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Grim news this morning from Harbour. It now seems that the only hope left for any of us to get even a fraction of our invested money back is either an Ombrina Mare settlement which is then distributed direct to shareholders as a special "closing" dividend, or a real "hail Mary" development of a different partner. Given the complete inaction and disinterest of the entire Oil and Gas industry over the last decade, I find the latter to be extremely unlikely.
So it would seem more important than ever to prevent Mr Moody and Co from emptying the remaining company bank account into their own accounts, before fleeing into the night. I have joined the shareholder action group and sent the appropriate letter to the company calling for a general meeting to agree limiting resolutions on the board's company-destroying greed.
It was a very simple process and took no more than ten minutes. Given the huge amount of money which I've lost on buying this accursed share, it seemed the least I could do.
I am concerned that the board, having filed their own pockets handsomely for the last decade while overseeing a massive loss to shareholder value, are now planning to simply run out the clock, take another 12 months personal payday, and then switch the lights off.
I replied to the most recent list with my own addition, but for some reason it didn't appear here, so I'm trying a new post.
Orient: 2million
Spacehoppa: 500k
Surfit: 500k
Bootledoger: 125k
Steve0 500k
Pre2rcd: 2.6million
Flipper: 135k
hewaits: 1.1m
markednmbr1: 455k
Daikihaku2: 200k
LaticsRule : 75k
LSEtown 750,000 ish
Godders 3 million
Ovets 800k
Glen 3.5MM (MM=millions)
LTT 350K
mike33 180k
kr2009 250k
Blinker 240k
Ephemeral 100K
CroftOriginal 167,005
Neilius 354k
Oilfred 500k
TheGreaterFool 170,551
Orient: 2million
Spacehoppa: 500k
Surfit: 500k
Bootledoger: 125k
Steve0 500k
Pre2rcd: 2.6million
Flipper: 135k
hewaits: 1.1m
markednmbr1: 455k
Daikihaku2: 200k
LaticsRule : 75k
LSEtown 750,000 ish
Godders 3 million
Ovets 800k
Glen 3.5MM (MM=millions)
LTT 350K
mike33 180k
kr2009 250k
Blinker 240k
Ephemeral 100K
CroftOriginal 167,005
Neilius 354k
Oilfred 500k
TheGreaterFool 170551
This feels like the can getting kicked yet further down the road.
“This time next year, Rodders...”
Well, that’s cheery. :(
I am one of those lazy private investors who never exercised their right to vote on any share I own. Until now.
I’ve voted to get rid of the current directors. My shares are worth some 90% less on average than they were when I bought them, and after the massive dilution of the FOGL your-cash-for-my-mates bung, a couple of hundred thousand us neither here nor there, I guess. But I couldn’t sit and watch them carry on shovelling the last of our cash into their own pockets without at least registering a protest at the gross incompetence and personal greed which has taken this share from £5 to 5p, and has spent hundreds of millions of pounds for absolutely no result.
It’s very easy to do through my broker’s website, so I do heartily recommend other shareholders fo the same.
rpoodle
For me, that's the key. It's all very well saying "but we're just paying our share of the costs which PMO incurs". What on earth could possibly have cost tens of millions of pounds already. There are no rigs, there is no infrastructure, no contract payments, there is no funding, no crews, nothing. All that could possibly have been happening is existing staff having meetings, drawing up documents etc. Yet we have gone, in five years or so, from having hundreds of millions in cash and hundreds of millions in carry, to having £10m left, and that only because we panic sold our Egypt asset, otherwise, we'd have been bust.
How on earth can so much money disappear on so little. I've long been critical of the outrageous, kleptocratic levels of remuneration the board award to themselves. But even I don't think they've personally pocketed hundreds of millions of pounds over the last 5 years. So where has it gone? And how on earth can our board justify their positions when they have overseen such incredible, almost unbelievable, cash drain, with literally nothing substantive to show for it?
Never has one company blown so much cash on absolutely nothing, surely?
I'm not a historian of the oil industry, but I'd be interested to know how many other companies found a billion quid's worth of oil (minimum), and then managed to lose/spend hundreds of millions of pounds not getting it out of the ground, before going bankrupt.
RKH may well be taught on future MBA courses as an example of the most incompetent management in corporate history.
I’m fairly sure we’ll see 8p or lower today. The difference is that while other shares will eventually rise again when the mad panic is over, this won’t, because it never does.
Imagine that they actually release an RNS saying we've got a stack of cash from OM on M0nday, and the sp rises by a whopping 100% in one day to ….. wait for it...… 26p! Fantastic.
Still, at least Sam's got his 930-odd shares this morning. Hope that £100 doesn't leave him too stretched.
FFS
It’s the silence from rkh which speaks volumes. No words from the board, no explanations, no updates, no plans. God forbid no directors who’ve pocketed millions at our expense putting a fraction of that back into the company through buying shares.
Just silence. I guess they’ve got no breath left to speak, as it’s a tiring business shovelling the company’s last remaining cash reserves into their own pockets.
Moody has made just 1 significant purchase of shares in nearly 5 years. He made a sizeable purchase in April 2015. Otherwise, his only purchase was in June 2017, and that was worth just £50k, which is actually a lot les than my current paper loss in RKH.
In the same period, he has taken millions of pounds from the company in salary and bonuses.
There's no rocket science here. It's not hidden. It's a direct transfer from you, me, us, to Sam Moody and his mates.
The only reason why a director would not be buying large amounts at such historic lows - particularly a director with such vast personal wealth obtained through extremely high salary and bonus schemes - is because that director has no confidence that the company will succeed, and so his focus is solely on personal extraction, not investment.
That was me. The only hope we have is mothballing. The way this has been run for the last seven years, has essentially seen a direct transfer from shareholders to staff/directors in salaries and bonuses. We all know we’re running out of money fast, but the question is why? And the answer is because Moody et al are bleeding the company dry into their own pockets.
Seems to me the obvious explanation for why they sold Egypt is because it gives them another couple of million they can give to themselves before switching the lights off.
The very least the Board must now do, having overseen such a catastrophic destruction of shareholder value and company assets over a consistent period of many years, is to mothball. Salaries need to be slashed. Staff laid off, and the company turned into a shell, in order to survive until such time as a Hail Mary development might take place.
If that means Sam Moody working for free, then that is the very least he owes shareholders, after having made himself a multi-millionaire from salary and bonuses which he's extracted from the company while destroying shareholder wealth.
It would, let’s face it, be absolutely typical of this dog of a company if UKEF rejected its funding bid because it had used up its budget on fracking in Argentina. It would sum up the absolute disaster of the last decade.
Would a PMO rights issue suggest they were seeking to raise the funding necessary for Sealion themselves, rather than borrowing it as previously expected? And if so, would that mean RKH would also have to raise funds for its own share - presumably through its own rights issue?
Forgive my amateurishness, but what does that mean? Some funds have gone short and some have gone long? Betting against each other with no relationship to the real-world prospects for the company itself?