Member Info for OofyProsser

..mark to market, not market to market. Spell check.

Ocelot: you should be ashamed of this post. Angus are still losing money, the huge profit you quote is merely a market to market value of the derivative contracts vs.their huge loss position last year. You know this full well.

HITS: the expression “debt structure” is largely obfuscation. It’s not the structure, it’s the constantly growing quantum that’s going to drag Angus down. Unless there’s a big rally in gas prices. And we’ve still got no idea of what’s in the Trafigura offtake contract.

One or two mugs on here appear to subscribe to the late Eric Morecambe’s old dictum: “Ernie and I split everything right down the middle - 60/40. I’m no fool - he pays more tax”.

There’s nothing here on the terms of the Trafigura offtake agreement. There’s very little, it seems to me, that Angus can do now to improve profitability. They’re in the hands of the gas market and of the ability of the increasingly depleted Saltfleetby field to maintain production at levels which will service their liabilities and pay for a new well.

It’s good to see that the executive directors are now receiving proper AIM-style remuneration for their efforts.

Speed-dating style research sounds just the ticket. What is it?

HITS: I think, as you know, that you’re right about the resolutions. The point about Angus now having to go to their major shareholders before they have a rights issue, however, is that those shareholders can say no, and that will cut off any recourse Angus may have thought they had to new capital - from anywhere. If they were to go ahead with a rights issue without the approval of the major shareholders, they’d have to hope their existing small shareholders would stump up yet more of their money to support the company. It’s one thing for retail investors not to want to realise a 90%+ loss. It’s another wanting to add to it. The amount Angus would raise would probably not reward the effort, other than giving most of the proceeds to the company’s broker etc. There’s no question of getting a rights issue underwritten and I can’t foresee many takers for unsubscribed rights shares. If shareholders in this can’t see that their company is over that barrel again but with bigger debts, an unsupportive gas price and a more depleted asset, it’s a bit sad. With any luck, we should find out soon what further concessions Angus have had to make to attract Trafigura to replace Mercuria, with a larger loan. I don’t think the small shareholders here are going to see any return whatsoever from their investment in this now.

Firwood: your post is gobbledegook. Do you always express yourself in this way? If so, you must be a trial to those close to you. I don’t want to try to decipher your output again, so it’s in the bin for you.

There’s no guarantee they’ll get the diamonds even after paying a bung. If the RBZ fail to produce them, what are Vast going to say? “ This is outrageous. We paid them a substantial bung in all good faith and they’ve welched”? That would be a police issue and would require resignations. The Directors would be persona non grata in the US and in Zimbabwe and subject to police, LSE and FCA investigation in the UK. It’s possible considerations along these lines are what Vast mean when they refer to “protocols” etc. It’s more likely the diamonds were part of Mme. Mugabe’s generous first class cabin baggage allowance quite a while ago.

It’s more fun discussing the parcel of diamonds than any of the rest of Vast’s £200mm. of assets though. Why don’t they just sell 5% of those and clear their debts? Or even 50%. That would be something.

I think a more likely explanation of the two 20mm+ share trades respectively early in the day and after hours is that they were one trade, split into two, the first at a low price at a time of day when it would do little harm, the second after hours, at a higher price, giving the impression it’s a buy. If you take the average price of the two deals, it’s approximately in line with the prevailing sale price through the day. Quite a good ploy, if so.

Onetomany appears to have sat too long at the feet of Ocelot, whose latest dictum appears to be that the recent re-financing has resulted in Angus taking on a loan that makes them debt-free.

I wonder if we’ll find out the terms of the fixed offtake volume/pricing agreement. Or the terms of the release of Angus from its existing forward contracts. All we know about these is that Trafigura appears to be taking them on. If Trafigura have big plans for Angus, they’re hardly likely to want to share their benefits with a lot of small investors, are they?

A low price takeover is a distinct possibility. If such a thing happens, it will be at or below 0.2p, I should think. At which point the prevailing investment method of the likes of balanced viewer, which avers that you haven’t got a loss until you sell the shares, will be exposed as a fallacy. There will be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth.

HITS: you do balancedviewer a disservice: he hasn't lost any money yet in Angus, even after multiple episodes of knee-jerk averaging down. It’s when he starts to sell or gets bought out that his fortune takes a hit. Er... that can’t be right, can it?

