Cobus Loots, CEO of Pan African Resources, on delivering sector-leading returns for shareholders. Watch the video here.
85p is cheap. A long long way for this to go before it is looking fully valued in my humble opinion. This tech is potentially world changing. It could enable better detection of cancer, better monitoring of cancer, better treatment of cancer, prevention of metastasis (leading to death) and that is just in cancer. Away from cancer there are other applications amongst which it seems the most likely to be first to market is pre-natal screening and that is not the end. Immensely proud to have been supporting this company (as a shareholder) for 5 years. In my humble opinion, this is going to make me a very nice profit and make the world a better place. That is the double whammy I look for in an investment.
Of the shareholders asking questions on the conference call, many stated they intended to take up their full allocation without being prompted to comment on that at all.
QFI said they had been in touch with the large shareholders and had found them generally supportive and expect a good take up from that group.
I will be taking up my full entitlement and I would appeal to other shareholders to do so. If your shares are not taken up, I won't be surprised if they are then sold to an institution at half the price (lower price because they are tainted by you not wanting to buy them) which then causes dilution for us all.
Main 3 points of interest for me were:
1) Boards reasoning for only raising enough cash to see us through to next October: "Wanted to raise just enough to get us to a point where we can make more substantive announcements and raise money again in a less dilutive way". It appears that the Board would rather issue shares when the share price is higher and they appear hopeful of being able to make announcements that will get the share price higher. It was also reiterated that debt is a good option for financing specific revenue generating projects so financing those projects wouldn't have to be dilutive.
2) If insufficient cash is raised in this share offer, there are other option that the company has lined up (plans B, C etc). There is no guarantee of funds from the alternative plans but the tone was confident and reassuring. It was presented as being that the share offer to existing shareholders avoids diluting the existing shareholders (if they take up their rights) . It was suggested that shares could be sold elsewhere but that it would be at a heavier discount - and thet would make sense to me... if the existing shareholders don't want to back a fundraise, that won't give confidence to new investors and they will demand a heavy discount and so it would be very dilutive to us.
3) QFI have talked to their major shareholders about the offer and the response has been positive and strong uptake is expected from many of these (though nothing guaranteed until the funding is done).
Of course, I am just one person. I was making notes but I didn't record the call so I may have got things wrong. I'd suggest you look at other people's comments on /accounts of what was said rather than taking my comments/notes in isolation.
Hi All,
I'd like to hear from anyone if they have, in the last few months, found it more difficult to hold SEE or any other AIM stock through spread bets, CFDs or any other leveraged means. I'm trying to get a handle on impact on SEE share price of the recent problems that retail investors have been having with leveraged investment.
For my personal holdings, I have historically used share dealing accounts, ISAs, SIPPs and spread bets. I achieved leverage through using spread bets in IG Index. Although I could qualify as a professional investor, I chose to be classified as a retail investor by IG for my personal holdings so that I could take advantage of extra protections.
Since this summer's crazy ESMA rule changes on retail spread betting, I have found it increasingly difficult to hold shares through spread bets. Particularly if those shares are dipping as the ESMA rule changes force spread betting bookmakers to miscalculate available capital for betting by making them wrongly double count running losses on open positions when assessing available capital. It has become so hard to hold shares through spread bets and achieve any decent leverage through that route, so I have been shifting, bit by bit, away from spread bets and into normal share holdings. It has been a pain the posterior but I have been able to make capital available to make this shift but I speculate that others are finding leverage harder to achieve and, not having the capital to fully replace leveraged ownership with outright ownership, are having to reduce positions.
I'm not sure if any spread bet users hang out on this board but, if so, I'd appreciate hearing about your experiences.
My guess is that the key here is not the number of simulators being manufactured each year but the total number of simulators in use.
(1) Simulator manufacturers own and operate a lot of their own sims, using them to provide training to various airlines, air forces etc. (a) L3 will look a bit silly trying to sell SEE enhanced sims if they are not retrofitting the tech into the sims they are using. (b) L3 clearly believe the SEE enhancement is worthwhile or they wouldn’t be hawking it to their customers, they have a very healthy sim market at the moment anyway. If they believe in the SEE enhancement, you would expect them to put it into their own sims.
(2) Simulator customers are buying the SEE enhanced simulators because of their superior performance in training pilots. As they use these simulators and their appreciation of SEE enhanced simulators grows, they will surely begin to look at their pre-existing sims and scratch their heads.
