The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
it’s not that the phe directors can’t be ****d to get building, it’s that they are trying to get funding for the foak. and last estimate of the capex i saw was c. £40m so any funder will want to see a solid financial projection showing significant profits. i believe that is what’s causing the hold up.
ILEO, by “him” I assume you mean Howard White. Why do you assume it is him that’s selling? He is not the highest shareholder, and he had denied that it is him. It could be any of the shareholders that are included in the many Nominee Accounts. Take a look at the list of shareholders in PHE’s web site to see what I mean.
I absolutely agree LedZep, those are the very thoughts going through my head as well. I know that Peel are generally blamed for wasting 3 years, and that blame is not entirely unjustified. I know that Peel were looking for external funding from the outset, rather than committing their own money for 50% of the SPV, and clearly they failed to achieve that. Of course PHE should have been pressing them all along, and PHE should never have allowed the destiny of the Protos DMG to lie entirely in Peel's hands. Keith Riley has acknowledged this, but of course he wasn't in charge when that agreement was made initially.
Like you, I firmly believed that it was the intention to build the DMG to produce syngas to generate electricity initially, and to bolt on the hydrogen production whenever a hydrogen fuelling station was built at Protos. Or indeed whenever an alternative buyer for the hydrogen should become available. It would seem that they are now going for hydrogen from the outset, and if that is true then I think it is bound to cause further delay until such time as there is a buyer for the hydrogen. But I really don't know for sure if that is the case, and I am keeping an open mind until we get more definite details and timelines from PHE.
If he's going to persuade institutions or companies to fund the capex for the DMG, he has to be able to show them that he has contractual commitments at both ends i.e. at the feedstock end and at the production end for electricity and/or hydrogen. Without that it would surely be nigh impossible to get funds for these organisations.
In his interview with Zak Mir on 10th May Keith Riley said:
"In terms of technology we're in a pretty good place. I don't see the engineering and technology any longer being anything that holds us back. What we've now got to do is to get the supply of the plastic in place. We need to have contracts in place that supplies us the feedstock, and we've got to have the off-takes for the hydrogen. What we've got to do is to get an off-take agreement that we know now what price we will get for the hydrogen in two years time. And that's where the focus has now got to come."
So it's not technical or design issues that's holding anything back, it's getting contracts in place for feedstock and sale of hydrogen.
Start at 4 minutes in:
https://zakmir.com/zakstraderscafe-interview-keith-riley-acting-ceo-powerhouse-energy/#gs.yew3sj
£7.54m cash at bank at 30 June 2022.
https://wp-powerhouse-2020.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/media/2022/08/22-08-25-PHE-interim-accounts-FINAL.pdf