Marben's Misc Bits

Signet Global Fixed Income Strategies Ltd (LON:SIGG) (which I hold as an arb. opportunity) has now published its final NAV for July: 90.72p/share. This is the NAV to be used in calculating details of the tender offer. Plugging this figure into the formulae for calculating the tender parameters, I arrive at:

• Maximum tender will be 18,738,977 shares
• Basic entitlement = 19.5% of holders' shareholdings
• Tender price will be 90.35p

Current bid price for the shares is 68.5p.

Cheers,

Mark

E&OE

In reply to marben100, post #88

Thanks Mark

Makes interesting reading , I'll be viewing it as potential home for funds released from the sale of Soco VN , so the timescale is elastic..

Was there any indication on the gas vs oil split going forward? I still struggle to get a grip on the key drivers in their portfolio as they appear relatively unprofitible given their operational scale?

Cheers

In reply to rhomboid1, post #90

No, there was no indication but:

a) I dont see it as too big issue: Indonesian gas (which is the bulk of their gas production) is selling at $54/boe.

b) Most of the new projects coming on stream are oil rather than gas:

• Huntington is light oil
• Solan is oil
• Catcher is oil
• Sea Lion is oil

This is one of the main attractions for me: decent profitability (relative to market cap) now and substantial growth to come (subject to project execution and oil price risk). Then there is possible explo upside to come. Risk seems moderate relative to most oilies.

Cheers,

Mark

In reply to marben100, post #91

I can't see any reference to the pricing mechanism in any of the RNS

Indonesia – Signature of Gas Sales Agreements;

"15 Apr 2008

Further to the signing of Heads of Agreements for gas sales from Premier’s operated West Natuna Sea Block A in Q4 2007; we are delighted to announce that three fully termed Gas Sales Agreements have been signed in Jakarta.

The three contracts are with Sembcorp Gas Pte Ltd. (Sembcorp), PT Pelayanan Listrik Nasional Batam (PLN) and PT Universal Batam Energy (UBE) for a total volume of 125 billion British thermal units per day (“BBtud”) with options for a further 13 BBtud. 

The contracts are “life of field” contracts and deliveries are expected to commence from the Gajah Baru field on West Natuna Sea Block A, offshore Indonesia in 2010.

Premier (28.67%) operates Natuna Sea Block A on behalf of its Partners, KUFPEC (33.33%), Hess (23%) and PETRONAS (15%).
Simon Lockett, Premier’s Chief Executive, commented:

“We are delighted to have progressed from Heads of Agreement to fully termed Gas Sales Agreements in such a short period of time.  Indonesian regulatory approval of the plan of development for Gajah Baru has been received and we will progress this significant development towards first gas targeted for 2010.  This underlines Premier’s growth profile to 50,000 boepd by the end of 2010.

We are also pleased to note the signing of a Gas Sales Agreement between Medco E&P Malaka and PLN for the supply of 15bbtu/d of gas from North Sumatra Block A PSC in Indonesia in which Premier holds a 41.67% stake.”

Do you have anything to suggest how prices are arrived at here?

Cheers

In reply to rhomboid1, post #92

Do you have anything to suggest how prices are arrived at here?

No. I think terms are commercially confidential. All we have to go on is the average realised sale price of $9.0/mcf shown on slide 35 of the interim presentation.

In reply to marben100, post #89

Mark

Thanks for flagging this up - I've just bought after asking my brokers whether they would have the stock and be able to give my tender instructions in time & they've indicated that it should be done - fingers crossed as it's a bit last minute!

I was able to purchase for 68p and if I've done my calculations right, the return (ignoring market movements of course!) at the minimum basic entitlement of 19.5% of shares is going to be just over 5% (after costs) after a couple of weeks, and up to 28.5% if all the shares are tendered and accepted (unlikely I know).

I think I will keep a significant part of what I've bought on the assumption that I'll have 20% and a bit taken up in the tender, but will likely exit the rest as I've bought more than my usual position size just to maximise the benefit of the current arb opportunity. Are you expecting further opportunities to arise with this fund, and if so, any guesses as to timing?

