Member Info for TerryM1

Somewhat Ironic that the Saudies are a better friend to SQZ shareholders than the BOD.

The one bad point about the Oil price is that is another excuse for the government to leave the WHT as it is.

You should read my posts before replying

I have clearly stated I worked in IT as a Technical Consultant, Technical Support Consultant and last role was assigned as an SME, not certain what has changed.

I said Investment Banking, you are talking about domestic banking where the sums are considerably less. The NatWest case is one I brought up in meeting on the importance of proper contingency. My point was no one cares about billions of successful transaction but they remember the time their card did not work, perhaps could not get a train ticket or trying to pay for a meal for clients.

As for CPI during Covid, there were great opportunities for outsources to take advantage of the many government schemes which need to be administered. Either CPI missed these or it just used Covid as another excuse for poor performance, I tend to think the Latter.

I will not dispute the government is broke but it does not stop companies like Serco making a fortune, given the state of the public services this is an ideal opportunity to say to the government we can do it better but disasters like Fridays do nothing to help.

You should not rush to get the system online, you should follow the procedures, there should be a disaster recovery plan and it should not take at least a day to implement. It should have been tested on a regular basis, one place I worked as well as testing regularly on a back up machine used the Christmas period to test this on the otherwise live system, there were maximum time set for recovery if breached the plan and resources were revisited.

On a personal note some years ago I did work with a nice but not so competent guy who was removed from the bank due to poor performance who joined CPI IT operations department who informed me it was not very good. Hopefully it has changed.

Lets hope CPI can lean for this and prevent something similar for form happening in the future, this company has been beset with bad press and needs to show competence and hopefully this will help with a proper share price recovery.

Moyes123

"Can we have a confirmation of top 1% wealth or 1% income - very different things!! Hats off if 1% wealth"

Depends on where you get you figures from about £2.2mn upwards.

Not a very good point to make but I thought I would throw this in to see how much it winds up the CPI fans who attacked insult and lie about anyone who dares to critsed CPI.

By the way I rarely post and and only do so if I feel there is a point worth making and for the record this was my first negative point as I was it is something I am not happy about, the RNS was an exercise in PR and it is an area where I have worked in a professional position.

Well the one thing I do know after spending a large part of my life in IT in investment banking no incidents at the banks I worked for took this long to fix. If they did heads would have rolled quickly.

Since IT was my profession, employed as an IT consultant and have professional qualifications in IT, it proves to me and all my employers I am an expert in IT. You either believe it or not, I don’t care.

And as for GoCpi, when you turn to insults you have lost the argument, you state I went short on Friday, prove it, if insulting people for telling the truth, lying (I did not go short and never have) and swearing helps you keep it up, it seems to be your hobby, however it does not affect me.

How about some truth

Shares once over £13.00 before crash (pre rights/dilution price).

Balance sheet found to be packed with good will which was worth nothing.

The rights issues raised more than the current market Cap of the company.

I have been in CPI since it listed and seen it all but looking back on history helps nothing, however the current management are responsible for the rights issue, they either lied on the state of CPI or were not competent to access the true state of the company. As a result more funds have been injected to save the company (at 2018 prices) than it is now worth. In the rights issue it was stated

“The successful implementation of the new strategy is expected to generate at least £200 million of sustainable annual, post-tax free cash flow in 2020”

5 years on and still no dividends or even back to the rights issue price.

I will be no doubt be attacked by the rampers but take a look at the facts.

Fortunate this company paid me more dividends than the cost of the shares and rights issue (as I sold out as many as I could so I did not get CGT) but it is a mess. I hope that one day we will see a proper turn around, it pays a dividends and goes above the rights issue price. I live in hope.

eatsocks

"TerryM1 how much do you know about IT? Doesn't look like you know much."

I would like to think quite a lot, spent all my working life in it and managed to earn enough money to put me into well into the the top 1% wealth in the UK. Computer Science and Maths degree. There were times in my life I was headhunted due to my reputation.

My role was mostly technical consultant and technical support consultant (SME as it now know), involved in many incidents over the years. I started in defence, worked on compilers, research, radar, maths applications FFTs etc, spent the last 25 years in Investment banking as the pay was better. Was alway on call in case a major incident occurred and these usually occurred during EOD so in the evening, I was one of the first technical people to be called when incidents occurred so good enough for large investment banks, is that good enough for you.

