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Hi Lottie,
Unfortunately, you are spot on.
For me, there has been a deafening silence on any meaningful RNS-worthy new contracts and it's hard to disagree with you that the penetration into the 5 markets is looking a little meaningless (FSS aside) at the stage.
I took the decision to sell up my cash holdings on this yesterday, didn't have many left but still took 3 trades to off-load 30,000 shares. Still have holdings in my SIPP where I take a more relaxed view on things, but I halved that about 3 months ago.
I still want to see H&W pull it off, I genuinely do, but unless a complete surprise drops out of somewhere, I'll sit on the sidelines for now.
Cheers
TheEast
Lottie is spot on. The stats are stark.
In my view, needs a statement of some sort re the 16 cruise ships refits. Can't just say that sort of stuff in a public domain; is reckless at best, at worse it's bleeding against the law!
I fear, but really hope not, that it's another RNLI situation emerging.
News of financing is absolutely critical. Full stop
Morning All,
Lottie is spot on- another push back on the financing is starting to get a little worrying when we know the existing facility must be getting pretty maxed out and H1 revenues were short of where we should have been (not to mention the 'missing' revenue for 2022).
I was fairly open to all options on IM but now lean towards an outright sale, perhaps structured in a way that there can be an element of profit share above a certain level perhaps. One thing is clear, we are trying to do too much at once and that needs too much resource to manage day to day, let alone invest for the future. The BoD need to focus more IMHO. As it stands, we're contemplating building new ships. wind jackets, manufacture batteries, proposing to build and operate a ferry service, potentially build and operate gas storage with an eye on storing hydrogen, refurbish cruise ships, re-purpose military vessels among many other things.
The risk is we are trying to do too much at once, and risk bleeding to death on the huge cash demands that entails without building the revenue sufficiently enough.
If we pull it off, it'll be an incredible success story over a 5yr period and shareholders should be duly rewarded supporting the business which has changed vastly from what many originals envisaged- and are currently paying a heavy price of where the SP is today.
If the appeal period passes without action on IM, I think we can see a correction back up to the 18-20p mark but it'll settle down to a trading range of around 15-17p till a financing deal is actually secured. IMHO of course.
Cheers to those giving live updates yesterday for those of us unable to tune in.
TheEast
Morning All,
Can you children take your playground antics off-line to a personal setting so the rest of us can actually try and enjoy the board for what it should be. It's becoming a joke.
To the adults in the room, fingers crossed for an IM update of some nature this week. See if anything else falls out from last week's trade show. Maybe some more commentary on Scilly. I quite like this one, the current monopoly are desperate to hold on to it and blatantly can only deliver it at huge detriment to service users. Would be a travesty if any alternative proposal was not dutifully considered (ours of course!) that delivered a wholly better outcome for the people that use the service. I'd like to see this one grow legs. Hopefully the locals see what an excellent opportunity it is and put due pressure on the Council to make sure it happens!
Have a good week
Cheers
TheEast
Hi Stokey,
Can't knock your enthusiasm for picking out that as a highlight!!
Not good to see re-financing pushed back another quarter. Current facilities must be on the brink of being maxed out. Not much given away on IM. Only 25% of revenue achieved in 50% of the year (remember how the back end of last year's revenues went...).
Nervous 6 months ahead
Cheers
TheEast
Finding,
I don't think we should (or will) wait, but any party buying a £100m project would only proceed with purchasing once absolutely 100% clear of legal challenge, that's just common sense. I'm not saying there are or will be, but let's see what the anti's throw up, if anything.
I'll clarify, I fully expect discussions to have been ongoing in the background and continuing to do so!
Hi Lottie,
Difficult to disagree with your sentiment.
My thoughts (only) are that the BoD were fairly certain we were not going to be awarded the ferry build (and we clearly won't now if it does proceed as originally planned) so had this up their sleeve as a parallel exercise for that eventuality.
IM, maybe a lull whilst we await what (if anything) further challenges there are. Let's be honest, the positive JR decision is not the end of the matter for the anti-brigade. Let's hope that there is a frantic exercise of firming up offers from the interested parties and we'll get an update as such in due course.
With regards to break-even points, previous guidance for this year we need to see an uplift in numbers just to stand still given the inflation we've seen, and similarly, I'm sure out break-even cash position has also moved northwards. Inflation will have put downward pressure on our margins which will exacerbate the numbers needed.
Personally, I would lean to selling IM. It's a distraction from the bigger picture now and the funds received from it would turbo charge the rest of the business. Second to that, I'd go for a small free carry on the project. Third for me is taking it forward ourselves. Is such a specialist project, we have to be sensible about what the company can deliver. My opinions only.
Have a good day all, and enjoy the late summer sun.
Cheers
TheEast
Morning Stokey,
I think the difference between FSS and IM is that the JR decision instantly increases the value of an asset we already hold.
FSS is future revenue which is several years off, requires huge upskilling, growth of the workforce and financial investment to get there. It'll form the backbone of HARL in the medium term, but a lot of hard work to get there.
The facts for IM are that there is still ongoing volatility in the gas markets, the underlying lack of storage and decades of requirement to store large volumes of gas. For me, IM supercharges us.
In terms of the outcome, who knows. We can all have an opinion but nobody knows what the result will be tomorrow. What we can be certain of is a volatile couple of days for the SP, so time to bunker down and ride it out.
