 months time will look very different.

So oil companies get taxed at 40% already, and now have an extra 25% to deal with but can get 90% relief (on what? The 25% or the entire 65%) if they invest in U.K. projects? It seems to me Hbr have lots of investment strategies in the U.K. in place already eg tolmount east so the tax effect is not as bad as it might be. 100m is two weeks cash flow for this year. 200m is a month next year. Meanwhile they have big projects in Indonesia and Mexico which presumably are not affected at all. And oil price is rising with no seeming catalysts to go lower and gas futures remain over 200. How can the market reaction make sense? It doesn’t to me. Surely the rise in oil up to 120 is offsetting any tax at 100 anyway. Bonkers market reaction.

the article says 38p not 30p - my mistake. I guess this low price was a short lived intraday low and serves to embellish the point the article was making rather than suggesting that they have stayed at that level.
I wasn’t aware that there were so many different gas market prices and the U.K. has one all of its own which seems to be trailing the European TTF price.
This site seems to be the U.K. price.

https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data?marketId=5253320