Only about 100 sims per year are being manufactured (though I would guess this will be increasing rapidly), so it will be a long time before the 1,600 active sims are replaced. Even longer when you take into account that sim capacity needs to massively increase because of the huge need for new pilots ( https://www.boeing.com/commercial/market/pilot-technician-outlook/2018-pilot-outlook/ ). So, what to do with those 1,600 pre-existing sims underperforming the new SEE enhanced sims? Some of them can be used for certain parts of training where the SEE enhancements do not help significantly but the rest?
They are very expensive bits of kit so retiring them would be a big step, perhaps they will scream for retrofit of the SEE tech instead. 800 retrofits at $125k each, or $100m is something I'd like to see! I'd buy Patrick a pint. Add to that a share of the something-more-than-100 new sims/year being built in the future…
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2018-07-18/simulator-manufacturers-enjoy-bumper-sales
Thought it might be worth reposting this, originally posted following 9 Aug RNS-R re pilot training collaboration:
The opportunity is in simulators AND in aircraft. Don't belittle the opportunity in simulators though.
Per the below link,
- "all the training for commercial pilots around the world is done on flight simulators"
- "Flight simulators [cost]... between $8 million and $20 million"
- "civil aviation training [market]... is worth more than $3.5 billion annually".
- And this market will grow "255,000 new commercial airline pilots will be needed over the next 10 years to sustain the growth of the commercial air transport industry. This record demand—70 new pilots per day, or 25,500 a year—will challenge current recruitment channels"
- "Massive traffic growth in the aviation industry and a serious pilot shortfall are boosting the demand for pilot training"
http://tradecommissioner.gc.ca/canadexport/0002526.aspx?lang=eng
So simulators is a big enough prize to get excited about!
Large scale simulator deployment of SEE tech will come before large scale in-aircraft deployment as large-scale in-aircraft deployment will likely need to go through extensive testing before it can be permitted. However, large-scale in-aircraft deployment may be able to happen earlier if the initial role is passive (eg as an enhancement to the black box flight recorders) rather than active (eg being involved in alerting the pilot to certain data during flight).
And yes, as a blackbox enhancer, there is the potential that this will become an FAA requirement for any aircraft required to have a data redorder. This gives a good explanation of which aircraft this applies to ( it is a lot!):
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1684/which-aircraft-are-required-to-have-a-black-box
I've made a big loss on QFI so far. The biggest loss I have ever made on anything, by a street. But I WILL be backing this fund raising. The downside risk is very small (it will cost me less than £1k to take up my 1 for 10) and the upside risk is very large.
I, like everyone else, have been considering the vital question "Well, we haven't succeeded in the last x years, why should we succeed in the next x years?". It might not be different but there appear to be some reasons to think it might be different. The key positive reasons for me are (i) Importance of widening MSAR/HFO spread as evidenced by sudden progress with PowerSeraya (ii) Freepoint's focus on jam today and (iii) European Oil Major.
Slide 11 of the AGM presentation shows the widening spread between MSAR and HFO. At the AGM we were told that the MSAR cost discount to HFO is $30 but that, based on the futures market, the discount for delivery in 2019/2020 is widening to $100. Ie to buy a tonne of HFO on the futures market now, for delivery in 2019/2020 costs $100 more than buying a tonne of MSAR. We were also told that PowerSeraya are progressing to a supply study in 2019 (slide 14). A question was posed to the board saying that PowerSeraya had been known to be interested in MSAR for years but the questioner understood that PowerSeraya had previously not wanted to go it alone and had been waiting for another MSAR customer to come in alongside them. The board were asked why PowerSeraya are now suddenly moving forward to a supply study after years of waiting. The board replied that PowerSeraya are now moving forward because the economics have changed which makes it very attractive.
So, based on what we have been told, it seems PowerSeraya have decided “though having been very interested for x years, we haven’t moved forward in the last x years but, because of the change in economics, we will move forward in the next x years”.
On the widening discount of MSAR to HFO – this was presented as a structural change driven by the IMO 2020 effects and not a temporary fluctuation in the markets.
I take the progress with PowerSeraya to be a big positive, an indication that things are more favourable in the future than they were in the past.
I’d like to post some more later about my reasons (ii) Freepoint's focus on jam today and (iii) European Oil Major. I hope to get time.
This is all just my own humble opinion and I’m not an expert. I’m sure you’ll have your own thoughts and will make your own decision. Good luck with your investing, whichever way you lean.
