Member Info for Serif

Fwiw Egdon told Broughton Town Council that detailed planning documents were being submitted in January 2024.

That’s clearly the most important factor for the business, trouble is that’s in Ryan’s control at present - and they are clearing lobbying hard but he holds the cards on progress…. They ARE in total control of reward and shareholder relations so can take action on that now.

I agree they should act now and coherently (see below), but I also think memories/behaviour on AIM is very short term, so one bit of excitement and suddenly people change their minds at the prospect of making some quick money.

If it was me I would:

1 - work with UJO to force Egdon to report back better or lose operatorship

2. Buy a big chunk on release of CPR

3. Appoint new Non-Exec commissioned with first task to report in 3 months having consulted with shareholders on ways to better structure reward to relate more clearly (in part at least) to SP performance.

Can’t see what they would have to lose from such an approach - and it would be a first step to winning back broader shareholder support.

Share price here is clearly heavily sentiment driven for all the reasons and more that people have been talking about. In my experience sentiment will change - may be not this week/month - but for one reason or another eventually it will - and then people will look at the SP/assets/cash and react accordingly.

Some don’t loan out shares and some others allow you to elect not to have your shares loaned out. Might be worth checking with your platform/broker what their policy is on this?

Odd I can get offers on selling as much as I want online.

True - unless there is positive news on Wressle, Ireland or even Cloughton and West Africa.

@itsawrap. Interesting! Do you know when the RBD EGM is scheduled? Could be one to watch in terms of how it plays out as clearly similar dissatisfaction - it seems we are not alone in Directors taking reward without the risk experienced by shareholders.

Thanks Gerry - I’ll look up the ShareSoc petition - seems to be an area that needs improvement. That said if the requisition did not legally trigger the EGM I still think it would be bizarre for a CEO to call an EGM to vote on his own competence if not required to - didn’t John Major do something similar and got rightly ridiculed for it?

I’m not clear Gerry - are you saying the application was technically valid or not? Because so far I’ve only seen suggestions that it was “ morally” wrong to refuse an EGM rather than technically wrong/illegal - which would change the position considerably!

Isn’t there another way around this apparent block? Of the 50.1% of supporting votes you need to win a vote at any EGM surely there must be 5% of those who own shares in their own names who could request it? I think PB mention WA at the start of this process - they worked together and he knows all the people involved and has enough shares. But if he is unwilling to support it for some reason, then there must be others if this has that level of support.

I think that dismissive attitude was particularly SOs. Now that they have the consequences in black and white vote I hope that they will look again at their attitude towards all the shareholders and stop appearing to ignore an angry section with a reasonable case about rewards and performance. Perhaps a new non-exec will influence a more considered approach. Pragmatically I don’t see WH being removed so would rather let him get on with the job and prove himself as CEO if he can. Would take the same attitude with PB if he had had enough support to have won the vote - once the point has been made cant see the point in constantly attacking the management of my investment if it’s not going to change anything by doing that.

My question on West Africa is whether it’s part of a carefully thought out strategy of growth or just a company with a pot of money desperately chasing the latest hotspot to get something going. I think I would like to know a bit more about the rationale and how it fits in with the rest of our portfolio development plans.

Just checked - he’s got over 5% of the shares.

Apart from the fact that the company clearly hasn’t “been destroyed” I agree with your last two sentences - so let’s see if the shareholder rebellion finally leads to any improvement in performance/reward ratio or no doubt we will be back here again next year.

Well thank goodness the operator is not on AIM then!

Must surely be flow rates and CPR coming Monday - that’s 5 weeks since production started. I am expecting both to be good results - 750+ flow rates and chunky upgrades to the 2016 figures with perhaps a little bit extra reservoir interest thrown in! The gap between Wressle value to us and our SP is simply incredible - and one day the SP will react accordingly 🤞

Who wants an EGM if it’s not going to change things? Just looking at the data on the AS vote I don’t see that the numbers are there to remove the Execs - as opposed to non-execs (who did get held to account rightly imv.. And the numbers look like they are getting worse with people selling off.

Probably an unpopular view here but I’m not outraged that the CEO didn’t call a vote of confidence in himself when the numbers as above show he was likely to win - that imv would be a waste of time and money. If there was sufficient momentum behind the removal vote it would have to gather some of the bigger shareholders and so would reach the legallthreshold. I don’t favour Will or Paul - neither of them has proved yet that they are clearly better in current environment, I just want this to move on for the sake of my investment — as prolonged uncertainty is no good for the company whoever is going to run it.

So would you appoint someone whose stated goal is to kick you out?

More to the point is the EGM idea still in play or have all the recent sell offs by SHAG supporters left any potential vote dead in the water? We need to move on one way or another rather than just keep repeating ourselves.

Well it needs to be a very different prospect type from the Morocco waste of time and money - no more 4 year projects which end up with wonderful prospects that no one wants to farm into. We haven’t had much luck abroad in the past - even nearby Ireland is stuck. But if we are going for exploration no point in looking in Europe as the politics will kill it off.