Member Info for Sturm

How abour answering these questions:

1) “What do you mean by ‘not serviceable’ — inability to pay interest, or just lack of comfort?”

2) “Which year do you believe Touchstone actually defaults if none of these wells succeed?”

3) “Why do you exclude VAT recovery when assessing debt service, given it directly reduces net debt?”

4) “At what level of VAT recovery would your debt-stress thesis no longer hold?”

5) “Do you assume Trinidad gas prices stay flat indefinitely — and if so, why?”

6) “How much incremental cash flow would a $1/mcf uplift generate — and why doesn’t that change debt serviceability?”

7) “Are you arguing Touchstone cannot survive, or that it cannot grow without new wells?”

8) “Do you accept that debt can be serviced but deleveraging requires success?”

9) “Why would lenders force a default when interest is covered and leverage improves via VAT or pricing?”

10) “What covenant specifically is breached after VAT recovery or price uplift?”

11) “Is there any non-drilling scenario under which you believe debt is serviceable?”

12) “Are Cas-4, Cas-5 and CR-3 equally necessary, or would success at just one suffice?”

13) “What specific cash shortfall causes insolvency after interest, VAT recovery, and gas price uplift — and in which year?”

What this does to Millstone’s argument:

Debt is comfortably serviceable

No drilling success required

Deleveraging becomes possible organically

❌ The core of Millstone’s argument collapses under this scenario.

At this point, saying “debt is not serviceable without new wells” is simply factually wrong.

ChatGPT 5.2 Enterprise, fully loaded.

Where Millstone is wrong..., implicitly asserting this:

“Without success at Cas-4, Cas-5 and CR-3, the debt is not serviceable.”

That is not supported by the numbers.

Why that’s incorrect:

Even excluding Cas-4 / Cas-5 / CR-3 success, Touchstone still has:

Existing producing cash flow

Cascadura + Central Block

Enough to cover interest ~4–5×

Structural tailwinds not tied to wells

2027 gas price uplift

VAT recoveries (cash / bonds)

Manageable debt profile

No immediate principal cliff

Issue is covenants and leverage, not liquidity collapse

That means:

Debt is serviceable

But not comfortable aAnd not deleveraging meaningfully

VAT recovery and gas price uplift are exogenous to Cas-4 / Cas-5 / CR-3. They change the balance sheet without drilling success.

What happens to Millstones argument if any of the events happens: VAT or Gas price uplift?

Debt becomes clearly serviceable

Covenant pressure eases

Dilution risk reduces materially

❌ Millstone’s claim that drilling success is required is weakened

❌ Debt stress is no longer binary

👉 VAT alone does not make Touchstone comfortable — but it breaks the “unserviceable” claim.

I wonder if we get a fine increase this week. This time last year, Rodney, VAT money appeared and there's perhaps some fomo from CR3 getting closer to test and production. We'll see.

@ Rossannan

If it's commercial (and remember they have more than 1 target in that well). c.f. GPT

2️⃣ Probability-weighted calculation, Step-by-step

Low case contribution: £30m × 20% = £6m

Medium case contribution: £115m × 50% = £57.5m

High case contribution: £275m × 30% = £82.5m

📊 Probability-weighted valuation:

£6m + £57.5m + £82.5m = £146m

So yes, has to be commercial and even then there's a 20% chance it will bad.

I understand why risk adverse people don't like those odds. That's why people don't put all their money in this share.

Go post some more affiliate crypto sh.. instead of wasting time here.

Here's how risk and reward is percieved for most people (that excludes Millstone, Aligator and a few more).

You're getting 100 dollars if you roll snakeeyes with 2 dice and you pay 1 buck a throw.

Time to get your wallet out!

Except if you're Millstone. Then you'd spent months and months explaning to everybody how bad risk/reward is since 35 outcomes will be bad. Very bad. Losing. Very bad.

Millstone, why don't you give me a list of 5 companies operating in the country and onshore - then I'll put the names in ChatGPT and laugh at your effort. Welcome to the grind, Millstone.

GGG, go QQ to the major shareholders. Nothing (NOTHING!) you post here will have any effect on who the CEO is.

The millstone, aka cryptoboy, aka rossannan, lives in his own negative echo chamber and hasn't posted a single posive post ever - apart from cryptoaffiliate sh... Why he and Aligator are on the “save the stupid children” mission is beyond me — possibly the most absurd thing on this sad board. Why GGG et al. think no shareholder has an eye for the risks here is just astoundingly arrogant.