Thanks again!
S

In reply to snaj, post #94

Hi Snaj,

You can do better than guess at timing. Anticipated realisation timings are given on p6 of recent interim results available here: http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/4976K_-2012-8-21.pdf

I expect that further tenders will be made when significant realisations occur, so there ought to be another one by Q2 next year.

Note that the timing for realising 56% of the portfolio (and its ultimate NAV) is uncertain, but I expect it will become clearer over coming months. The substantial discount to NAV does offer a margin of safety, however.

H/T to jaws6, who pointed this opportunity out to me, when the tender was announced.

Regards,

Mark

Over on TMF, fredahad raised this point, after earlier posts lamenting the dearth of activity in PP's pub:

As regards TMF boards' lack of activity: -
What we are up against is dilution of primary content on TMF by all the other alternative media -Twitter, Sharesoc blogs, other blogs and forums. Would it be an idea if the "Pub" could be considered as THE hub for all these alternatives, with, at the very least, links posted from there to the alternatives, on subjects that are considered of interest to TMF regulars? It might be that original content remains on PP Share Ideas, and the links be posted on PP "Other Stuff" (to avoid the Pub becoming like the Wild West)

I responded as follows:

Would be glad to so... except that when I posted articles on Stockopedia and linked them on TMF, TMF pulled my posts. If I knew that my posts wouldn't be pulled, I'd be glad to post links here.

Moderation for what appears to be commercial reasons is a key factor in why I rarely post here now.

Yesterday, my post received quite a few recs (11 when I last looked). Surprise, surprise, TMF have pulled it, this morning. Kinda proves my point.

While TMF moderatesoveraggressively, it will be impossible for their BBs to be any kind of "hub". I will, of course, continue to use Stockpedia as MY hub for posting articles. Besides sensible moderation and a management that is incredibly responsive to users' issues, I find S'pedia's modern technology allowing pictures, tables, charts etc to be easily incorporated into well-formatted articles to be far superior to TMF's outmoded pure text based approach with only the most basic of formatting capabilities.

Mark

Well Mark I have to disagree because what counts is not moderation practices and pretty pictures of edit facilities but the content and S'pedia is lacking in good content provided by quality posts.

There are some exceptions to this but generally speaking there isn't nearly the same quality and depth of posts on S'Pedia as there is on TMF. TMF will survive because it is the best quality. If you were to remove the Soco content on S'Pedia I doubt there would be very much left of interest to most. This may well happen as a function of corporate action anyway.

Stockopedia is a me too in a very crowded space. The other entrants in that space make little or no money and have been there for some time. I don't think selling premium market data products is going to generate much revenue either. I'm just guessing but I suspect Stockopedia is in a fairly fragile financial position.

Full marks to Stockopedia for the technology and its willingness to improve and take on board customer feedback but the real value is in the quality of posts on the boards and I'm afraid with a few exceptions (your contribution being one of them) it lacks that. I don't think S'Pedia have done much wrong - its just a very hard space to make money in.

Also I can't really blame them for removing posts that link to a competitor website. It's hardly surprising is it.

Ok bring on the big red thumbs ;-)

In reply to loglorry, post #97

"I can't really blame them for removing posts that link to a competitor website"

They could do as advfn do and remove the competitor's name but leave the post.

It's a rather crude approach, though - on advfn it's done by a bot, but the moderation on TMF is human, isn't it? So it should be possible to distinguish commercially threatening posts like 'TMF is rubbish; go to xyz for your paid services' from those like 'there's an interesting article over on xyz.com'. As marben suggests, that sort of informative post which is not directly threatening to TMF's income stream will bring readers in.

It doesn't take a newcomer to TMF, advfn, Stockopedia etc long to learn of the existence of the other sites. Deleting in their entirety all posts which mention them is foolish. People pick and choose - you might read advfn and Stockopedia and get your level 2 from moneyam, for example. You're not likely to cancel your paid subscription to one site just because the free bbs are interesting on another.

In reply to loglorry, post #97

If TMF make my life difficult, which they do, I will not post anything substantive there. Simples.

They claimed to me, in an e-mail, that I could have posted in the "civil discussion forum". If they were worried about my post taking the thread O/T (and fredahad's post didn't seem to bother them), they could have done as S'pedia mods do in such circumstances and have moved my post themselves, replacing it with a link in the orginal discussion.

