Share Prophets Article2 Apr 2015 17:11
By Nigel Somerville, The Deputy Sheriff of AIM | Thursday 2 April
Tom Winnifrith had warned as far back as November (see HERE ) that AIM Cesspit posterboy Maple Energy (MPLE) was in serious trouble. Anyone who hung on after that is now locked in to an undead corpse, suspended as it is with just the formalities to complete before being dispatched to the corporate knackers’ yard. The latest kick in the teeth for shareholders came at no-one-is-watching o’clock last night (at just after 5pm).
I guess as the market winds down for Easter we’ll see a few more after-hours bombshells, but Maple really does take the biscuit: even while suspended and facing oblivion it still cannot do its wiped-out shareholders the common courtesy of announcing during normal market hours (let alone, heaven help up, at the more usual time of 7am). But then Maple is advised by Nomad Cenkos – who themselves were shown to have overseen a pile of horse manure in the form of Quindell’s first attempts at explaining the deal with Slater and Gordon (see HERE ). ZAI Corporate Finance certainly has some stiff competition for the title of worst Nomad on AIM.
Maple had found itself defaulting on its bonds and was forced to, ahem, work with its stakeholders in order to find a resolution. For that, read hand over all of its assets to the bondholders and leave the company with nothing but a pile of debt.
An RNS on 4 Dec 2014 announced that Maple had received a notice of event of default in an RNS issued after-hours. Quite why the shares were not suspended at that point is beyond me.
Then on 8 Dec 2014 the shares were suspended ‘pending further clarification’ – not that even then the dire situation was being fully ‘fessed up in that RNS which gave investors false hope that the company’s subsidiary Maple Gas was continuing to operate normally.
Some reassurance: Maple confirmed on 22 Dec 2014 that those Gas operations were also falling under the control of bondholders, although Maple stated that it had signed a deal worth ‘up to’ $1.1m for maintenance. But then the bondholders could terminate that deal at any time – one presumes once the assets had been sold on.
Then yesterday, aptly on April Fools Day – and again after-hours, further details of the dealing with bondholders emerged. This time, the bondholders had bought out class A and class B convertible stock in the Maple Companies, and that Maple had now disposed of all its Ethanol operations for $108m with the proceeds to be applied ‘in full’ just to reduce the debts to the bondholders. Noting that Maple had been in negotiations over a $47m offer for its Maple Gas operations last year, that compares with its half year balance sheet to 30 June 2014 which showed property plant and equipment of $204m, and intangibles of $61.7m. But there were $182m of non-current liabilities and a further $85m of current liabilities. Not that
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