GLA
Cheers
TheEast
Hi All,
Reading through various published articles, whilst the Levelling Up funding is available, my take on it is that the Steamship Co are not actually in favour of using it as they are concerned it would mean the service going out to Tender, potentially breaking their monopoly on Scilly transport. So in place of this, they apparently have secured asset financing for the project, but clearly would mean increased fares for service users. Do tend to agree that the 'end of July' decision target will be put back somewhat. If it does land in the future, it'll be a bonus rather than necessity in any event.
More important targets before then...IM decision due within weeks, firming up of the LOI to formal contracts for the 2024 docking and announcements of those contracts not yet known to us at all!
Cheers
TheEast
TDF,
For the sake of the majority of posters on here, and especially leading up to what could be an exciting few months here, can you please just try and leave your nick-picking behind you? Occasionally you make some quite interesting points but your persistent desire to just argue with people is getting beyond a joke. If you do have a habitat of posting when on the sauce, which does appear a distinct possibility, make a conscious effort to not post till the morning.
All,
Love a cheeky 7% rise as in the majority of cases it's based on some leaky news. Fingers crossed for Monday but hard to ignore there does finally seem to be some momentum behind us now. I'm personally enjoying what appears to be a conscious uptick in news on various forms of social media.
I was only 25miles from Methil on Tuesday but was annoyingly short of time so couldn't get over. Due back in a few weeks and will make adding an extra personal night on to the trip to get there this time!
Have a good weekend all and let's hope next week is a good one!!
Cheers
TheEast
Hi Wyndrum,
Each to their own I suppose, but I'm in this for the medium-long term and for me, the steadiness is a sign of maturity.
Totally agree at this stage about the jumpy nature of things is natural and expected.
£70m contract. Yes please. But I'd like to see some nice £5-10m contracts landing on a semi-regular basis. May already have some and I'd also like to see the days when those sort of contracts are normal projects not worthy of an RNS. All in good time!
TheEast
hi all,
just to cut through some of dog**** on here....
ukef, seen some big numbers floating around over the past few weeks which is positive to see the funds being used;
- £680m for turkish high speed rail, really only service exports rather than manufacturing
- £373m for zanzibar road network and airport
also seen the news that the island of ireland is to commit €35bn to a huge expansion and refurbishment of the rail network up to 2050. not directly relevant, but useful infrastructure spending that drives up the demand side.
i'm working nearby to methil tomorrow and hoping to be able to get over for a peek to see what it looks like from the roadside. will post photos if so get up there.
here's to a positive summer and autumn for harl.
...oh- and for all the talk of sp predictions, personally, if we've hit and consistently maintained 20p+ by the run up to christmas i'll personally be happy. i'd rather a steady increase over lumpy jumps, and falls. medium term, it's an exciting place to be.
cheers
theeaat
cheers
theeast
Morning All,
Not a huge surprise this morning, if a little painful.
What will help stabilise this....
- Positive outcome for the IM JR, it's now been 8 weeks since the court case closing, so fingers crossed we get this before the summer break
- Director buys. Nothing public to suggest they're in a closed period. They should be all over it at these levels, and not just a couple of £k's, something meaningful
- Decent contract RNS. We hear lots about the progress in all key markets, but it's not translating into big wins. I want news of multi-year wins in the £10m's range. That is the sort of contract level which will build in the base cash flow to make the core business sustainable aside from FSS
- Closing of refinance. Would be interesting to know the cash position of the business and remaining facility to draw down from. Can't be a huge amount of headroom given the cash burn rate and a further delay to the refinance to the autumn
Still lots of positives, as always, but it's going to be a painful 6 months IMO.
Have a good week
TheEast
Excellent news?!
Good one!!!
Not great. Refinancing slipped (again), terrible loss for last year (if expected), saving grace is the 'on course' for revenue this year.
Suggest the SP fall this week is now reflected by this RNS.
Pressure on JW and the BoD to now deliver their words and upbeat forecasts. For me, crucial 6 months now for JW to deliver now, or for me, might be time to be looking at a replacement. Do want him to succeed of course!!
Cheers.
TheEast
Morning All,
Still not clearer with HL in share and SIPP accounts.
Cheque in the post must have been delayed getting down to Bristol!
Interested to hear the thoughts of others where we might go now, reckon there is something close to being announced? Or winding up more likely?!
Cheers
TheEast
That's good news, there is already an awful lot of money sinking into the ground locally in Suffolk.
If anyone is in the area, would recommend doing a free public tour of Sizewell B. Interesting to see the scale of the sites, with the reactor room itself only being 3m x 4m. Tiny dot in the middle of a vast, complex facility.
The Battery Storage link up may or may not be that interesting. Very specific SPV set up, may just be that Wartsila are installing BESS into H&W's site to lower energy costs.
BESS are v v expensive, we wouldn't be funding this ourselves.
Cheers
TheEast
Hi Chris,
Hopefully something big is brewing- one thing we know for certain is that inflation is stubbornly high and financing is horrifically more expensive than it was 12 months ago. Is going to be a drag on future profitability and may well take longer (and greater financing) to get there.
I'm still moderately optimistic for the medium term, but I can't see anything but a bumpy and scrappy year through to financial year end.
The biggest concern for me at the moment is the lack of news on meaningful contracts. We seem to be ticking over in small scale work, but we need to be winning newsworthy contracts of £10m's fairly regularly.
Hopefully your timelines are right and we do get some news over the next week or so, and indeed that it isn't too negative..!
Cheers
TheEast