Ocelot: when did the Angus management reverse their policy of minimising new equity issues? The shareholders here are now about to be diluted at a rate that will make their eyes water, which will leave a small group of connected shareholders with a majority of the shares and which will enable this group to make a heavily discounted bid, if they want to. Without a big, sustained rise in the gas price, there’s nothing Angus can do - even if they want to - to protect the interests of their small shareholders. If you think this is encouraging, I wish you good luck with it but I think it’s a little unfair to encourage the likes of balanced viewer and onetomany to keep chucking good money after bad with their reductio ad absurbum policy of blithely averaging down. The moving finger has writ here.

Dear oh dear. Hold on to your hats.

HITS: I understand your comments re the Global Re-financing and agree with them. I also understand that you have deliberately left out the looming capital spending required to keep Saltfleetby in business. However, the financial aspects of the new loan to make Angus debt-fee are de minimis compared with these costs. A new compressor this year and a new well or sidetrack by the first quarter of 2025. If they’re planning to get such a well into production by then, they’d better start drilling it very soon, on recent form. The costs of the drill, in particular, are likely to dwarf the cost of servicing the debt this year and next. Shareholders can expect more share placings over the next two years, as long as the share price remains above the 0.2p nominal price. Which is not a given. If Angus don’t drill a new well, the start date for storage will be pushed further into the future. And the already depleted field’s flow rate will become an ever more serious problem. This is the issue.

I think you have to ask yourself how likely it is that the GM proposals, no matter how which are passed, will result in enough money being raised in time to get Vast out of trouble. Has anyone heard of a company raising two or three times its market capitalisation through an issue of shares at a premium to the prevailing market price? I’m relatively new to AIM, anything is possible, I suppose, but it wouldn’t happen in the real world. Vast has made it clear for some time that its hopes of repaying its loans are predicated on the recovery and sale of the parcel of diamonds. I believe them in this but I don’t believe they’re going to get the diamonds.

Tony_currie: “The existing Mercuria hedges are being novated and restruck with Trafigura.”. “Novate” means to replace one obligation with another. The whole paragraph is written in such an opaque way, it’s hard to understand much of it. Typical of Angus, sadly.

It’s clear from this that Trafigura has little interest in the remaining gas, it just wants to get it out of the ground ASAP so that the field can be re-purposed for storage. Shareholders will see little return over the next five years unless the gas price takes off again (and we don’t seem to know much about the new offtake agreement or the terms of the new and old hedge contracts or the fixed price contracts). The cash flows from Saltfleetby will largely go into drilling more wells for this purpose. Any excess spending in excess of income is likely to come from placings - Angus has clearly dispensed at a stoke with its commitment to minimise share issues.

I can’t see how they arrive at the £5.9mm remaining after repayment of debts etc. Some of the remaining cash is paying off “legacy creditors” from the drilling of the sidetrack.They had trade creditors of £4.5mm. in March last year. This figure will have risen sharply with the continuing costs of sorting out the sidetrack. How much of the £5.9mm. Is being applied in payment of these?

Why are there now two offtakers? The Shell agreement is still in place and Trafigura seems to be taking a similar fee to Shell’s for their additional agreement. There’s virtually no information on the new hedges or the new “embedded price protection” and whether the proposed new hedges are in addition to the Mercuria ones, which Trafigura will be taking over.

By the time this loan is repaid, there will be little gas left in the Saltfleetby field. In the interim, shareholders will probably be called upon for any unexpected new expenses. Once the field is fully depleted, it seems likely that it will be used for storage and shareholders will get a utility-style return from it. Yes, they’re keeping the lights on at Chiswick and the Directors will continue to draw their salaries (I imagine they’ll pay themselves fat bonuses too for their work in the new financing) but I can’t see anything in this for shareholders. Just more and more share issues, going forward, to finance a basically uneconomic asset until it’s ready to re-purpose.

The new boys from Scout Lane have got very nice fees from this, too. Another £1mm. With Mr. Forrest’s shares, there’s still a massive share overhang. And what is that, about 7.3mm to “price protect” 7.3mm therms related to the July 2023 hedge? Would someone explain that to me, please?

SillyButtons: perhaps this will teach him the futility of “averaging down” and the absurdity of the view that “you haven’t got a loss until you sell”.

Maddog: if you are part of the softening-up of investors in preparation for the next RNS, I don’t think it’s going to help a great deal.

What do shareholders think will happen if they vote “no”? Will the Lenders rescue them? It seems improbable after Vast has put these proposals to its shareholders and been rebuffed. Vast will no longer be a going concern and the Directors will be required to take the appropriate action, which will probably involve a share suspension. But whether Vast gets another lifeline or whether the shares will be suspended, the alternatives may prove academic. Without a large cash infusion (the release of the original parcel of diamonds and their prompt sale) the future appears bleak. I’m surprised the shares are holding at close to their all time low price.