What are you all on about??? Give me strength. Its 1.4m shares. Less than £65k of shares. It does not move an investors needle on any level. It is deeply deeply immaterial. Some people will moan at anything. Bauchsapr - "seriously thick" - come on.
Maybe some of you are frustrated at the low share price - Fine, moan about that. Moaning about an issue of £65k of shares? Please!
"Driver drowsiness and attention monitoring" necessary for type approval OF ALL VEHICLES WITH AT LEAST 4 WHEELS as soon as the regulation is approved. No preparation time allowed for manufacturers so IMHO they will be under pressure to put this tech into any design they are working on whose type approval could conceivably be after the regulation approval date, erring on the side of caution.
"Advanced distraction recognition" necessary for type approval of all vehicles with at least 4 wheels, 24 months after the regulation is approved. IMHO, manufacturers should be able to meet that as long as they already have designed their solution and are ready to flip the switch - And we know that they are all looking at this stuff now so they shouldn't have an excuse for missing the boat. IMHO, having a solution designed will mean that they will have needed to have selected their DMS supplier prior to the regulation being approved.
Per the EU:
" 'driver drowsiness and attention monitoring' means a system assessing the driver's alertness
through vehicle systems analysis and warning the driver if needed"
" 'advanced distraction recognition' means a system capable of recognising recognition of
the level visual attention level of the driver to the traffic situation and warning the driver if
needed "
Every hour, in their 2 minute news segment, one of their stories is about how our tech is currently deployed across the Croydon tram record and could be deployed in trains. They don't say which trains and they don't mention us by name but they describe how the tech works and what it is for.
I think his personal reason is that he has been asked to leave. BoDs don't like to hurt peoples careers by saying "we are getting rid of him because x" unless x is really bad and they have to.
According to the announcement, a good handover will be completed by Mid-Jan. To achieve that, they likely already have their new man found but won't say that until his exit from his current post is sorted.
I've met James Palmer, as many of you have, and he seems like a nice guy and a smart guy. However, I am hoping that we are replacing him with someone a bit more commercial. James is more of a compliance kind of accountant - he was an audit focused partner in EY and look at his "specialities" as listed on LinkedIn (bottom of this post).
His set of skills was good for getting us established and making sure we have solid reporting people/processes in place. Moving forward from here we need something more commercial. Just my view from having held similar roles myself though I don't know James intimately or better than many of you.
From James's LinkedIn:
Specialties:
Financial statement audits and reviews
Finance function reviews
Financial viability assessments
Acquisition due diligence/ post acquisition due diligence
Completion audits
Technical accounting advice
Fraud investigations
Internal control reporting
Corporate governance
Agreed-upon procedures
Accounting Processes and Controls support and remediation
IPO and other public offering assistance
Internal audit
Financial Statement Close Process advice
Lack of RNS flow?
We had an update on 19 September and I expect there to be an AGM statement on 14 November, less than 2 month later. Most boards only meet once each month and we're getting updates spaced by 2 months.
Surely your frustration is that we haven't had any wins announced recently, probably because no wins have been confirmed recently. But, as you know, no one else has announced those wins yet either and I'm sure you are as confident as me that there are plenty of wins coming our way.
Easy to get frustrated when the share price is so low. Share price is not the same as share value.
Dibs61:
In 2014, Andrew Newland used some of his shares as collateral for a loan for a house purchase. This ended in 2016.
https://geeksnews.co.uk/equities-first-holdings-remain-the-top-lender-of-stock-based-loans/
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/AGL/13014490.html
I have/had no problem with this but some people didn't like it. The transaction was a little unusual and there were arguments among commentators about whether it constituted a sale & repurchase of shares or a use of share as collateral. The company that facilitated the transaction had Quindell among their other clients and at that time Quindell were pariah so anything vaguely associated with Quindell was deemed awful. Kinda like a "Hitler had a mustache so everyone with mustaches must be evil" line of argument.
If I was in Newland's position, I might have done something similar. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be forced to permanently sell my shares in Angle to buy my house then miss out on the future potential of Angle.
Others hold other views. Each to their own.
"More than 200 UK shopping centres in crisis":
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45707529
As this unfolds, people like Begbies will have an important role in recycling the assets and clearing away the deadwood ready for the new.
I hope Begbies are building capacity ready for this and the other structural factors that, in my humble opinion, are inevitably going to send masses of work their way.
Do your own research, and all that.