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Unbelievable insider trading going on with this share, it's an utter disgrace but typical of the increasingly lawless nature of the UK markets.

Have any of the posters on here actually looked at the latest balance sheet?

The last time the RCF facility was mentioned was 17th October 2022. The reason for the collapse is the fact ASC has drawn down £258m in that period & barely made a dent in the near £1b inventory position.

They had £308m of cash at 28/02 which barely covers the RCF payable.

The Accounts Payable balance owed was £837m, whilst receivables were just £63m

If they had to repay the RCF + even 30% of their accounts payable balance then they'd be stuck without selling off inventory and not replacing it...

They are in a terrible financial position & capital raise would likely result in a sharp rebound in the share price as it would sure up the current sh*t show.

Personally I wouldn't go near ASC until the ridiculous inventory build up is resolved. At Feb 2021 they held £532m of stock, a year later this had ballooned to £986m and today's results show that the most recent year saw a tiny reduction of just £8m to £978m.

On a run rate basis sales are now similar to H2 2020 but they are carrying an additional £450m of stock... to me that is nonsensical given it's fast fashion (and how horrific some of the stuff on ASC is these days).

I'd be fairly sure that this is the reason 2 CFO's have resigned in the last 12 months & the new guy is another interim. It must be an absolute nightmare to manage & given the deteriorating net debt position will start to threaten the going concern status if they have to take a £300-400m impairment, as it will become very difficult to refinance the debt.

I'd also guess that senior leadership would want to drip feed inventory impairments to the market, however if this is the plan then it will come under increasing scrutiny as the hedge funds turn the screw.

May be in play for a technical day trade at some point but as an investment I'd rather buy PREM...

Very positive news out of NY yesterday / overnight which likely explains some of the buying today;

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-highlights-1-billion-plan-overhaul-new-york-states-continuum-mental-health

https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/governor-hochul-address-mental-health-concerns-and-allotting-50-million-to-be-spent-on-resources-in-schools

"BUFFALO N.Y. (WKBW) — Governor Kathy Hochul in the Queen City on Monday commits to address mental health concerns in the Western New York community. In her most recent budget, more than $30 million dollars is being spent on service expansions for school-aged kids mental health.

"We need to just embed this into our education system," Hochul said. "Something bad happening at home they have someone to talk to something bad happening at home there's someone to talk to. We catch them before they fall too hard because if they fall too hard we'll be spending a lifetime getting them back up."

FWIW I still think there is a very good chance that the solution which Kooth are going to roll out in Cali from Jan 24 (that currently has 70-75% of the required functionality) , ends up being adopted by NY too.

Ps. On the jobs in Kansas, that's where their current US head office is based, so a simple explanation there :)

Can’t say I’ve ever seen a worse run of RNS releases, all their chickens have come home to roost in the space of a few days…

I’m still amazed that anyone fell for this once the initial FT revelations were made back in 2021. Amati have had an absolute nightmare yet again having put around £10m in at ~£3 a share.

Impossible to say what it’s worth now but I suspect the shorts will be loading up post suspension (if it returns that is).

Wow, fantastic to see AIM burst back into life, congrats to all who’ve bagged / made money today. Closed strong so should open up considerably…

There are some truly horrendous traders / wannabe investors on this BB. @seav, the PLC is owed $3m by the Norweigan JV which will be added to its cash balance - so you’ve got the complete wrong end of the stick there and appear to have sold the bottom…

Nice to get clarity on what was holding the price back expect we’ll see some big delayed trades after close.

$16m see through valuation of Norway assets = 22.5p + £12’ cash at PLC level = 45p target price before you even consider potential upside from Velocette & the $100m acquisition financing facility.

Always going to happen with only 56m shares in issue, todays trading has been relatively quiet but still nearly 5% of share capital has changed hands…

Quite funny reading the posts from the likes of GeordieShores - if you don’t know why II’s could be selling out of O&G companies in todays political environment then it says everything about your investing knowledge.

PS. One of the simplest ways to differentiate between good and bad AIM / LSE listed oilers is by looking at the number of shares in issue. I remember getting spiked by Cluff (now Deltic) back in 2018, they are the definition of a lifestyle company tempting in punters and hitting them with large placings.

LBE haven’t gone down that route which tells you everything you need to know. Preservation of shareholder value is clearly important to them & this means the share price has far more potential to re-rate back to the 2021/early 2022 levels of 60-100p

@Hallmark, could easily be a large buy order at 20p which the MM’s are filling by holding the price and collecting shares from profit taking / impatient buyers. Either way, at some point this will break out in a major way - the fundamentals are now that of a £40-50m market cap IMO

Happysparrow, do yourself a favour & learn about how JV equity investing actually works before continually posting rubbish;

https://www.fe.training/free-resources/accounting/joint-ventures-jv/

JAPEX now own 49.9% of the economic interest in LBE Norways assets, this means that they are responsible for 49.9% of future costs but will also receive 49.9% of profits & dividends.

THEY DO NOT OWN THE SUBSIDIARY BALANCE SHEET

Their only interest going forwards is the P&L performance, if what you were saying was true then no JV would ever be formed!

Say LBE Norway had £50m in cash before yesterdays deal, do JAPEX now own half of that cash despite only investing $16m? Of course not!

