Member Info for ps200306

SP of a pound would be a valuation of six times SOU's share of the TE-5 horste, assuming zero debt and no NPV discount. Without further drilling success it's unlikely to ever exceed 5p.

HyMaroc is a boondoggle to keep John Argent on the books while he has nothing else to do. Anyone who thinks it's ever going to generate revenue might be interested in a nice bridge I have for sale.

Thanks for the Twitter link muntene. I'm hoping SOU were embarrassed into it. Like dangler, I emailed the CEO a couple of weeks back and got no answer. I'd like to think the tweet means everything required is on site and commissioning will be done as soon as all the pieces are hooked up. Unfortunately it doesn't quite explicitly say that. I would never put it past SOU to say we still have a 3 month wait for some didgerydoo from Timbuktu. Even without that, first gas in 2025 seems a remote hope. However it does seem to have mollified the masses for now -- most of the trades yesterday were buys around 0.7p. Opened this morning at 0.75 before dropping back.

Yawn. The same BMCE Capital Global Research produced a report in February saying that "opportunities in the energy sector, particularly the exploitation of hydrocarbon fields in Morocco, remain limited”. You'd be as well off reading the tea leaves as rummaging around the internet for old articles on Moroccan gas. You will not find any "new news" on Sound Energy's immediate prospects. For that you will have to wait until Managem and/or Sound deign to give us a progress update on Phase 1. So far there is no indication that all equipment is on site, that construction has completed or commissioning has begun. "Watch this space", as Graham has been saying for years now.

BV: "the forecasts are out in the Public Domain for all to make their own judgment. Let's see who tries to argue that all 9 are incorrect,gla!"

Sorry to burst your bubble but there is zero chance that there are nine analysts poring over a penny stock on LSE to come up with their own independent analysis. The internet is littered with bot-generated sites that just crawl the tickers (and each other). A more legitimate site like the FT can only find one analyst (https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/forecasts?s=SOU:LSE) and we all know who that is.

Unfortunately, Zeus follows the Sound chairman's lead in predicting "near term news" where the definition of "near term" slips by six months every time we get a report. Right now we are still led to believe that first revenue is coming in Q4. But anyone who's been paying attention is expecting three months of commissioning, can see we are nearly half way through Q4, and there's no indication that all the equipment has even arrived on site. So we can safely assume the Q4 deadline is already toast.

The calculus is still incredibly straightforward. We need Phase 1 revenue to save SOU from a cash crunch. We need drilling and Phase 2 announcements to convince investors that SOU is worth a punt. And we need SOU to stop missing deadlines if they're to convince anyone to touch the share with a barge pole. (The solar, hydrogen, and Sidi projects can be discounted as none have a chance of generating revenue within several years).

All that said, the share price has been remarkably resilient for the last 12 months despite the constant predictions of doom. I'm still here and still holding although I've lost interest in any chat on this board that is not directly related to the important deadlines.

Thanks Ducati. Excellent find as always.

"Prediction is difficult, especially about the future", according to a Danish aphorism. Not for two of this board's stalwarts, according to themselves at least:

• Kylie, yesterday: "I’m about the only one on this board with a decent track record calling this share."

• Big John, yesterday: "everything Kylie said in last 2 years was spot on!!"

• Kylie, last week: "Ok, don't listen to me. i've only called this right for the last 2-3yrs"

The problem for Kylie and Big John is that you don't have to dig very far to find them being diametrically wrong. Such as when Kylie declared that Calvalley was a complete disaster and it was absolutely "CRYSTAL CLEAR" that there was no Plan B. That was two days before the Managem announcement which had clearly been in the pipeline for many months. Shortly after that Kylie announced that Graham would be departing imminently. Five months later in early December he/she announced that Graham would be "gone before Christmas". Those are just random examples among many. Big John is equally historically challenged:

• Big John, last Monday: "the SP is sinking faster than Titanic."

I'm sure that would have been great comfort to the passengers on the Titanic, as they would have been still afloat a year later instead of on the seabed after three hours. The SP is trading in the same range as it has been for nigh on two years.

Rewriting history does not make one a successful fortune teller.

Ahshanbd: "Dr might pronounce dead any minute unless miracle ( Drill success ) happens."

Ediacaran: "Months away from multi million revenue but you think they might go under?"

That was my thought too. Drill success is one thing that is NOT necessary for SOU to survive and prosper and, in fact, might not even help very much unless other things go right. What we need right now is some indication that Phase 1 is on track to start delivering revenue. We know from past experience that SOU milestones can easily slip six months withing six months. Our last news was at the June investor presentation. An update would be nice.

