Member Info for Simms45

Nice Ripley on the trade and good for you. Also nice of you to leave some upside in for the next investor :)

we recently raised £3.5m and £1.3m of that was earmarked to finish the Croatian plant so while it is not imminent will certainly not be held up for lack of funds at least and finished in 2023 but have always assumed Q3 but we will see. Key is we have put the funds raised directly to use and the way i would like to see placings, and a shame some of the funds have been diverted elsewhere but France and Croatia will be going guns this year.

I hope todays £21m market cap is the bottom as we trade below a lot of basic metrics that even if they shut tomorrow and fire sell everything we would probably not lose anything on our investment as there is value in a lot of projects we have got involved with. The company seems to have been punished well for putting on some rose tinted glasses on project timelines and cashflow forecasts when times were good but we are considerably further than we were 2 years ago when we were valued in excess of £250m so we should have some optimism that once we release news of Italy refinance, Croatia/Greece commissioning dare i say consider moving into cashflow positive and profitability later this year perhaps can start sizing up the the partners we have and whether we can start to make some dent in the sales pipeline using the new model. I have a feeling end of this year we will be back to a £100m-£150m valuation, which if it was not for the fact we trade at £21m today i would say was quite conservative. Eqtec are arguably the global leader in this specific field and have built a world class following and the reason we have billions of sales enquiries from around the world. However i am still baffled that we have not yet secured that big brother with the cheque book to start cranking up the projects but perhaps Italy will provide the commercial reality that we are good for the distance. it might take a while to get us back over the recent placing price but when it comes it could be very exciting on the upside and hope everyone can hang in until that happens.

Slowly ticking up to 30-40p that feels a good holding position pending new bids. Plenty of upside and as long as we have a plan B limited downside as with gold battling $2000 the economics are very strong. I bet JM and MC if they sell will look back with envy when new owner repays all costs of buying and building mine in less than 12 months from production as $2000 looks very cheap given the confetti printing presses in US and elsewhere. Really you would expect quick binding offers now to secure asset before MC and JM sharpen pencils on valuation and others jump in. Certainly this month should be the month of final bids.

I think this paragraph is about we will get on future strategy and the talk on Hydrogen is all in the right direction but dissapointed there has not been more talk on actual new projects won post 31st December as the shares doubling was due to something? Little guidance on return to profitability. If the annual report aimed to damp enthusiasm and now company will buy back 20% of shares now is their chance as they really have not made much effort. I really hope they seize it as the company cant be worth any less than they are today.

“Business development strategy
In the next few years, with the world’s attention and commitment to carbon emission reduction and carbon neutrality and China’s dual carbon goals, application and development of new energy production technologies will enter into a new era. The Company will seize this historic opportunity and actively develop new technologies and new business given its leading position in the industry.
The Company aims to maintain technical advantages in the fuel ethanol market. Through our R&D efforts in the cutting-edge 1.5th and 2nd generation cellulose ethanol production technologies, hydrogen energy production technology, as well as high- carbon ethanol production technology through ethanol intensive processing and related equipment manufacturing, we shall be able to increase project income from cellulose ethanol, hydrogen energy industry and high-carbon ethanol equipment manufacturing in the future.
Looking forward, the Company will further strengthen the building of our marketing team, continuously improve the depth and breadth of sales network, maintain good relationships with the existing customers and actively acquire new customers. The Company will also proactively explore investment opportunities in related industries and increase production equipment manufacturing and technical service income from other chemicals in order to expand the current revenue mix.

Our R&D activities will focus on fuel ethanol technology, super grade alcohol, hydrogen production and equipment manufacturing technology and related chemical production processes. So long as our technology is ahead of the curve, the self-owned intellectual property will eventually convert into income from businesses of the Group.“

You seem to forget that the Italian project is live and generating cashflow to the tune of over £1m a year net profit and is in the process of being refinanced. The refinance will conclude in Q2. the question will be what the valuation of the plant will be generating over £1m profit. As an ex CFO if you had a plant able to generate £1m a year what would a bank place on that level of income in regards to valuation bearing in mind we have 20% stake with options to buy out all partners at a fixed price if we decide. Secondly this quarter Croatia will come on line and that will follow the same process. We just landed £1m grant to help pay the wages of the team at Eqtec of feasibility study and North Fork is in the process of coming online in Q3. This is real cash coming into the business. Set against that we have £40m of net assets that need to be worked through and the plan going forward is less upfront capex and focus on work where payment will be upfront. All in all i think this year could be profitable but i would say 2024 is most likely to be that year but i think this year we will have decent levels of refinancing and income from projects. There is a lot to be positive about when todays market cap is £17m and the company stopped counting the order book as it got silly. Everyone can be rightly angry at the financial mess the CFO created but oddly Eqtec has tracked the same share price path as PHE so one wonders if strings are pulled from higher above us pi plebs.

