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WHat's behind this sudden drop? I don't see any news out. Anyone? Hope its not a big sell being worked or late reported. Certainly can't see the transactions to cause such a drop at the moment. ANyone heard anything?

People placing orders on the orderbook to buy and to sell at 16p. Don't trust all the 16p transactions to be "buys". They are probably largely just trades between people.

I hope you are right but a 25% reduction in revenue without a pro-rata reduction in costs and overheads has a MUCH larger impact on profitability than just 25%. CEY has bounced back a bit and hopefully things will eventually be favourably resolved but until then I think patience may be required.

Loads of us got caught. It was a horrible situation. But it wasn't forseeable. Therefore there's no lesson re averaging down. Sometimes its good to and sometimes its not. In my view the error is to think in terms of changing an "average" at all. Buying a stock should be based simply on whether its available at a good price with more likelihood of going up than down over whatever term you are happy to wait for your money back. That decision shouldn't be influenced by whether or not one already holds shares in the company, nor on what price was paid for those shares. Whether you bought those shares at a good price, or what turned out to be a bad price, it can't be changed by buying more. For those that were able to buy more shares around 33p that decison has turned out to be a good one. Its never possible to know for certain. The one exception to the above would of course be if one already felt over exposed in one company in which case buying more shares could be considered too many eggs in one basket. Something I'm very guilty of myself on this one, annoyingly. I've now reined my buying and selling right back and am trying to be patient for a change in the hope and expectation that SHFT will eventually resolve these issues and come good. I said this situation wasn't forseeable, but that wasn't quite true. The warnings re the termination of the Eurochem contract were there in the RNS statements to be seen, and it was clear that SHFT wanted payments that Eurochem were reluctant to make. Maybe we all should have been asking how the relationship was bearing up and what EC's reaction was to SHFT stopping work.

$800m The question is, IF they settle out of court will EC be paying SHFT or SHFT be paying EC? And how much!

Got to love those directors' buys :-)

Welcome aboard. We're a little above bottom and I think much now rests on the Eurochem outcome. Without industrial unrest in SA and the Eurochem thing we'd be flying now on the back of recent contract announcements but I can't see many institutions investing until the fear of the lawsuit is well and truly past. The tender pipeline is £1.1bln - not quite the same as the order book but still great.

In my 08:32am post below I somehow managed to cut and paste the wrong extract from the RNS re discussions on costs. Rather than Karee 3 I should have been referring to AngloGold Ashanti's Moab project as follows... "At AngloGold Ashanti's Moab project, workers reported for duty and operations were back to normal on 30 October 2012. In total, 25 working days were lost as a result of this action. The Company is in discussions with the client regarding costs incurred during this period." So my concern is whether we are asking AngloGold to pay our costs or are THEY saying they have costs that they need us to pay as a consequence of us downing tools? Or a bit of both? Wouldn't want that to turn into another EuroChem! Apologies for any earlier confusion.

RNS states that SHFT have consulted with legal counsel on EuroChem's claim and still believe the claim is without merit, and further states that we have put in our own claim to EuroChem for $15m. That's as positive as one could possibly expect barring news that EuroChem had dropped their claim. SHFT can't spell out any details of the claim or of their defence as the whole matter is sub judice.

Agree there's no surprises at all in today's statement. Can't believe many people could have dreamt that profitability wouldn't be affected by recent events so no real reason for the market to react strongly to the news. The only thing I'd like to under stand better is... "Karee 3 Technically, the project continues to perform at expected levels and discussions with Lonmin are on-going with respect to the rates related to the project." I.e. Are we asking Lonmin to pay our costs or are Lonmin saying they have costs that they need us to pay as a consequence of us downing tools? Or a bit of both? Wouldn't want that to turn into another EuroChem!

PS you should have tried getting a price for 4000 shares. That's the market size and the best size to judge optimum pricing against. Offering you so much more for such a bigger quantity does seem odd though.

If you were an investor with shares in an OEIC and the OEIC lost 20% of its value and you found out it was because they invested in a company that got sued for $800m and lost you'd be looking for payback from the fund manager. I imagine institutions have their own guidelines about what thay can and can't invest their investors's money in, and until the EC issue is resolved SHFT is likely to be on the black list however unlikely they think them losing might be. No institutional buying very likely til EC resolved so not much chance of a big push north. But once resolved, and assuming its favourably then I'm expecting real progress. Well that's my thoughts and hopes anyway.

The MMs often set the spread stupidly wide just before opening mate - are they hoping to sucker people? I couldn't possibly say! :-) Wow your post was TWO days ago - its quiet on here these days!

I agree that institutions would be nervous about investing here while the EuroChem situation is unresolved (they may even have their own rules preventing them from holding in such a situation), and also that the matter could well take some time to reach a solution. However, having seen other shares reactions to successful outcomes from lawsuits I'd be very surprised if SHFT's SP's reaction to a positive result was as slow as you suggest. If we get an RNS saying EC have dropped their claim or a court has thrown it out I would expect the MM's to immediately mark up their prices significantly and for the market to buy in very quickly. Just my opinion of course and rather a moot point if we don't get that kind of RNS but obviously I'm hoping we will. Yes not enough information to judge which way it will go - my gut feeling (and that's all it is) is that EC have raised this as a warning shot in the hope of preventing or discouraging SHFT from suing for their contract losses, and that EC's claim would in fact have very little contractual basis. But quite prepared to admit I could be wrong given the lack of actual info to go on.

You and I both buddy! Well and truely SHGed and SHFTed this October! :-( The only way is up from here though! (hopefully)

Blimey! Have you got £400k in SHFT then? lol

You've got more experience than me then! Hope you're plan works out - I'm VERY invested here and envy your average!!! You SHOULD do very well I think with patience (but who knows). Don't count on the full dividend though. No way of knowing if they will maintain 4.8p again this time around or not. If we can get EutoChem out of our hair without running up huge legal bills and also get back to our original profit expectations then maybe, but personally my best guess is that we might see the divi reduced - if I'm wrong it will then be a HUGE bonus! :-)

Sometimes using big words CAN make one sound intelligent. Other times it just indicates desperation and highlights silliness! Which clients do you think can't afford to pay their bills? They got awarded 2 contracts and RNS'd them as usual. Normal practice - no hidden message or agenda in that.

In a word: Yes! The last Broker View for SHFT was £1 but that was issued on 5th Oct BEFORE the EuroChem claim news broke. In my view no chance of hitting anywhere near that while the Eurochem claim is unresolved. Personally I'd never count on actually hitting a broker's view anyway although of course it can happen and even be exceeded (they just move their target price up along the way). Recent downtime due to labour unrest in South Africa will have no doubt cost us some further profitability - hopefully not too much but I couldn't possibly quantify. The contract wins recently announced were already in the management's expectations. I'm in this for the long haul now in the hope of of a positive (and hopefully early and inexpensive) resolution to the EuroChem situation, further contract wins, and no more hiccups - in which case I would hope to see us back in the 70's at the very least and hopefully considerably higher if we can achieve the profitability that the management were expecting before everything kicked off. I still see £1 and beyond as distinctly possible but its going to take much more time and certainly will only happen once EuroChem are out of our hair.

Has anyone managed to find a link to the Styldrift presentation yet from the RNS of 25th below... "Shaft Sinkers Holdings plc (LSE:SHFT), the international shaft sinking and underground construction group, is today [25/10/12] hosting a site visit for analysts to its Styldrift shaft sinking project. No new trading or financial information will be disclosed during the visit. The presentation to be given will be made available at www.shaftsinkersgroup.com " I don't seem to be able to find it.