I looked over the project history recently and the slippages on what was supposed to be 2 years of development have been abysmal. Notice to proceed was given to Italfluid on 15-Feb-2022. Road construction and site preparation started within a month according to a SOU tweet of 17-Mar-2022. In May 2023 the 2022 annual report said the project schedule was "challenging" -- they blamed the Ukraine war -- but a fully commissioned plant was still due in Q1 2024. By the time of the 2023 annual report Italfluid's "cost increases and supply chain issues" had slipped delivery to the end of 2024. In the 2024 annual report the full summary of excuses included "the war in Ukraine and Middle East, global inflation as a result of the COVID pandemic and the resultant effect on global supply chains". Sounds to me like they spent 2023 and 2024 in denial that the schedule was xhot to xhit.

Nevertheless we were assured that Managem would "start LNG production by the end of 2025, provided that no major event occurs and impacts the plant readiness schedule". That puts it close to 100% over the original schedule and still sounds like "we'll be ready unless we're not ready". As I said, an update would be nice -- we would need to be hearing about start of commissioning VERY soon to have a chance of hitting the deadline.

Time is not on SOU's side as they need revenue to start flowing. But the good news is that once it does, and with the new EPC contract, it has the potential to cover all ordinary outgoings while we wait for Phase 2 advancement. Managem has every incentive to progress that. Time is money for them too, and remember that the clock for the tax exemption period starts ticking as soon as Phase 1 production commences.

No extra drilling success is required on SOU's journey to achieving value (although admittedly that's all relative for existing investors). SBK-1 with its high chance of success would be a welcome addition. And of course M5 has the potential to more than double the value again.

No time to waste if it's to hit 0.00000000000000005p by Christmas, Big John. Only 70 trading days left.

Big John: "the SP going south everyday"

Every single day? Hmmm ... checking last 12 months ...

Sure enough, SP went south 56 times. 😱

But wait! It went north 67 times. 😍 And stayed the same 130 times. Been in the same quarter penny range 95% of the time.

Seems to me it's tacking sideways into the headwind 🤣

"smacking plasterboard walls with kitchen knives"

sundance, you certainly have a way with words 🤣🤣🤣. I filtered the trolls a few weeks back. Done wonders for my plasterboard.

Big John, nobody's expecting the SP to do anything until someone starts liberating the $400 million worth of gas that SOU has stashed underground. After that you can expect $4m of annual revenue from Phase 1, and $20m from Phase 2. As Little John says, it's an opportunity for people willing to take a punt at today's price. If your average is in double-digit pence per share your money is long gone (except in the unlikely event of M5 coming up trumps). This is all well laid out in the broker reports. There's no real mystery about it.

Well said, Little John. One can live with the perma-bears like Kylie and Big John -- they are entitled to their own opinion -- but the only solution to the childish perma-trolls is to filter and ignore them.

Agree with you that we should see revenue in the near future. ItalFluid are contracted to complete and commission Phase 1 in Q4, or presumably suffer penalties. That will go a long way to keeping SOU's head above water while we wait for drilling and Phase 2. All going well, the future for SOU could be pretty good, certainly enough to make it worth a punt. 2027 will bring challenges with 5% accrued interest due on the Eurobond, not to mention repayment. But that will be one for a new CFO to negotiate. I still think it could take some considerable time for a lasting rise in the SP, but if Zeus's projections are to be believed the free cash flow from Phase 2 could be 10-15% of market cap assuming a share price of 5p. That means either the share price should be higher than that or SOU would be able to pay a handsome dividend.

Kylie: "So many in this bb are clueless morons. Seller out again. Brokers are clearly filling a sell or 0.05p away from all time lows. Go figure."

Pot calling the kettle black. When did you join the ranks of the fractional penny counters? In the last 12 months the SP has close at or below 0.7p on 28% of trading days, at or above 0.8p on 29% of them, and in between on 43% of them. The phrase "nothing to see here" would be an understatement.

And "nothing" is exactly what I'd expect to see until we get some meaningful news. We had one spike to 1.2p in December last year on the announcement of the completion of SEME sale. 150 million shares traded in a week, which gives you some idea what it takes to shift this turkey. More recently we had 1p when 30 million shares traded on the occasion of the ShareSoc presentation in July. There is pent up interest, but it's going take announcements of *real* progress, not glossy presentations and trolls declaring that "the train has left the station" for the umpteenth time. Some people seem to think the SP is powered by magic.

Couple of other trivia about the SP. There's definitely skulduggery going on. Yesterday opened with a trade at 0.65p worth precisely 76p. And that's not particularly out of the ordinary -- definitely manipulation going on. As for this BB, after my last post John282 (who I'll call Little John to distinguish him from Big John121983) posted to comment that he bought c. 700,000 shares that didn't show up on the Trades tab here. His post stayed up for several hours and then disappeared. What's up with that?

