Member Info for pickedpeck

George, they wrote into the terms if the buy back that significant moves would pause buy backs, so a volatile price means buy backs stop.

I posted the terms here some time a week or two ago, basically price has to be within 5% of the 5 day closing average in order to buy back.

Without that pause mechanism I am sure PH would be buying every day, as it is they are not.

My view is that they have signed a contract to outsource the BB to Peel Hunt and have put terms in kt that are making it misfire. I think it is likely they committed a quarter or less of the money that would have been paid out as a quarterly dividend to an annual buy back program.

Looking at it simplistically they may have divided the old dividend budget into 4, one part for new divi, one part for BB, two parts for debt reduction / acquisitions.

They may repeat that at each quarter going forward in which case the rate of buy back should accelerate each quarter. We will soon see.

Go to the agm this Friday and make your point notrex. It's in London, you can get a seta as a holder. I'm thinking of going.

No George. I'm a mug too, although PE indirectly gave me the money to be so.

I'm not quite in the target demographic for PE funds sadly so I will just have to carry on with the fundamentals, patience, and luck strategy.

It definitely seems like DEC is now absolutely following the gas spot price despite the vast majority of production and revenue being forward hedged. That means the current price is taking literally zero account of the actual profitability of the company.

I know I shouldn't be surprised when I find market stupidity, but really? You can see why so many CEOs abandon the market in favour of private equity.

To be fair if you looked at my directorships it would look a bit like that, but some of the companies I appear on the lists of have no activity in a year, just holding companies for assets.

I get the impression that Alba is stop start, bouts of intense activity followed by a lot of waiting. I suspect of the list it is probably George's main gig.

£115k is a mid range professional salary. Engineers, architects, project managers, junior execs make that kind of money. If you're outside that level of earnings, working in a shop, nursing sick patients, teaching, or driving a truck, it can seem a lot of money. But for an exec of a listed company it will be amongst the lowest on the markets. I'm not arguing about the social rights and wrongs of that, but those are the facts.

Using the date slider on the chart under the link suggests DEC has been moving with HH Spot prices since the US listing, January gas spike aside. (set the slider to 100 days). I can't help but wonder if this is because no account is being taken of the hedging strategy in US trading? Just a theory, but the correlation is pretty strong since December.

Interestingly over a 1 year view the correlation is much weaker.

https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$NATGAS,DEC,UNG,NG1!

George's salary is £115k. He also has £56k FV of options vesting, although we can't see the terms of the options. No options were granted this year. The £208k includes Directors Fees which are a cost rather than salary.

Not exactly a monster salary for a CEO. I've hired project managers that make more than £115k, lets keep it real about lifestyle company and get rich quick schemes.

I did the three Novembers in the original post 24, 25 and 26, I didn't bother with anything further out as that's really more astrology than science, not that futures are that scientific. They are today's best guess after all.

November is weirdly a good proxy for winter pricing, using the same month over three years gives a flavour of where longer term pricing is going, tracking all three as they shift is also interesting. 24 is steadier at the moment than the other two, which is a bit weird. The spot price being way off the Nov24 future is also weird. It's not that far away, it implies storage is currently full but is expected not to be by November.

That $3 price point is important for DEC, I seem to remember reading somewhere that most of their forward hedges start with a 3 rather than a higher number.

Shorting is a dangerous game though, you can lose multiples quickly if you get it wrong and it's very hard to buy the market off. Something will give eventually, but at least one group of ii has it wrong shorters or JAM

They would be mad if they did. The gas market is now moving pretty quickly against them.

Nov 24 futures holding above $3 now, a 50% forecast rise from today's spot price.

Same goes for a sharp fall too BTW. Likely there will be some tomorrow.

Weird how they don't play catch up on quantity given missed days.

See my post at 16:59 yesterday. The buy backs are being done under contract by Peel Hunt. The BB authority has rules, a section of which is in the post yesterday. Basically the buy backs will only happen within 5% if the five day average, so if there is a sharp rise then buy backs pause.

You can argue the rights or wrongs of kt separately, but that's how it is set up.

I'd like to know who the partner is too, and why we are not being told. What's the big secret? George looked pretty shifty in that video, like he was trying to explain to his wife why he had been away for a business trip with a close female friend. He is cheating on Clogau!

Still doesn't explain it though, especially now the Azure cat is out of the bag. Why is whoever they are getting the option from selling it? Why wouldn't you wander the landscape to see if you can see pegmatite out crops?

I had a look on Google earth, it's quite easy to tie in the Azure landscape into a SW to NE surface geological pattern. It's a barren spot so you can see surface geology pretty well. Have a look at Roebourne, WA.

Hmm. Its a 'why?', not so much the why buy it, but why were they able to buy it. The Azure guy basically said you can wander round and spot pegmatite outcrops with visible spodumene. If the plot that Alba is potentially buying into has the same geological features why hasn't someone already snapped it up? Azure is valued in the billions now, surely they should be doing an epic land grab of every bit of similar landbank they could find in the area?

In the video posted by Ocelot at about 10:20 there is a map with the pegmatite outcrops marked in red. The look to be running more or less East West through the block, with nothing really recorded in the NW corner. Alba's block is NW of this!

You would assume they would at least have a geologist wander over the landscape before committing to the purchase, its only common sense. But if you were selling wouldn't you have already done the same?

Nice dashboard for the US listing:

https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/NYSE-DEC/

There is a mechanism in the BB agreement where a sharp sustained rise over 5 days means buybacks pause.

From the AGM papers:

'17.2 by the condition that the Company does not pay less (exclusive of expenses) for each

Share than the nominal value of such Share and the maximum price which may be paid

for a Share (exclusive of expenses) is the higher of:

17.2.1 5% over the average market value of the Shares for the five Business Days

immediately preceding the date on which the Company agrees to buy the Shares

concerned, based on the share price published in the Daily Official List of the

London Stock Exchange plc; and

17.2.2 an amount equal to the higher of the price of the last independent trade and the

highest current independent purchase bid at the time on the trading venue where

the purchase is carried out, '

17.2.1 means when there are a couple of positive trading days then buy backs pause. What's not clear to me is why they then don't seem to play catch up in quantity.

Futures interesting and seem to be indicating some market change.

2024 more or less flat vs when I posted a week ago, 1c down but rising this morning (US time).

2025 and 2026 both up on the week, only a few cents but moving. 1m /3m charts for both look healthy.

Currently $4.23 for Nov 2026 deliveries.