I was involved in many incidents over the years, no incident took more a few hours to fix, a number of which I found the issue, there was always contingency plans tested on a regular basis. When incidents occurred many were for sums in the £ billions so a days outage would have been disastrous for the bank and probably the whole banking system.

If you want to see RNS go the London Stock Exchange website and you can see the RNS was posted at 7:00 this morning and is the one posted by schlemiel

Great wording form the PR department playing it down

"experienced a cyber incident”
should read cyber attack

“primarily impacting access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications . This caused disruption to some services provided to individual clients, though the majority of our client services remained in operation."
From all reporting on Friday took out all of the systems, at the very least this caused serious disruption and staff were not working so costs incurred, staff salary etc.

“Our IT security monitoring capabilities swiftly alerted us to the incident, and we quickly invoked our established and practised technical crisis management protocols. Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue”
In other word the attack was successfully and we only took action after it was found, the immediate steps took out the whole day. Lucky it happened on a Friday so they had all weekend to fix it as they did not say when it was fixed I assume it took some considerable time.

In summary an attack got through, took down all of the systems and took a day or more to fix. If the systems are good no attack should get through, also if there is proper disaster recovery plan it should not have taken anything like this amount of time. Very poor show from Capita.

I had these shares in IWEB, Fineco, Quilter Cheviot and HL not ISA or SIPP, without being asked the dividends have always been made in in £.

All now in HL as the other all insisted on taking %30 WHT with W-8BEN while in HL 15%.

troubledseller

I am struggle to understand your analysis

1. The only ambition the BOD have is to keep their jobs as long as possible, if they believed in their strategy they would have bought shares. If the BOD had any regard for shareholder they would have negotiated with Kistos and now the shareholders would have been sitting on substantial profits not like myself substantial losses.

2. The cash pile should have been paid out in dividends as promised or invested outside of the UK. 90% of all NS produces are reducing investments in the UK before an even worse Labour government, either they are right or the BOD are right.

3. Swapping the cash pile for debt and assets valued much higher than current asset values makes no sense to me.

4. Who wants to be a serious NS producer now, virtually all other NS produces want out, they can see the writing on the wall.

5. There will be worse to come with Labour, they have stated this many times.

6. There is serious trusts with our new majority shareholder which have now stopped us getting a takeover bid, one of the best chances to increase value.

7. O&G price will probably rise but not much use if government takes virtually all of your profits. It will be far more profitable to extract it outside the UK and sell it to the UK. Labour have stated they will stop all new NS O&G developments.

8. The market takes a different view to you and can see no value in this reverse takeover.

Upomega

" Even our current government are not that stupid"

How do you came to that conclusion. this government have done nothing but stupid policies, mostly in the area of high tax and spend also regulation and who was chanceller when BOE printed huge amount of money which caused this inflation crisis. Rishi Sunak can't go anywhere without giving our money away, half a billion £ to the French to not stop the migrants is just one example. From every example in history these policies alway lead to drop in the economy, come to think of it it is is not stupid but insanity. As Einstein say's "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

Clinch

To sell before the next election might well be the most sensible options, even if SQZ make investments overseas they are stuck with a lot of O&G in the UK and tax losses which will be removed by the next Labour government as well as a useless self serving BOD kept in place by the new best friend Mercuria with no chance of a takeover except by Mercuria for a derisory price.

For me the best use for this share is capital losses to offset against capital gains tax, with our great government new reduced allowances very useful. Choice between conservatives and Labour is do you want your hand cut off or your arm.

Hope I am wrong as like all of us would like to make some money but break even will be an excellent result but highly unlikely.

Decent set of results, also

UK Infrastructure Bank will invest £75 million on a match funding basis into the Gresham House Secure Income Renewable Energy & Storage LP (SIRES) alongside a £65 million investment from Centrica.

https://www.centrica.com/media-centre/news/2023/uk-infrastructure-bank-and-centrica-announce-significant-investment-into-sustainable-electricity-funds/

Should be about time for a re-rate.

The question for Labour is how are you going to fund the freeze to council tax with the depleted WHT and corp tax from O&G companies. These will be disappearing fast as 90% of O&G companies in the NS say they are reducing their commitments to the NS, add in more tax and more is gone.

