Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Having been on the end of redundancy myself, I feel for the staff, especially those who travelled considerable distance to relocate to the remote area. They will be stuck with rent or mortgages with little chance of finding any work nearby. Only winners are the highly paid bosses who knew what problems they had, but didn’t disclose.
It’s been too long for any announcements, makes me wonder what’s going on.
Are Scotgold trying to impress investors with the latest Gold pour? https://twitter.com/scotgoldresltd/status/1687137796467695625?s=46&t=qht--npDcBB8UT1QDL-v-A
I don't recall seeing much in the way of showing us the gold, you'd think they could come up with a good pile of it, unless they haven't managed more than a few ounces at a time!
From Jan to May they had sales of £485k which wouldn’t touch the sides to pay the 100 staff, let alone running costs.
I’ll be surprised if the mine is still in action in October.
What has puzzled me is the lack of selling gold direct to the public in the way of LTD edition coins/medallions. They’d definitely sell at a huge premium and attract the right sort of attention.
https://www.scotsman.com/business/scotgold-raises-ps2m-but-warns-future-depends-on-quantity-and-quality-of-ore-being-mined-4142590
Nearly bought a load a few years ago, but did my research. It was never going to be a money earner, just a vanity project to keep themselves in a job. I'd be glad to be proved wrong though. Clearly too many on the payroll, scaled up too fast and needed to process the gold themselves rather than sending it off.
Email to the staff on this tweet, oh well, thats my investment down the pan!
https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/1063557967684009984?s=21
In the past 4 days volume of shares traded is 12.6m
I'm hopeful on this one shooting up, can't see it going above 18p, so put a limit order on my shares for 16p just incase it doesn't reach my prediction.
The businessman behind a bid to overthrow the Johnston Press board has dropped the idea of Alex Salmond becoming chairman of the regional publisher – saying he would prefer to install someone with a “deep understanding of technology”. Christen Ager-Hanssen had previously touted the former Scottish First Minister for the role, but has now confirmed the plan has been shelved. Christen said in March he was planning to adopt a “wait and see” strategy instead of launching a planned boardroom coup, which would also have seen ex-Local World boss Steve Auckland become chief executive. But the decision to officially drop Mr Salmond now by Christen, whose Custos Group investment vehicle owns more than 20pc of the company, comes days after the JP board challenged him to come up with a “workable proposal” to refinance the business. Christen previously wrote to the company’s board over what he called “speculation among investors” about its future, claiming directors may be planning to place JP into administration, but the board said in a statement yesterday that it had not received “any plan or proposal from any party for a refinancing or restructuring of its debt”. Yesterday the company’s share price increased from under 3p to 8p, but in the statement the board said it knew of “no reason” for the change. The share price rose again this morning to above 9p for a period. Of his decision to drop Mr Salmond, pictured, Christen told HTFP: “At the time we initiated this it may have been the right thing to do, but at this stage it’s all about putting together a team with a deep understanding of technology and media companies, and also the aspect I find most interesting which is a way of dealing with the declining advertising revenue industry. “You need to have someone that has that understanding to chair this board.” When asked by HTFP whether he had anyone specifically in mind, Christen added: “We’re going to do it a little bit step by step to wait and see. First of all you need to get through the restructuring of the bond, then you’re going to put a board in place that’s going to move the company forward.” The company, whose titles include the i newspaper, The Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, has been in discussions for months over ways of refinancing £220m worth of debt that becomes repayable on 1 June 2019. Last month HTFP reported that one of the options being looked at includes offloading its pension scheme to the Pensions Protection Fund, allowing a new owner to take control free of pension liabilities. Christen told HTFP he would reply to the company with his “thinking” on the refinancing issue “some time next week”. Mr Salmond said: “Mr Ager-Hanssen, as major shareholder in Johnston Press, is now focused on restructuring the ailing group rath
From the Daily Telegraph
Johnston Press last night appealed to its largest shareholder to submit a rescue plan after he raised concerns the troubled newspaper owner is heading for insolvency.
Christen Ager-Hanssen, a Norwegian entrepreneur who owns the Swedish version of Metro, has built a 20pc stake in the publisher of the i and more than 200 regional titles. The self-describer “streetfighter” and “crazy mother------” has been an outspoken critic of the board of Johnston Press (JP) since first investing a year ago.
In a letter seen by The Daily Telegraph he demanded information on whether JP is considering administration as part of its lengthy talks with restructuring advisers. He asked whether a pre-packaged deal in which the 250-year-old publisher’s assets would be immediately acquired from administrators by a new entity was under discussion “in my capacity as a potential funder and prospective rescuer of and/or bidder for the company’s assets”.
