Member Info for Stupmy

I wasn't commenting on the piece, just thought it good form to share it. I've been buying so obviously hoping for a rise from here.

Harbour Energy

Last Price £2.30 57.0% undervalued Fair Value £5.36

New major risk - Revenue and earnings growth

Earnings are forecast to decline by an average of 0.4% per year for the foreseeable future.

This is considered a major risk. Ultimately, shareholders want to see a good return on their investment and that generally comes from sharing in the company's profits. If profits are expected to decline, then in most cases the share price will decline over time as well. In addition, if the company pays dividends it will also likely need to reduce or cut them, striking a dual blow to total shareholder returns.

Currently, the following risks have been identified for the company:

Major Risks

Earnings are forecast to decline by an average of 0.4% per year for the foreseeable future.

Shareholders have been substantially diluted in the past year (120% increase in shares outstanding).

Minor Risk

Dividend is not well covered by earnings (208% payout ratio).

Oh, for clarity, I bought more this afternoon.

"I'm just rambling here, not quite sure what my point is other than i'm frustrated with the current state of play."

This is an observation, not a criticism, but you are not just rambling, you are contributing to the machine that is currently bringing the SP back down to the bottom of a trading range that it occupied prior to the Wintershal Dea assets acquisition. The truth is, the SP has not reflected the upside that you expected, within the time frame you expected it. Most of you considered it impossible that the SP would revisit these levels. Well now we're here, I don't hear many folk saying 'I got it wrong' and need to rethink my approach. Mostly it's blaming conspiracies and management for the fact your hand is not looking as good to you, as it did at 298.

Come on people, grow up. The market is not there to throw money at you. It's there to take money out of your pocket while you're watching a future that you actually have no idea about. Focus on what you know, not what you hope for.

Dave, why did it rise from 230 to 298? Are you asking the right questions?

Mike, without being certain, I'd have imagined that the shares (or at least some of them) could have gone directly to a third party. If the third party went over 5% then they'd have to declare it. It's not obvious to me that those large sells which seem to have occurred on single days, resulted in sharp drops in the SP. Maybe they were not sold on the open market. Would seem like a big ask for the market to swallow 8.2m shares in a day without a big drop in the SP on that day.

Thanks meor, that's clear. Linda is the only member of the board with a significant holding, then Blair Thomas via EIG (our Chairman) has about 8x as many as Linda.

If you plot the EIG/Blair sales on the chart, apart from EIG's disposal of 1.6m shares s on July 20th 2022, their disposals have been followed by reasonably substantial SP falls. So, good work if these are simply trading calls, but it does raise a certain question in my mind as to whether there is something of a conflict of interest there.

The last big sell that I can see is Oct 3rd 2024, the SP dropped a fair bit after that (from 265 to around 240). The SP has since rallied to around 295. That high at 295 might have been an opportunity for Blair/EIG to sell more shares if that's their intention, but they have not. So the recent fall from around 295 to 230 is not clearly caused by insider selling. That doesn't mean the 8.2m sell was not related to the recent fall from 295 to 230. The fall from 295 to 230 is likely due to the surprise reduction in FCF. I'd have thought that it might be possible that Blair/EIG would have an inkling about that by Oct last year (Obviously I have no idea whether they did). So to my mind it's not impossible that the FCF drop triggered the 8.2M sell and when it became public, it brought other sellers out to bring the SP down to where it is. Probably nowhere the reality, but it's the way I'm thinking about it at the moment.

Worth noting that the start of EIG/Blair's selling was prior to the buyout of Wintershalls assets (SP 349.1). SP went up to around 500 in Sept 2022 after EIG's selling spree. The annoucement of the deal to acquire Wintershall Dea's assets was Dec 21st 2023. You'd have to imagine that the 2022 sale by EIG was unrelated to the Wintershall deal. EIG dropped about 6m shares in 6 batches 8th Feb 2023.

I tend to agree that some clarification around the FCF surprise would be in the interests of transparency and help in the establishment/maintenance of an orderly market.

Sorry for that ramble.

Also worth noting that EIG retain an interest in 126m HBR shares (8.7% of the company; 2nd biggest share holder after BASF).

