Plexus Regulatory News (POS)

Plexus Holdings PLC / Index: AIM / Epic: POS / Sector: Oil equipment & services

23 December 2015

Plexus Holdings PLC ('Plexus' or 'the Company')

Director/PDMR Shareholdings

Plexus Holdings PLC, the AIM quoted oil and gas engineering services business and owner of the proprietary POS-GRIP® friction-grip method of wellhead engineering announces that, further to the notification by the Company on 8 July 2013, Mutual Holdings Limited ("MHL") has repaid in full the balance of the loan facility provided to MHL by Barclays Private Bank & Trust Limited (the "Loan Facility") as part of a banking relationship transfer process from Barclays to EFG Private Bank Limited ('EFG'). The Loan Facility has now been cancelled, and the associated security arrangements, which included a charge over 42,700,001 shares of the Company held by MHL, has been released with immediate effect.

Under the terms of the banking relationship with EFG, MHL has provided security over 24,000,000 shares in the Company as a second charge guarantor for a maximum £5 million loan facility provided by EFG to Plexus Property International Ltd ('PPI') and secured as a first charge on property owned by PPI.

Ben van Bilderbeek, Chief Executive of Plexus, is a settlor of a trust which controls 59.96 per cent of the issued share capital of MHL. Following the transaction MHL remains interested in 42,700,001 ordinary shares in Plexus, representing approximately 47.8 per cent of the issued share capital of the Company. 

**ENDS**

For further information please visit www.posgrip.com or contact:

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Plexus Holdings PLC

Plexus Holdings PLC, which began trading on AIM in December 2005, is an oil and gas engineering and services business, which supplies wellhead and mudline suspension equipment together with associated equipment and services for exploration and production applications. Based in Aberdeen, with offices in London, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and a presence in Houston, Texas, it has developed and patented a friction-grip method of engineering for oil and gas field wellheads and connectors, POS-GRIP®, which involves deforming one tubular member against another to effect gripping and sealing.

The Company plans to accelerate the roll out of POS-GRIP wellhead equipment as a superior alternative to current technology and for it to become the future industry standard for wellhead design. In particular, the technology has advantages in High Pressure/High Temperature (HP/HT) and Extreme HP/HT (X-HP/HT) oil and gas environments, for which there is growing global demand and where Plexus is being increasingly recognised as the supplier of choice.

To date, POS-GRIP wellhead systems have been used or selected to be used in over 350 oil and gas wells by international companies including ADTI, AGR, Apache Energy Australia, BHP Billiton, BG International, BP, Brunei Shell Petroleum, Cairn Energy, Centrica, ConocoPhillips, Dana Petroleum, Dubai Petroleum, ENI, GDF SUEZ, Global Santa Fe, Maersk, Niko Resources, Petro-Canada Trinidad & Tobago, Premier Oil Norge, Red Sea Petroleum Operating Company, Repsol, RWE, Senergy Limited, Shell China, Shell Egypt, Statoil, Silverstone Energy, Talisman Energy, Total, Tullow Oil, and Wintershall.

Importantly, the Company is focussed on extending its proprietary POS-GRIP technology into an increasing number of subsea applications. In line with this, in March 2011 the Company launched a Joint Industry Project ('JIP') initiative to develop a new subsea wellhead design, the 'Python Subsea Wellhead' utilising its friction-grip technology in collaboration with key oil and gas operators and service companies. BG, Royal Dutch Shell, Wintershall, Maersk, TOTAL, Tullow Oil, ENI, Senergy, ADTI and Oil States Industries Inc. The JIP is nearing completion with final qualification testing of all key features of the product under way, and the resultant Python Subsea Wellhead design will include a combination of key features never before seen in a subsea wellhead which include being rated to 15,000 psi, 4,000,000 pounds of 'instant' casing lockdown capacity, and importantly rigid metal annular seal technology qualified to match the performance of premium connectors. The building of a single string Python Subsea Wellhead system prototype commenced in February, and was launched at the SPE Offshore Europe Exhibition and Conference in Aberdeen ('OE2015') in September 2015.

Plexus is an innovative technology company always looking for opportunities to apply its proprietary POS-GRIP friction grip method of engineering to new products both within and outside the oil and gas industry. For example Plexus have recently completed a JIP in conjunction with Maersk to develop a downhole HPHT Tieback connector which for the first time allows the reconnection of production casing to HPHT exploration and production wells. In addition the Company has developed and qualified a new product called POS-SET Connector™ which is designed to re-establish a connection onto rough conductor casing previously cut above the seabed to facilitate tieback or abandonment operations. The market for permanent plugging and abandonment of wells is increasing in the North Sea and beyond, and could be an important new revenue stream for the Company.