Of course energy security means nothing to Labour, this is the same as the pension lifetime allowance, conservatives changes are to be overturned by Labour, it is done so no one wants to take advantage of it as they know it will be gone soon. This is a way to harn the country while conservatives are in power to help Labour get elected, pure vindictive politics to detriment of the people of this country.

Wounded if Sir Keir has a special act of parliament to give him cheaper energy like the act to exempt him from pension taxes, if not perhaps that is the first thing they will do when they come into power.

This W8-BEN has been discussed many times before.

If you fill out a W8-BEN you should get a 15% reduction for shares held in an ISA or outside a tax wrapper, however the brokers owned by large banks like Halifax, IWEB, Fineco ignore it and you get the full 30% tax, however other brokers like HL, II, IG will give you the 15%. I was once told if the shares are held in Crest you cannot get the reduction as Crest refused to give this but I am not sure if I believe this. Also I checked the registers and they said if I held the shares with them they would honor the W8-BEN and have 15% WHT.

If you get WHT at 30% you could try a complaint and if rejected you can go to the FOS, however you may just get the broker to pay the tax back to you to avoid the hassle of FOS and a charge of £750 no matter what the outcome.

I moved my holding from IWEB, Quilter Cheviot and Fineco where they refused to reduce to 15% to HL where I pay 15% WHT.

Telegraph article from below not behind a paywall

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-foolishness-of-the-energy-windfall-tax-has-now-been-proven/ar-AA199L6t

I am not sure anything that comes out of Aberdeen is worth anything, take a look at the SP performance of ADBRN (they are a money losing machine), the funds outflow and it's ESG policies which are part of the problem, Also it disastrous merger ended up to 2 overpaid CEOs until the shareholders put an end to it and losing it's funds from Lloyds. In this case they can't even get the yield correct and think that ESG credentials will help make money.

"Can you please explain the pros & cons if the company does go ‘Private’?"

I have been there before with REITs where the conditions were clearly laid out and worked fine but in this case it is either get out beforehand at a derisory price or trapped in a company in an illiquid/no market at the mercy of Mercuria with no end in sight.

How Mercuria must be loving this deal .......

Yep, got controlling interest, shed loads of SQZ cash, compliant BOB, very low share price enable a cheap takeover and delisting.

This will probably go the same way as another company I have shares in, KAPE. Doing really well but SP held back because of a threat controlling shareholder with a derisory takeover offer of take the offer or I will force it private and you will the struck. No matter how much good news comes out SP will not move higher because of this threat.

Let's hope some common sense is used and there is a floor on the WFT, however I get the impression they are looking to reduce the tax if the price of O&G falls below a certain level not stop it.

Shadow climate secretary, Ed Miliband said the report was more evidence that next week's announcements would be "Fossil Fuel Thursday".

He said it would see "giveaways to companies already making record profits, for a policy that will make no difference to energy bills or security, fleecing the public whilst trashing the climate."

This is scary especially as Labourt are highly likely to be in power in a few years. As you can only giveaway something you own Ed Miliband believes that all the profits from O&G companies are the property of the state as anything not taken in tax is a giveaway. Who is fleecing who?

There is talk that the WHT would have a floor applied

https://www.ft.com/content/913db0ed-ccb6-4cde-8d39-f1f78b1240f5

Unfortunately the problem is that Labour will no doubt play politics like they have with the pension lifetime allowance and say that they will undo any change while taking away the tax relief as already stated. With labour knocking at the door of no 10 it is hard to see any company changing their mind on the UK until Labours position is know. It is somewhat ironic that an opposition party can have such effect on on the UK by either threatening to undo policies or putting pressure on the government to put in their policies like this windfall tax in place.

Headline:
UK government expected to offer energy companies windfall tax relief

Unfortunately the problem is that Labour will no doubt play politics like they have with the pension lifetime allowance and say that they will undo any change while taking away the tax relief as already stated. With labour knocking at the door of no 10 it is hard to see any company changing their mind on the UK until Labours position is know. It is somewhat ironic that an opposition party can have such effect on on the UK by either threatening to undo policies or putting pressure on the government to put in their policies like this windfall tax in place.