Member Info for Serif

Good to see him putting his head above the parapet and giving the company a face. Not flashy or exciting but seemed pretty straightforward. Nothing really new, but did confirm that this was his full time job and they are looking actively for a new ceo, which is a positive (even if he didn’t exactly project urgency or give likely timings on this). In rough terms I took away: all good on ,Wressle, everyone wants to move quickly on this and detailed plan should come over next couple of months and they are already thinking about phase 2 and think Gov attitude may be more positive now to onshore; Inishkea farm out discussions continue and he is confident that it will go ahead but that any farm out is unlikely before the survey permissions are granted; Morocco work proceeding as planned; still actively looking at projects to diversify and fill in the time gap between current production assets and long term exploration.
A reasonable start would just like the added assurance of some director buys to show they are willing to back their confidence - or is that asking too much?

I don’t think we will get turkeys voting for Christmas, so I would rather go with a new ceo who will make it a full time job and will hopefully show enough confidence and commitment to invest in the company and provide the energy injection and sense of direction it really needs. Then let’s see what type of board we get with that.

May be that’s the difference between reading the signs and getting official notification - especially when it may have suited all parties not to find out at that point. Personally don’t mind either way, just want them to appoint the new ceo while there are still things that can be done and before this drift makes things worse.

Yes I’m sure he’ll be stepping up soon to become the new face and dynamic force to drive eog forward or he may even buy a share in the company?

Looking to move on and what else can we do - could there be a better time for an ambitious CEO to take on the job? Short term opp to land a farm out on Inishkea and be a hero - and if you don’t succeed you can blame it on the past management - Long term project under way in Morocco and needing little current attention, BOD keen to set new strategic direction and pick up some shorter term projects, company financed by current revenue (and any funds not now being used for all those surveys) and new revenue stream coming along this summer to fund new projects. Surely scope and headroom to do something here that would be attractive to someone worth having!

I agree on all 4 points!

@amnesic - thanks for your points. I know you keep close track of the trading data, so very useful to have your take. While I happily admit my calculations are back of an envelope, I have checked reported dates/times as it’s then pretty easy to track back and identify on basis of the price patterns whether it was a sell or buy. I have also excluded any after hour midpoint trades as “broker swaps” and excluded anything that looked too close to call, but generally I think the pattern is clear at any time. Can’t be definite on duplication of reporting as there have been many identical buys bunched together such as today. So this could all be wrong, but am not seeing the 50/50 split you calculate the 11million on and which is usually approximately true. Cancelling out the reported sells and buys, there seems to be a very large discrepancy since Xmas somewhere in the 10-15 million range. There also seems to be a very persistent large buyer into the sells - do you have any thoughts on who this may be?

Not sure that I would want a sacked CEO to carry on representing me at conferences in Ireland! Either way - I think they would have known earlier than announced that it was on the cards and should have started their search. I just hope they are actively searching and not thinking they can “make do” somehow. Would like to hear or see some sign of progress on this - even if it is that “we are actively looking to appoint a new CEO” - have they actually said that?

Large trade listed for 21 Jan at 1630 just appeared for 1.7m. Might just have been a sell at this price and time stamp.

Agree OTF only a new CEO will be able to give the company a clearer sense of direction and purpose - and they have been saying that they are taking a new direction. Current Chairman has been and is too invisible to carry out this role for long - even took them almost an hour longer to get the Wressle rns out after all the partners! Presumably they knew Hugh was going before it was announced, so they must have had at least 3 months to find their person.

Thanks for the response, Copperpot. I had wondered if it might be a huge delayed sale, but a bit surprised it wasn’t broken up into chunks that we should have seen by now. I was also surprised to see Ask price rises up to 1.5 at one point, if they were simply clearing a big sell backlog. Still hopefully it will be finished soon at this rate, it’s just difficult to judge where we are with the sells when it is so delayed/invisible!

Anyone know why the sells driving this price are never shown? At a very rough estimate there have been 12-15m more buys than sells on this share since Xmas period but the price has remained fairly static. So a big seller (ex CEO had about 17m left?), but why would the sells never appear in the listings?

So in fact probably more buys than sells over the day.

Plus a £20k buy at 0804

Nice to be going into a week with a very positive rns from last Friday afternoon - able to feel positive on real news rather than just hope and possibility! Will be great to get firm timescales for Wressle production, presumably in summer some time? Now can look forward to the Inishkea decision knowing we should have a really secure financial basis. And if the Director’s have spotted any other development opps, as they say they have been looking, should soon have the cash coming in to go after these.

Great news. Well over doubling our production, and should provide £2-3 million extra revenue a year at current prices - really secure financial basis and good amount of cash over to fund extra project work.

A couple of large trades showing up from yesterday. Both are listed as “sells” but based on trading patterns yesterday pm and the prices quoted for buying today, I suspect the 2.2m is a buy, which is probably why the price has not moved.

Haven’t noticed anyone else making this link a fact. If there is a correlation think it is more likely to be around confidence that Irish Gov is genuine in allowing further exploration, as they have signed off so little in past year. But this confidence could come many other ways than survey sign off - which is why the early GE could be helpful - so news could come at any time.

Just seen that Irish GE is to be on 8th Feb, so might be an equally important date as a new Gov hopefully won’t be grandstanding and delaying everything once the election is out of the way and may actually take some clearer practical decisions.

@Copper3 Yes, thanks, glad you asked and glad he has given such a full reply. Helps to fill what has felt like an info vacuum!