The latest Investing Matters Podcast with Jean Roche, Co-Manager of Schroder UK Mid Cap Investment Trust has just been released. Listen here.
Pity he does no use some of the surplus cash to purchase acquisitions rather than keep funding them through share disbursements. It is really a sock in the eye for PIs *which are the major investors here, He is obviously aiming at a consolidation and the PIs can watch their dreams of high increases in the shares they hold at the moment, to fractions of a penny on a miscule amount of shares they will be left with after a consolidation
Why on Earth has no company stepped in to buy this company up. Homegrown companies have no need to fear Brexit if they own these because it is homegrown and will be totally unaffected by changes in the £ because its product is valued in dollars. It is almost a get out of jail free insurance policy for any company that wishes to smooth their path through Brexit
It is not the potential of UKOG at fault it is the constant buying of new assets, some unproven. They are buying with shares which is diluting the shares. SS is not displaying any particular concern over the small shareholders, which are the ones that keep AIM (and his company) afloat. Of course, in the end SS will mop up the shares by consolidating probably at about 40-50 to 1 . People who have been through a consolidation know that suddenly they find that they are left holding a couple of thousand shares. They are still the same value of course, but any increases are minute on a day to day basis and to know that your shares have improved .00.50 over the week does not have you laughing to the bank if you now only own 2000 shares. Of course, all things being equal, if you can afford to hold them for an extended period they probably would improve to around £3 per share. The best thing, I believe, that could happen to this share would be hostile buy out :))
Ah but you forget the Colchester earthquake of 1894, it was subsequently proved to have been caused by farmer ' Mr J Snowflake' who was knocking in fence posts around one of his fields. A bylaw was changed and fence posts in Essex can now only be positioned using a maximum 7lb hammer . Snowflake was , apparently, using a 14 lb hammer at the time.
Well they have produced over '40,000' barrels as of the 11th April , so they are probably in the region of 45,000 now, 70% of the take belongs to UKOG, so they ought to be covering their costs and taxes, if any, they would have a considerably off-set of tax. Some of their planned ventures will probably need income mainly because they do not like to spend their cash, but prefer to raise loans with share issues. Which means that you and I are paying for it !
IMO it must have been tipped in a investment column somewhere, not necessarily in this country . SHD, except for pride, it doesn't matter too much to SS what the SP is at the moment . He can reset it with a consolidation when he feels he needs to. That will probably be sometime after , or in, Q4 when he has increased production on-stream. He may also try for a full listing about that time
I am not too sure how it works, but it seems to me that raising money by issuing shares costs the company nothing (other than down valuing any personal shares that they may have) . It could be reasonable to think that the shares they use to raise money have a guarenteed floor level price./ I think really, they don't give a hoot for how many shares that they have on issue because they will consolidate them anyway at some point down the line and reduce (is it 5 billion ) shares down to less than 50-100 million ?
I thought another go at SS would not be amiss. When you buy up prospects for oil you are buying up risk for the company, because the odds are against your acquisition never becoming productive. You are in danger, therefore, of changing the outlook for UKOG from successful to barely surviving . Would it not be better to consolidate what you have got, which would protect the company and its shareholder and branching out later once the company is on a sound financial footing
I must admit that it is a little disconcerting that SS seems prone to chasing pipe-dreams BB being a case in point. I think everybody would be easier if he just concentrated on what he has got. The Knighthood can come later
I just had a thought about what I said this morning. There is a possibility that he is making the company ideal for a T/O. To be honest I don't see how it has been avoided up to now. On-shore, politically stable environment, lots of good prospects as well as proven production.......I would have though that a North Sea oil company looking at a dwindling pool of oil in the North Sea would fancy UKOG
The problem is with so many shares on issue that the shares cannot get off of the bottom because there are so many of them in circulation hat even a shift of 0.05 is enough to trigger profit taking. If, however, these shares are for investment in say the ioW and it comes good then they are (cost) negative because they have financed a profitable expansion. However, it makes a consolidation very probably now and possibly in the next month, or two as the company seeks to rationalise the number of shares that it has on offer (rule of thumb, without checking, suggest that they have upwards of 5 billion shares on offer ) A workable sum would probably be near to 1 billion or under
I believe certain things oil and gas included are strategic for the whole country therefore it cannot be left up to local councils to torpedo them. It is then local councils are able to deny the rest of the country a vital commodity that will benefit all, and not a local area. Oil, is not a local affair, nor is Shale gas iy is nationally owned
It makes sense that America is now the largest oil producer. Until quite recently they imported 25% of all of the oil production of the world. The game changer for America has been Shale which our snowflake generation believes with Uni maths, but no experience, tell us we don't need ! That must have hurt OPEC, but as they realised which oil got down into the 20=3$ per barrel a year or so back, because they realised that they cannot sustain a low price for long. The reason being that the oil revenues of OPEC had been earmarked years in ahead of them being earned and Suadi quite quickly moved into a budget deficit
Could it be that you maybe misunderstanding FPTP ? I have lived in a PR state and it sounds fair on paper, but it is not. The governments of PR can usually only survive by going into coalition with other parties. and they are paid of by giving them government departments to manage. So a British model could see Labour running defence, Conservatives the Home office, LibDems the NHS etc etc etc. None of them dare slam the door when they are visiting/leaving another Department. In effect PR stifles democracy because people who perhaps voted with something in mind find although their party received more votes than any other party, that still amounts of only 25% of the vote. it cannot govern on 25% so they make up the missing 26% from other their parties. The other parties don't come cheap they want their pet projects. It often takes weeks or months (ask Holland) before one of the parties can win over (usually with political bribes) enough smaller parties to form a government and the larger party, the one that got 25% has to shelve a lot of the principles they espoused during the election, likewise their alliance parties do not get everything they want either, but they are in the stronger position because the can withdraw, causing a collapse of the majority 25%, who are now left scrabbling around the communists and daydream parties to fill the void and keep them in power but, of course, that give the communists and daydream parties powers above what their electoral status is . So I repeat what I said before, PR is very poor government, it is not at all democratic and it is often paralysised because it cannot bring the parties it is allayed with on side