"The only return I am seeking is to make people think twice about the balance between risk and reward"

Thank you for being the sole grown-up in the room and for treating the rest of us like children in need of daily reminders.

After all, who wouldn’t want a knight in shining armor?

Thank you for your relentless efforts to keep us safe. It must be a demanding, yet deeply satisfying, role.

So why would a company like Shell, with 1 million options and potential targets NOT drill in a country with poor tax climate and 2 center-left parties leading?

I guess they had 999.999 better targets, considering VAT and tax. ROI is just better elsewhere.

Just like you, they're not constrained to operating in T&T. Not to mention that their generel cost base and "employee benefits" is likely many times bigger than the T&T basis, leading to higher costs at CB than most other companies would accept. With a heli-pad and regional managers doing jet-set leadership, carried over on local, small assets. This is peanuts for them. They're taking down trees, not looking for peanuts. Certainly not peanuts for TXP though.

If you want to see a company that did exactly what TXP might do, take a look at #VLE / Valeura. Amazing how much value you can create with extending lifetime and paying a low price for an asset bco. liabilities. Reserve growth and commercial targets... VLE is up 1000% or something over the last couple of years. It's still cheap btw.

My questions were unbiased ("What could the possible commercial results mean for touchstone at a low, medium and high level of succes, based on Trinity oil and gas sector and Touchstones financial situation? And "What are the rough valuation ranges in these scenarios?"). I also asked GPT to give a prognosis wrt. 2025 and a 2026 guidance, based on RNS's and ERs from 2024 and 2025. I think the answers were interesting. But you can do your own research. And 2026 will rely on CR3 and (according to GPT) >7.000 BOEs per day in total (and we're not getting anywhere with that; that's the minimum grinding level). Not going to paste 20 pages of Q&As here and all the , but the final estimate (based on three scenarios).

If you weight the valuation ranges we discussed earlier by these probabilities:

Low case (£20–40m) × 20%

Medium case (£80–150m) × 50%

High case (£200–350m+) × 30%

You end up with an expected outcome skewed heavily toward the medium–high range, despite the low case existing.

That’s why CR-3 is:

Not risk-free

But asymmetrically attractive if execution is merely “good”

VAT (Next bit is for Dunder: I thought GPT might not have taken VAT into account. So I asked - just to see the detail of what it learned from browsing ERs. I think it goes deeper than most investors do)

"So in your 2026 forecast, do you consider VAT issues solved?"

Good questions — they go to the core realism of the 2026 forecast.

1️⃣ In the 2026 forecast, am I assuming VAT issues are “solved”?

Short answer:

👉 Partially solved, but not fully cleared.

What I am assuming in the 2026 base case:

VAT stops being a worsening problem

Some cash inflow occurs

VAT no longer dominates liquidity stress

Specifically, the 2026 base case assumes:

Partial VAT recovery (cash + bond monetisation)

VAT receivable shrinks, but does not go to zero

Management can plan without VAT uncertainty driving every decision

What I am not assuming

❌ I am not assuming:

Full VAT repayment in one lump sum

Immediate conversion of all VAT bonds into cash

That VAT becomes irrelevant to the balance sheet

Numerically (roughly)

In the 2026 model, VAT implicitly contributes something like:

$4–6m of liquidity improvement via bond redemption / monetisation plus some cash settlement

That is helpful, but:

It does not rescue the company on its own

The model still requires operating cash flow to do the heavy lifting

If VAT is not resolved by 2026

If VAT receipts slip further:

Net debt stays $5–10m higher

Leverage remains elevated

So VAT resolution is a supporting pillar, not the foundation.

Not really. The topic was the latest RNS vs. earlier.

ChatGPT on Cas RNS from the same comparing promt: Indicative probability band (qualitative):

➡ ~30–45% chance of commercial success

(Based on a list of pros and cons)

And as stated for CR3:

Indicative probability band (qualitative):

➡ ~65–80% chance of commercial success

Nothing is garantued here, but CR3 is a double money shot. Next thing you'll argue is probably that Cas wasn't commercial. But whatever. Cup always empty for you.