Exactly, yesterday LBE owned 100% of their Norwegian assets and had ~£12m cash. The market was valuing them at £5.7m because it assumed a hugely dilutive placing was inevitable.

Today they own 50.1% of their Norwegian assets and in return have received a payment of $16m, plus an extra $4m which is contingent on an acquisition completing.

So they now have ~£25m cash + 50.1% of their Norwegian assets + the potential value creation from a $100m acquisition financing facility.

The market is now valuing them at an even bigger discount to cash despite the risk of a placing being removed.

IMO it’ll re-rate higher over the coming months - you can currently buy 1% of the company for £115k, that surely won’t remain the case for long…

Here’s an example of what they could do with a $100m financing acquisition facility:

“TIDM: FPM
RNS Number : 2543E
Faroe Petroleum PLC
14 July 2016

Faroe Petroleum plc
("Faroe", "Faroe Petroleum", the "Company")
Proposed Acquisition, Placing and Publication of Q1 Financial Information and CPR
Faroe, the independent oil and gas company focusing principally on exploration, appraisal, development and production opportunities in Norway and the UK, is pleased to announce that it has conditionally agreed to acquire a package of interests in producing Norwegian oil & gas assets from DONG E&P Norge AS ("DONG"). A total consideration of US$70.2 million has been agreed with the vendor and, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, it is expected that the completion of the Acquisition will occur by the end of 2016.
The Company also announces its intention to conduct a placing with certain institutional investors and the directors of the Company (the "Placing") to raise gross proceeds of approximately GBP60.8 million in order to fund the Acquisition and to accelerate Faroe's recent Brasse discovery towards development sanction. The Placing is being conducted through an accelerated bookbuilding process which will be launched immediately following this announcement.
Stifel, RBC and Pareto have been appointed as Joint Bookrunners in respect of the Placing.
Highlights:
-- The Company is raising approximately GBP60.8 million (US$80.0 million) for the purpose of funding the acquisition of the DONG Assets
-- The Acquisition comprises:
o Five Norwegian North Sea producing oil and gas fields: the Ula field (20 per cent. working interest); two tie-back fields to Ula, namely: Tambar (45 per cent. working interest) and Tambar East Unit (37.8 per cent. working interest); Oselvar (55 per cent. working interest); and the Trym gas field (50 per cent. working interest)
o LR Senergy estimates that the Acquisition will add 2P reserves of 19.8 mmboe
o The Company estimates the acquisition will provide an additional 8,000 boepd of production in 2016 and to increase the Group's aggregate average production to between 15,000 and 17,000 boepd for the year to 31 December 2016)”

No other £11m market cap has that type of firepower…

Not seen a deal like this in a while! The initial investment of $16m is worth 22.5p a share… the whole deal surely have to rerate this over 30p given the potential upside on a successful discovery…

Oh and to why not just buy them? A Japanese company operating in Norway for the first time will want local knowledge / connections, you’re far more likely to get that from a JV than a full acquisition.

Yes I think the Penn state contract would have the potential to more than double revenues in its own right.

It’s worth emphasising the fact that per Kooths research each $1 spent on their services in the US saves ~$12, whereas in the UK it’s around £1 spent saves £3.14…

Consequently a $20m per annum investment in Penn would result in theoretical savings of around $240m whilst a £20m investment in the UK would result in theoretical savings of £62.8m.

So there is clear logic to back up higher contract values in the US (plus the fact that councillor salaries are around 2.5x those in the UK). Overall they should also be able to command higher gross margins (as they alluded to in the results release).

On Cali it’s 1 of 15 workstreams, not providers. Kooth are primary vendor so aren’t handling under 12’s, however the 13-25 bracket is surely the largest segment as parental permission is required for younger ages.

Some sleuthing on Google is worthwhile however I’ve resisted the temptation to post anything on here until the contract is finalised ;)

Very good at first glance, plus a much more positive outlook. Was surprised at the mark down and took the chance to add.

I’d speculate that the signing up of the NFL player as an ambassador suggests this is an expansion. We already know the pilot was very well received and kicking off a new campaign in May also points to this initiative being related to the 23/24 academic year given schools typically break up in late May / early June.

All very positive & as you point out the clues were most certainly there in the final results commentary.

Further positive news on the continuing Penn rollout on LinkedIn over the weekend;

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cory-keslow-7390842b_mentalhealth-digitalhealth-sportsbiz-activity-7055335281914191872-asAR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

"Excited about this upcoming campaign with Lane Johnson of the Philadelphia Eagles and Kooth Digital Health (North America). Kooth, a leading digital mental health platform is on a mission to provide accessible and safe spaces for youth to achieve better mental health.

Starting next month, the campaign will go live to hundreds of thousands of youth across Pennsylvania, letting them know that Kooth is there for them when it matters, and that no issue is too big or too small."

Look forward to the next news item here, whether that's feedback on the impact of the Penn pilot, a full Penn contract, Cali contract details or something else entirely. The consolidation over the last week has brought the RSI back to more sensible levels & allowed market makers to accumulate a few shares, any moderate buying volume will see a resumption of the uptrend IMO

Agree, based on the 52 week high of 77p last July + 52p in January this looks a decent shout at the current levels. As for transparency - it's LSE, what do you expect?