Member Info for Xenor

Fully understand the frustration being displayed in this thread and I'd by lying if I said I was happy with how this investment has performed since December 2022.

But, nothing has changed in recent months? Finance got kicked back again but the market thought that statement at the end of December was worth 14p at the time. The revenue goals haven't changed. We still have the FSS and Sea Rose contracts and the company is moving forward behind the scenes.

We are currently riding a wave of bad sentiment, and this will turn when finance is confirmed followed or preceeded by a likely positive IM result. Keep selling, I am getting tempted to add to my already overweight holding.

As a shareholder I understand that high growth companies can only grow so quickly because they've taken debt. If a company like HARL tried to be profitable from day one and grow via profits it would probably take another 10 years to get where it is today. Getting the balance right is key, hence why I said managing the debt is what matters.

I don't care how many charges are against the company or how much debt it has; the key thing for me is always can the company manage that debt? Clearly the new finance package is crucial to this.

As I've pointed out before, the new finance deal is a 5 year package that will last into 2029. The debt doesn't even have to be repaid by then because there's nothing to stop the company from refinancing the debt as many times as it likes. Not to say we should never pay it off, but there's no need to think that we'll have to pay 200m debt off over 5 years.

At this rate it's going to take finance news just to get us back to the 13-14p level we spent much of last year at. I'm not worried about said finance but this is dire.

Agree Kaeren. Finance is the only thing that's relevant right now. Once that's done we can focus on other important issues. Problem is the silence from the BOD is causing this to drift towards single digits and the lower it goes the harder the recovery and the lower the impact from finance RNS. Originally I was expecting finance news to take us back to 20p, but with this slide I don't see that happening now.

Communication from the BOD needs to improve massively. I suppose it's not a high priority right now as it won't change sentiment or affect the share price, but they need to do more once finance is sorted. Give people a reason to invest here. It's very unattractive right now. Arun needs to buy as well to give confidence.

Share buybacks would be nice but they don't make sense before finance is sorted. That said, it would have been a better investment than renting ferries for Scilly or trying to buy IOSSC so I can see the argument for it.

A takeover would make sense as it would give the likes of BAE and BAB more capacity. I don't think they would be interested until we're turning a profit however.

Sounds like Appledore has a bright future.

I doubt it. It does say "another significant order" after mentioning the barges.

I'll believe it when I see it in RNS.

Sounds like you've done well from a trading perspective Si. I could have been on a free carrry too after the FSS announcement had I sold 1/3 instead of doubling my holding after a 300% rise. Silly rookie error. My problem with investing is going too deep in shares that I feel are great investments. Due to being in prior to FSS my overall average is reasonable and I'm not worried, but certainly all paper profit is wiped out at this level and I'm now on paper losses.

I think as you suggest then trading a portion of your holding in the peaks and dips is the smart thing to do on AIM, but it's easy to say that in hindsight when you know that the imminent finance deal wasn't imminent at all. Risk with that strategy is always that you may be out when the blockbuster RNS lands. I remember traders bragging about selling for 7-8p in the days leading up to the FSS announcement.

As for the repeated dilution over 10 years, your loyalty of being a longterm investor certainly wasn't rewarded. Different company now though since they bought out HARL and changed strategy. Same leadership of course but given there's been no placing since November 2021 (which is a lifetime on AIM) I'm hopeful those days are gone.

Interesting. Is this five at once at different stages of production or going to be one at a time? It was mentioned in the third barge contract RNS that Arnish would be producing some barges but they didn't give any extra details.

You talk a lot of sense there Si. That's exactly how it is. Issue is we invest at this early stage because the higher risks should lead to higher rewards. In theory once the company posts that first profit then people should be paying multiples of this share price to get in.

One would think with a high risk investment that the share price progresses towards that higher level once key milestones are hit that show the company on course for that first profit. For me, the FSS contract was the first milestone, then securing the finances with the new debt deal is the next big one. Reducing annual losses (2023 results) is the next and that followed by getting as close to break even as possible in 2024. That puts us on course for a healthy profit in 2025.

If the high risk doesn't lead to high reward and people are still able to get in cheap following these milestones then what is the point of being in early and taking on the high risk? It seems like most investors just want low risk high reward these days and us fools who invest in high risk companies just have our capital sat around doing nothing for years until that risk changes or the company folds.

Caravan, no it's not essential for you tp be a holder to comment. But it just seems odd that you're here around once a week to moan about the share price not going up when you don't hold any shares. Like do you want to buy higher or something? It seems a lot of AIM investors seem to enjoy buying high and selling low.

You sure do post a lot of moans about the shate price for someone who isn't invested.

Of course the refinancing will move the share price. It reduces a huge amount of risk here and investors hate uncertainty and risk.

Stokey I certainly understand your frustration. I am incredibly frustrated here too. Clearly none of us are happy with the share price performance following the FSS win. It's dire and the only positive is that we haven't been diluted. But to suggest nothing positive is coming from attending all these exhibitions is a bit much.

Not all of our contracts are 10m+, as I'm sure you are aware there are a lot of smaller jobs happening that don't get RNSed and this marketing may be where these are coming from. Maybe even the current cruise refits came out of attending such events. We just don't know. Maybe pitch that question to JW when we have another investor call as he may be able to shed some light on the value of these events.

Anyway I agree JW does need to start speaking with investors and telling us what is happening rather than posting on social media and keeping us guessing. A business growing this fast should ideally have quarterly updates but I'm aware you have already pitched that to JW and had it shot down. Big mistake in my view.

Stokey you seem to be very negative lately. I wonder why.

Why would JW tell us which exhibitions are leading to which work?

It's a nice tweet. Hard to believe that's coming from a company with a 19m market cap.

Broomtree, clearly you underestimate the effect influencial traders have on low volume AIM stocks. AIM is sentiment driven, if you have a big enough following and a decent amount of cash it's not difficult to sway sentiment the way you want it. Of course they are only able to do so because of the financial uncertainty here.

Typically they wait for sentiment to rise on the back of good news stories like IM result, good contracts (Sea Rose, FSS etc), put their shorts in and then the campaign of "placing incoming! Cash running out" begins over the weekend. Down we go the following week. Seen it so many times here. You only seem to watch LSE so you miss out on a lot as these people avoid these boards.

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.