Steady on Kylie! What are you seeing that I'm not? Barely any trades at all until a paltry couple of million late in the day, dropping the price by a whopping fortieth of a penny 🤣. Also, not seeing anyone talking this up (admittedly I have the usual two trolls filtered, but only seeing two filtered messages in the last several days).

I'm actually quite enthused after getting ChatGPT to go through a detailed web history on Sound over the weekend that I couldn't be bothered to do by hand. If I'm right that the Phase 1 income is c. $20m after operational expenditure, that's better than I thought -- about $4m / £3m to SOU which is more or less enough to cover G&A. Managem may have done SOU a big favour by pushing the EPC contract with ItalFluid, something SOU couldn't have afforded on their own.

Answering myself on the Phase 1 CAPEX ... just noticed the Zeus note from March covers this:

"While the new EPC contract will drive an additional CAPEX bill of US$3.1m for Sound over the rest of 2025, we expect the company to remain fully funded, with locally sourced Tendrara project level debt likely to be available to make up any shortfall in existing resources."

I am hoping the half year report will provide some clarity on timelines. Also I would like to see an update on Phase 1 finances. Phase 1 revenue is an important part of SOU keeping its head above water while waiting for Phase 2. The news about the switch to an EPC contract was not entirely clear on finances. Total payments to ItalFluid were now to be $25m, including a $7m payment upon completion. $9.5m of payments already made under the lease arrangement were deducted from this, leaving $15.5m as of the contract change announcement in March. How much of the rest (if any) was going to be covered under the Afriquia loan arrangement? ... or was SOU going to be liable for c. $3m (20%) of this? I note that it completely removes nearly $14m in annual rental costs ($2.8m for SOU) so the contract change pays for itself very quickly and is a significant net improvement ... it's just that any up front money needed to be raised by SOU is unpleasant. Gross revenue less OpEx for 0.1 bcm/yr should be over $20m ($4m to SOU) once Phase 1 is fully up and running.

We should also be hearing about completion of gas gathering equipment and mLNG plant construction by end of September (October at the latest) if commissioning and start of operations is going to complete by end of Q4. Would also be nice to know what newsflow we can expect about drilling. Not even looking for dates here, just what milestones will be announced whenever they DO happen. Will we hear about completion of permitting, well planning, rig mobilisation etc. ?

John, if you think the share price is going to tank you sell whether you are underwater or not. I sold out four years ago even though I was nursing a six figure loss. The share price today (which is the same as what I bought back in at) is half what it was then. During those years I saw the share price spike several times on announcements and people buying in only to get stuck like everyone else. My assessment then was negative, now it is positive. That's why I'm here. I take note of negative sentiment from people like yourself or Kylie, but I don't see any evidence being offered. Sentiment at negative extremes is a buy signal. What I see is SOU owning $400m of gas (before costs and debt) and no evidence of an incentive for Managem to stall development. Could it all go t¡ts up? Of course it could. These are risk assets. If my assessment changes I'll be gone like a hot sn0t regardless of whether I'm up or down.

A new Graham wouldn't make Managem go any faster in any case. What would be nice is a bit more information about how things are progressing. SOU weren't great at that even when things were under their control. Btw, my last post seems to have gotten caught in the deletion crossfire, which was just to say that I don't believe in some conspiracy about a cheapo buyout from Managem. Apart from anything else, SOU is already more than 20% Moroccan owned between OGIF and Afriquia. Institutional investors have another 10% and the mystery loan note provider has circa 12%. They all want a return on investment.

Pescado, engage your brain for a moment. You repost Getech puff pieces about the joint venture with SOU "focusing on more targeted exploration, including geophysical and drilling activities to identify potential deposits [of hydrogen]". Consider the M5 Anoual prospect. It has an estimated 21% chance of drilling success, basically a roll of the dice. Why so low? There is an existing geophysical survey identifying an especially thick TAGI reservoir layer, a structural closure and paleozoic source rocks. What could go wrong? Pretty much everything -- reservoir charge, salt seal integrity, areal continuity due to faulting or heterogeneity of TAGI sands, porosity and permeability, cementation. Seismic imaging doesn't reduce most of those risks.

Now consider that all the same risks apply to H2 exploration. Except that the mechanisms of gas generation, migration and trapping are much less well understood. Added to that, SOU and Getech don't have two brass farthings to rub together between them, unlike M5 where the drill is carried by Mana. And now consider that they don't even have an exploration permit, much less a defined work program and the money to carry it out. The Tendrara basin has been explored for SIXTY YEARS, the first successful well (SBK-1) was drilled TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, and we are STILL waiting for the first commercial gas to come to market. You think a fledgling joint venture based on immature science with NO EXPLORATION PERMIT and NO MONEY is going to yield value within your lifetime? Think again. If M5 is a roll of the dice, HyMaroc is a ticket in the euromillions lottery. Please stop posting nonsense.