I'm looking at that and only see the transaction volumes/prices/aggregate prices.

Going back to the RNS announcement of Blais 8.2m sale, it seems to be via EIG Global Energy Partners of which Blair Thomas is Exec Chairman and CEO.

I'm not really sure how that helps me to understand why Blair is selling shares down. I also haven't figure out what he still owns or what other Board members own. I suspec that bearing in mind Blair's role in EIG and his role as non-executive Chairman of HBR, there could be a whole slew of reasons for him moving his investments around.

There must be someone here who can get a bit more of a grip on what's happening?

The only 2 other decent sales (small in comparison to Blair's were from Linda at 270k shares and from Krane at about 150k from memory). Both Cook's and Kranes sales come after they received shares in the company schemes I believe and could be simply sold for tax reasons. They were only about 25-30% of what they received.

Worth noting there is no shorting declared on HBR which doesn't suggest that there's any bad smell here.

Apologies, that should have read 8.2m shares.

Right I'm looking at directors deals and Blair is the only one selling substantial amounts. He sold around 5.9m shares at since 2022, then the 8.2m shares in Oct 2024. No other director has been selling substantial numbers (or buying substantial numbers).

Does anybody know how many shares each of the directors currently hold?

Alex, does that mean he's disposed of a single tranche of 8.4 m shares worth 21.7 m pounds at a SP of 2.65 in October last year? Or has he been disposing of further shares since that date?

Perhaps the press coverage has changed

buy recommendation from Ciaran Donnelly (Berenberg analyst).

https://citywire.com/funds-insider/news/expert-view-victrex-yougov-staffline-jupiter-crest-nicholson/a2459054?page=2

I'm still buying onedb. Not currently worried about the SP. From my point of view, we're a hop and a spit from a leg to the upside. I think 255-256 is quite likely, 274 is not unlikely. Just need the SP to stop following the downlegs of spot oil. I could imagine 74.25 as a support on POO.

Worked well at FOXT. They replaced Nic Budden with Guy Gittins (I believe he was previously CEO, but you need to check that). SP has more than doubled since then and the press is very supportive.

I'm sure there are other precedents for a returning CEO to turn things around. Fingers crossed!

Nacho, it seems that the threat of sanctions co-incided within 24h with a change in policy over the borders and drug trafficking. In an ideal world such a threat should not have been necessary, but to my untrained eye it seems to have been very closely temporally related to policy change.

Wonder if there's something that the UK could do to bring France on side with respect to immigration. The current policies where the UK pays the French to tighten their borders is not obviously successful.

We'll see LW, it's all over the place at the moment (low liquidity stocks are difficult to deal with). While I was waiting for YOU I've put my money to work elsewhere (and that's doing nothing good for the moment!). I can wait here and if it doesn't come down, that's just life. Turnarounds are usually slow and steady so probably plenty of time to consider investing . T/O's are a whole different thing. Good luck.

But the liquidity can only change if the number of available shares changes. That means either increase the free float or loosen up the holdings of the institutions. There are a fixed number of shares available for trade. I'm not that convinced that we'd see a rapid rerate based on increased volumes traded. Of course I don't know, I'm just guessing.

LW, it often pops up on open, and often gives it all up soon after. That's the difficulty of trading such an illiquid share. Good chance that we will see 320 or lower. Didn't seem to be anything exciting about that update to me, although the believers with see only upside. From my point of view, it's exactly what it said, steadying the ship, cutting costs, turning the profits around. To me it says, no rush to buy.

Burges, why do you think the US listing will boost liquidity? There's a pretty small free float and most of it seems to be tightly held. Are you thinking they might undergo a placing/rights issue?

It seems the 'threat' of sanctions is working it's magic with Canada and Mexico about to clamp down on their respective drug exports to the US. I have to say that Trump's bold approach seems to be immediately having an impact, with Columbia now sending planes to collect expulsed immigrants and Mexico and Canada tightening up their borders. Surely it can't be that simple. If it is, then Trump has apparently guaged the situation well that his power lies in the the US's position as the worlds biggest/fattest consumer/importer.