That's a nice biased answer, Millstone. Maybe try to use it to expand your thinking instead of using it to stay in your small echochamber? Avoid the "If bad then what"? Or go all in and ask questions like "Will Touchstone survive as a company if CB is hit by a 20 ton meteor" - "How likely is Touchstone to survive if a level 8 earthquake flattens Trinidad"

I don't have to ask ChatGPT to know if your cup is always half empty. Or to know that nobody would enjoy drinking a pint with you. Miserable.

Rax - spot on. Brent @ 64 they net 15 million USD more in 2026 - I guess they could just hedge a portion around 65 when it spikes a bit (Iran, Greenland, who knows but it will happen).

Would have been nice though, if they had been more easy on dividends and e.g. had 25 million own shares in the vault. That's a nice volume to keep the predators at bay, financing hickups or to spend on acquisitions when that is attractive again.

Oil is still there. The field is still very productive. I guess 2026 will be for traders and 2027 beyond for LTH's (especially if they handle shareholder return more intelligently).

I had a chat with GPT (5.2 enterprise) re. the latest RNS vs. earlier similar RNS's @ Cascadura. It came back with this:

🧠 Bottom line

Carapal Ridge-3:

👉 Much higher commercial chance of success

👉 Risk is mainly how good, not whether it works

What the RNS clearly establishes:

Commercial positives

Hydrocarbons are proven in the wellbore, not just inferred

Very thick net reservoir section (≈1,000+ ft hydrocarbon-bearing sands)

Multiple stacked gas intervals, reducing single-zone risk

Reservoir presence confirmed across a structure, supporting further wells

Clear path to near-term production (completion + tie-in planned)

Discovery of an additional reservoir (Karamat) adds upside without new exploration risk

Key unknowns

Actual flow rates (deliverability not yet tested)

Permeability and pressure behaviour under sustained production

Final capex vs economics (not yet modelled publicly)

Commercial chance of success (from the RNS alone)

Assessment: 🟢 High

Why:

This is post-discovery, pre-production risk — not exploration risk

The remaining uncertainties are engineering and optimization, not geology

Even moderate flow rates would likely be commercial given:

Onshore Trinidad

Existing infrastructure

Gas-weighted development model

Indicative probability band (qualitative):

➡ ~65–80% chance of commercial success

(Main downside would be poor flow despite thick sands — possible, but statistically less likely with this pay thickness.)

Hard to disagree with "show me the money" when it comes to TXP and their execution proficiency.

Though they did drill through what might be commercial gas @ karamat, so CR3 is really a double money-shot.

We'll see. The sooner they hook it up, the better. With a big horizontal well it's certainly a turning point, if it's commercial. I guess that just means the re-rate will be more aggressive. If it comes online @ 40 mmcf I guess UK traders will just sell 20 million shares at 11.5 p and we'll be stuck there - at least until the canadian market opens.... :D

No level of commercial gas can remove the management discount completely though :)

Nice progress.

Interesting how the market factors in ZERO production from CR 3 despite the progress and the monster RNS. Even net 5 mmcf would add around a quarter of the market cap a year.

... or maybe some random trader bought at 6 p and decided it was time for some nice profit now, since it'll be a while before we get results from that huge horisontal well, which could double CB production. Who knows. But stuffing money in PANR sounds like throwing good money after bad.

I'll get my coat. And your goat :)

From the RNS: "Completion operations are underway at CR-3. The Company intends to initially produce the undeveloped Herrera sands from the horizontal section of the well below the shale marker, while the uphole developed Herrera sands may be perforated at a later date. Much of the CR-3 facility tie-in equipment has been procured and is currently in Trinidad, with tie-in to the Central block natural gas processing facility targeted for the first quarter of 2026."

Though since they drilled through flowing gas @ karamat and they should have cash to drill it (and it's fast/higher up) there's some speculation if they're going to drill Karamat first and hook both up, which might delay things a month. Wouldn't be a bad thing to get 2 wells online early Q2. Though nothing has been decided re. Karamat AFAIK.

I called a long time ago that dividends weren't sustainable. Wasn't surprised to see them vanish.

Anyways, any LTH would ABSOLUTELY want share buybacks and not dividends at this shareprice. Don't give me the "I'd rather want cash in my hand argument" - you can just sell some shares (the % they buy back), get money in your hand and still own the same percentage of the company. And you can do it at your leisure with your own tax and financiel consideration.