Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
You're missing that some of these PI shorters are quite influencial people with blogs that some respect. They've done a good job having people panicking over the finances over the past year. Every time we have a rise a new blog post pops up. Last I heard they were warning people that the company would run out of cash by the end of December or early January, because their version of the facts said so.
Given how tight the finances may have been over the past year since we maxed out the Riverstone loan I would think JW has found ways to reduce costs. A lot of companies are finding ways to reduce costs recently. 200m should break even but with added interest on the debt it may be an overall loss. So I'm expecting this year to be close to break even and the first profit next year.
As for paying back the debt, the new finance will be a 5 year deal that takes us into 2029. Once the first profit is posted then future years will only go in one direction for a growth company. We don't even have to pay the whole loan off by 2029 as it could be refinanced again if needs be. Even big players like BAE and BAB have debt, it's not an issue if managed properly and having debt doesn't stop a company from issuing dividends, as the two I mentioned do. Key is getting to a healthy profit and being able to manage the debt first.
God knows Si. All we can do is speculate on what happened between the Grant Thornton report in H1 and the end of the year. I'm sure JW stated in an interview in July that they had a deal on the table already but wanted a better one. Cashflow was good enough then to not be rushed into a deal and we haven't ran out of cash despite an army of shorters stating JW is lying and we would do, so I'm trusting the process here.
I'm guessing that original deal had no UKEF involvement and a poor interest rate and probably poor for us shareholders. Or maybe it had the 80% UKEF guarantee. When JW saw he could apply for a 100% guarantee that likely set the process back some steps and required a minister approval before he could reapply to UKEF. We all know how slow government can be and it probably took longer than JW anticipated. In all likelihood the deal was stalled for several months in Q4 waiting on that approval. AIM shareholders aren't going to like hearing that so the public message was what was given. Though JW and Arun did allude to the fact this may slip into 2024 based on things outside their control when someone asked in the September interview.
The important stuff that is being done now, JW probably assumed would be done by the end of Q4 following a quick minister approval. JW always gave timescales by the end of the current quarter so he must feel that everything following approval won't take longer than a quarter. So I'm optimistic it will be done by the end of Q1.
We'll see. I'm happy with the estimated cashflow in H2 2023 and H1 2024 so I'm not concerned about it.
I'm not sure why this is aimed at me, it was Stokey making the point. I'm pretty relaxed on the finances and know what to expect in the 2023 accounts. 80m+ revenue and more losses. Direction of travel here will be dictated by the quality of the finance package we sign. Based on all comments from JW it sounds like it will be a good package.
Agree a business update is much needed. But given everything we know is happening at the yards from social media I don't see why anyone would be concerned about a bad update. I'm hopeful we get one early March as we did last year.
Finance is what everyone is concerned about. We know the work is there and coming in. I know you have little/no trust in JW but he has repeatedly said cashflow is fine and there's no need to rush to sign a finance deal, for about a year now he has been saying that. If he was bull defecating us then we would have had a placing by now. So income is clearly covering costs.
Why are we still discussing Hebridean9 parroting what he saw on ADVFN boards? Completely off topic.
Hopefully we win the contract for this ship, but large government contracts seem to take years to get issued so I doubt we'll hear anything this year or even next.
Well good luck. Hopefully you get a nice 25% bounce at some point. I'm still watching and it's starting to look cheap. Problem is I'm also watching about ten others that similarly look cheap. That's the problem with the UK small caps, everything looks cheap and very little buying.
UK stocks are a waste of time. Should have gone all in on Nvidia when the AI hype started. Whenever I look at US stocks it seems easy to make money there. Guarantee the day I sell all my UK stocks and buy US stocks is when their market will crash and ours will bounce.
Also I'm surprised you have dipped into CPI at 18p.
Even a "not material contract" is better than no contract so I doubt that's the reason for the drop.
I'm not worried about the current share price. It will correct when finances are sorted. Sooner the better as it takes longer to recover the lower a price goes as those who are selling at this level aren't going to be jumping back in a lot higher after finance.
"the smart money has been getting out"
Oh that old chestnut. Spoken often by those spreading doom and gloom for financial benefit. I don't disagree that European shipbuilding is a mess anyway, the way the Scilly contract went to a shipbuilder in Vietnam and Scottish ferry contracts going to Turkey highlights that. But that's why HARL is in five different markets, maybe six if you can count running ferries now too.
Regardless, this company is 19m market cap and has a bright future. Once the finances are sorted I would expect the "smart money" to be getting in.
Market is backwards looking. If you go back to the year 1649 HARL is valued at 0 because it didn't exist.