Pre-packaged sales can be controversial among creditors but can also preserve jobs and ensure uninterrupted trading.
It is understood from separate sources that a pre-packaged deal is one of the options under early consideration at Johnston. Several potentially less controversial ways to resolve its financial problems would need to be explored first, however. They could include sales of newspapers or property, or a debt-for-equity swap with bondholders, led by the US hedge fund GoldenTree.
A spokesman for Johnston Press last night declined to comment on any insolvency discussions but said: “We confirm we received a letter from Mr Ager-Hanssen over the weekend. We will, of course, respond to him this week. If Mr Ager-Hanssen does have a workable proposal to refinance the business, we look forward to receiving this and we will invite him to provide more detail. We have updated the market on a number of occasions. No decisions have been taken and we are not going to comment on market speculation.” The publisher has been in talks with restructuring advisers for more than a year as it approaches a £220m bond repayment deadline next June. The debt costs Johnston more than £1.5m per month in interest.
Thought I’d buy a few more to reduce my average share price, now 5.6p What is strange, yet again, my buy doesn’t show up on the latest deals, is this why the price is dropping because all the buys don’t show?
Smellyben your not far off. Highfield's pay for 2017 was �808,000 although deferred for a bit. http://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/16190923.Johnston_Press_boss_awarded_bonus_but_pay_out_deferred/ Also head internet bloke has also left https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005047/en/Jeff-Moriarty-Named-Senior-Vice-President-Digital
The results were far from good Bluedreamer. All smoke an mirrors. JP made an annual profit of �14.2m, �9.3m of that was profit from the i. The i was a good purchase, probably the only thing JP has done in a decade. Meaning just �4.9m profit was made from the 200 odd local papers, an average profit of around �24,500 each. I suspect many of the paper run at a loss. They can't get the web revenues high enough. Just been quoted 8.15p to sell my shares. If it gets back to 10p, I'm selling ASAP
i is now making �1m profit a month http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/johnston-press-says-it-is-now-making-1m-a-month-profit-from-i-newspaper/
I bought back in today, hoping for some good boardroom shakeup news soon. Christen Ager-Hanssen now has 20.01% Custos Equity AS 20.01% Ananda Krishnan Tatparanandam / PanOcean Management Ltd 10.63% Crystal Amber Fund Limited 10.48% Majedie Asset Management Limited 9.87% Sir Raymond Stanley Tindle 6.00% River and Mercantile Asset Management LLP 4.16%
Overall revenues are down 7%, Digital revenue is up 16%, but no figures given. Print advertising (excluding classifieds) was down 8pc and circulation revenue down 4pc. So would mean that the 16% increase in revenue of digital is a tiny amount. Smoke and Mirrors https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2017/news/revenues-down-at-johnston-press-despite-digital-boost/
So am I surprised, the SP should be sub-10p by now. I guess the news hasn't been read by the shareholders or investors. Wouldn't surprise me if the board approve another rights issue before the next bond refinancing, that would be fun. The share price is currently 0.29p in old money and to think I sold a load at 25p before the refinancing for �2000, if I held onto them and didn't pay into the refinancing, the same shares would be worth �23 today. Some people will have lost out big time and no way of getting rid of the board who have done nothing but drive the SP down.
This news does not sound good. https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2017/news/jp-offers-staff-extra-day-off-at-christmas-in-exchange-for-pay-cut/ Getting staff to buy December holiday, deducted from Novembers pay. There must be cash flow problems if they are offering this at very short notice, seeing that Novembers pay is in about four weeks time. The majority of staff don't get paid that well so can't imagine it would save that much! Maybe AH should take a few months off - unpaid, and let someone else run things.
I wonder where the 10.5m shares came from, a single seller or all the sales in the past few days added up in the three transactions. Will be interesting to know who bought the 10% of the company. No tweets from AH celebrating the share price increase as he has done so before!!
With the odd days of big buys, the share price is jumping and then dropping. So I've taken another gamble and sold the lot for a 55% profit, had to do a few transactions though, got an average 16.5p. I do think JPR can go above 45p, but think once the buys have stopped, the price will drop again. There is not enough good news at the moment to warrant the price sticking. The i has dropped sales and recently put the price up which won't help. If it does drop again, I'll buy back in at 12.5p. Speculation is the name of the game. I'm happy with 55%, just because there a buys, doesn't mean good news.
Strange spike at the end of the day, not many big trades that I could see. No news either that would make the price jump. Happy as my JP shares are showing a 40% profit in just two months. Still hoping for 50p!!!