As things stand, a) I don't know whether, if I did that, they would simply delete my crosspost; b) why should I have to go through all that hassle, when all I did was respond to a reasonable question/proposal with a sensible suggestion/answer. I've got better things to do than waste my time dealing with such nonsense.

In reply to zangdook, post #98

It doesn't take a newcomer to TMF, advfn, Stockopedia etc long to learn of the existence of the other sites. Deleting in their entirety all posts which mention them is foolish.

The main reason I left TMF was because I frequently found myself compiling detailed substantive posts that took 20-30 minutes to put together - and then finding them entirely removed due to some very minor issue (and I don't mean language here!). Furthermore, various individual trolls had decided to target my posts and report them with some spurious complaint in the hope that the moderators would remove them; TMF regularly fell for this tactic and so it simply became a waste of my time....and it also greatly disrupted the flow of debate and effectively allowed multiple unknown parties to censor my opinions, irrespective of whether this was justified by the facts.

At the end of the day, there are limits to an individual's interest in providing free content that may actually be useful to others. There is just no point in providing content pro bono if the recipient website simply throws contributions into the bin on a whim (hence my row with TMF about them not actually sticking to their own Ts&Cs for posting and inventing new rules whenever the fancy took them).

...so I have every sympathy with Marben on this.

Of course, the content breadth on Stockopedia isn't all it might be. But at least it is mostly of pretty good quality. If a few more of the regular posters from elsewhere would contribute more often (rather than just reading, as I know many do) then that would change.

ee

ps....I seeMarben says:

If TMF make my life difficult, which they do, I will not post anything substantive there. Simples.

.....that is precisely what I concluded in the end.

Both fair comment guys but you have to realise that TMF don't really need your contributions either. The boards don't make them any money and its a service they provide which costs them money to administer. It is a very hard space to monitise. I can therefore see why they might take rather draconian actions at time because they are simply not being provided with enough resources to do anything else.

Put simply what do you expect for free?

what do you expect for free?

Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to moderate less aggressively?

I left TMF because I did not like their treatment of ee. Simples.

In reply to loglorry, post #101

Put simply what do you expect for free?

Fair treatment - and sticking by their own Ts&Cs. Nothing more and nothing less.

I can therefore see why they might take rather draconian actions at time because they are simply not being provided with enough resources to do anything else.

Nonsense. They have the resources (ie moderators) - they just don't take sensible/fair decisions with them.

Are the moderators paid? Do they undergo any training? Is there a clause in the T&Cs that say that their decision is final and it is there content to administer how they want to ? I suspect No, No and Yes to these questions but I haven't bothered checking.

If I got something for free and it didn't turn out to be quite what I expected I wouldn't complain too much. Anyway you moved on and I don't really care too much.

In my mind these boards are very useful ways to share information but I doubt they'll make their owners rich. Fortunately, if one went bust or didn't give us what we wanted we could just move to another and there always seems to be people willing and able to fund them.

Log

In reply to loglorry, post #105

If I got something for free and it didn't turn out to be quite what I expected I wouldn't complain too much.

We provide free content to them and they provide a free service to us. Thats the deal - and the way the deal works is set out in terms and conditions, including rules governing posts. If they had actually stuck to their own rules then I wouldn't have complained - but they insisted that they should have carte blanche to make up new rules as they went along without even subsequently putting them in their Ts&Cs. So I left. And I'm not surprised that others do the same eventually.

Anyway you moved on

Indeed. Some years ago. I only commented today in response to Marben's evident difficulties which appear to have a similar origin (viz. inept moderation).

Well indeed. I don't know the details and don't want to know but I'm sure there were grounds to leave otherwise you wouldn't have done so. My point though is that the T&C's mean little since at the end of the day they can change them and not even publish the change. It's not like there is any contract in place as we don't pay a dime so if there was a breach of contract we'd not have suffered any loss so would have no claim.

In any case I can come here to read all about the interesting things going on at Soco and sometimes some other things and go elsewhere for other content so I'm not worried either way. If I'm really bored I can trawl through the dross on Advfn.

Log

I don't recall how it works at TMF but at advfn (and to a lesser extent here) I'm exposed to a fair amount of advertising; that's how I pay for the content. It's not free, even though a large part of it is provided free by readers.