Yes. Not exactly talking strongly about the order book post December 31st or projects landed as we are told they are going guns by RB and Ivy so given we were almost 1/3 of the revenue in 2022 compared to 2021 that means something. Also no talk of the share buyback at all and you wonder why the share price doubled if the company did not buy back any shares. Presumably CNEL landed something big about a month ago to warrant that rise as the volume was unusually high? Why do some people have information to trade on and we do not have that in the public domain. At least we are not suspended again and it looks the changes in the way impairments are applied accounts for some of that loss. there was news on their R&D that obviously puts the company in the great place in the future and they have finalised some testing but it felt like it was years away before commercial orders. I hope the talk of Hydrogen and storage gives the company some growth as it is a massive but they seem to play down growth of Ethanol, which is odd as the rest of the world of Ethanol is booming so they feel a little to PRC focused and not looking at countries pushing E10 as standard. this may be going in the bottom drawer again sadly unless the board trigger the buy back or share news on project wins then pis have little to go on as today only insiders have the trading advantage. still today we have no idea what triggered large volumes of buys last month and that is incredibly frustrating.

Still plenty of gas in the tank polo. If the binding offers come in then there is a probable 50-100% upside within the month. However the longer the month goes on the more investors will get the jitters. The award of shares to the CEO prior to asset sale is a canny move but fair if the outcome is positive, obviously all depends on the final price. Obviously it is hard now to think bidders will walk away with a pretty confident message but if they did walk away for any reason i hope we also have that plan B so it may also be seen positively. We are still below the share price before that pesky sanction talk so i still consider we should be back to that level of 30-40p. I am sure the bidders are also sizing up the company for takeover as it could work out cheaper and buy a nice fat £50m+ accumulated loss that can be set against future profits. That on its own is worth £10m to the right company so there is value in the shell and the brand could have some value. The next month will be critical as really we need 2 binding offers to get the top drawer price.

If anyone is going to try and crash the party with a takeover then we need to see this shareprice around 40p so a 60p offer could be sold to shareholders on both sides of the equation. we have 3 non binding offers in the pot and MC on site this week doing "site visits" so we could be up to 4 or 5 bidders and by then we might start to see some binding offers coming in from the site visits at the start of this month. You would expect, in light of demand, that the non binding bidders will be rushing to get the binding bid in place and then place pressure on the board to agree the deal with a short valid offer date. This might also flush out the sideline lurkers who do not want to miss out. Personally i still hold out a JV comes out of the mix and we go straight into build and production as at $2000 gold we will be drowning in cash as well as targets for explansion.

I would hope the least Harry can do is help lift the gold bars into the back if his truck and ride off into the sun.

As gold has pushed on considerably from the start of this process and economic horizons are looking better i suspect many miners with chests full of cash are looking over La India as any buyer will know that what they are buying into is a 10m+ Gold district that will generate billions of profit over coming decade and land package is so large its almost certainly far higher. The sale price is almost trivial as decent gold mines like this with future proof resources are few and far between. Most mines for sale are on the decline or needs a big capex injection etc. La India is almosr virgin gold territory, albeit mined 60 years ago.

Hilarious thank-you as i focused on the text and not the 10ft neon billboard :) lets just hope the bidders keep on coming as 3 is a nice number but 4-5 sounds better.

Where did you see that? All i can see is

“ CEO Mark Child is in Nicaragua hosting site visits for gold producers interested in La India Project. 9 companies are under an NDA and have access to all drill data, technical studies, and details of permits to construct and operate a mine and financial models.”

if someone posted they pulled it.

The good news from the short-term traders (albeit never fun to get caught in their games) is that we seem to have an environment where the price moves more freely and not being held down by some seller from the last placing probably. Everything seems in place and moving along for long-term holders and i hope within the next 1-3 weeks we get to create some shareholder value. It feels very likely we are in the final stretch before we go to credit for sign off off of loan as Harry seemed to intimate that the EG had signed off the remaining $10m of sweat equity into equity that has helped improve our borrowing. what that means could include reducing any shortfall and improve our stake in the projevct. Could be wrong but getting to credit proper and not "in principal" will be a big day for investors as we can relax a little as the rest of the steps will be paperwork with investors that we are assumed are queuing up to invest in some revolving door allowing foreign owned Ethiopian companies to invest in Kefi and then repatriate profits abroad with a tidy profit included. The peace talks simply improve the security and ease of logistics when we get the final sign off.

We raised £3.3m and we are not doing any drilling. The sales process is well advanced and binding offers are due along with further non binding offers. We have 3 offers already and we have 9 NDAs. Gold at around $2k with expectations it will rise increasing urgency of buyers to make binding offers. I am expecting first binding offers next month in all fairness. If we have no major drill programmes the cash will last 12 months. If MC decides to push into production this changes of course and back to different plan. Personally i prefer production as the numbers are great and i am sure we now have potential JV partner who could inject cash as loan and take equity stake for free. we will see but plenty of upside Slim as any bid made will be above the minimum board would even entertain or be close to it or would be rejected. Its really the bidding war that will bring out the real value of the asset.

Certainly the early parties DP chose to do business in retrospect were questionable but back in 2020 the company had just been saved from implosion and apart from a lot of R&D and an operational project in Spain and France we did not really have the top draw case studies and proof of commercial scale projects to lean on. DP is the grand master of spin and that has created a £2bn pipeline of decent projects to pursue and if Eqtec can deliver the case studies using the latest tech then the sky is the limit. The speed of change over the coming 10-20 years will be so vast that the pipeline could easily be £20bn+. From companies wanting to make their manufacturing plants carbon negative to commercial companies being paid to take dangerous materials and converting these into green syn gas Eqtec has a modular solution to suit all. I think the size of the market and the potential is not at question. Also i think once investors etc walk around the Italian project and look at Croatia and North fork the kit looks state of the art. This is important to impress and Eqtec do not disappoint. The reason we sit at a laughably low valuation of £19m, that is over 50% less than net assets, is poor management of finances in the face of global upheaval. in fairness this affects the entire world and Eqtec have simply spread too much and invested heavily into part build projects that we can only extract our investment on completion and refinancing. The other big bottleneck is the team that only numbers around 30. We simply cannot service all opportunities as we would like and was probably why in the gung ho 2020s DP launched into many projects when raising cash was easy. This model is fine when you have vast funds to invest but given the head on collision with the market changes DP and team did the right thing and was already working on partners to deliver and for Eqtec to focus on the high margin tech and maintenance contracts and hopefully some equity upside. It has taken 2 years but we now have a global partnership with some of the best delivery partners. This is where Eqtec will now be able to meet the demand of another 10-20 more North Forks in California alone. The recent raise for me has massively derisked Eqtec, even if it was personally painful having not long before invested more when i heard Italy was to be refinanced. That was not a very thing DP did as it gave some investors hope that a raise might be possible to be averted. however once you swallow the pill we have cash and we have many assets that are close. we will refinance Italy in next few months and free up several million and we will finish Croatia and do the same. Therefore the recent raise gives us the timescale to start to stand on our own two feet. We have a huge number of part built projects and over the next 12 months i expect DP to sell these to realise cash. .19 is a great buy in below the recent placing as .22 and i hope it will be at this level in a weeks time when i hope to invest more.

Many of the sells are actually buys as you can buy and sell very close to the mid market rate and some will be doing bed and isa transactions. The basic system that decides whether it is a sell or a buy is often wrong. Secondly there is almost certainly a buyer lurking buying up stocks sold to build a position quietly.

Our trusty duo who were going to release results on the 29th have now decided it will be the 31st? Can this duo ever reliability do something except hand out cash to mates. Hopefully not how it ended last time and RB and all the rest are looking over their shoulder to make sure mates rates, mates contracts and mates buyouts are not involved in this delay.
https://www1.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2023/0328/2023032801449.pdf

My tuppence worth is that It all depends on timelines to a point we know the outcome. The key is removing EG from the timeline so we then are just left with credit and signing of definitive agreements. The latter is easy and the former is the variable. If Harry gets EG greenlight, which tentatively appears to be the case as in last webinar Harry said the bank will lend more implying EG signed off the extra $10 m of expense for 2020-2022. In this cass RAB will keep lending cash as they are largest shareholder and wqually want to preserve value as they have placed at higher levels. The whole TK deal is built around triggering warrants at 2.4p so for the sake of raising a few million quid for 2-3 months working capital it is not worth it. If TK is end of year territory i think placing would have already happened as we are clearly running on loans and even RAB will decide when they have lent enough. The recent movement in share price was based on EG support of project and the mysterious need to release quarterlies early for some meetings planned. My hope is we are close, Kefi will blast past 2.4p and the rest is history. Of course looking at last 2 years SB is not far wrong but you cannot used past events to predict the future. To do a placing now at .7 would likely delay the TK project further as it would be hard to then achieve 2.4 off the back of a placing for a good time as that is digested. We will see but we might even get an update tomorrow and SB could be right or wrong. the happiness Harry expressed in last webinar hinted at something big had happened but not able to divulge until it was certain. I hope that is my reading. In anycase i invest and just keep on adding so blips are painful but overtime my average continues to track so the eventual ride up will be sizeable.

Very confident from JM witj expectarions of more bidders incoming.

“further offers are expected as 9 companies are under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)“

Steady rise coming.