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This is reading an awful lot like game over to me
Personally happy to see this and push DP harder to focus on closing deals and cut excess costs. No more borrow and spend as he ran out of runway. Eqtec was going guns increasing income each month and looked to be covering almost all costs to stop reliance on that model. £2m from Logik and Larissa and Northfork about to go live we should be in a good place and idex £15m will build over next 18 months.
This is the exiting part
“negotiations are ongoing to finalise a longer-term financing solution with no conversion rights, for which a non-binding term sheet has been agreed“
This is key and ideally kick all these snake oil salesmen into touch. We only need £5m loan secure on Northfork or some assets and Eqtec can finally start to march forwards, however market must weigh up how this might in thr short-term shake things up.
Fair enough if you're trying to put a positive spin on it to keep spirits high - I would probably do the same when I got desperate but if you genuinely think that's a positive RNs, you shouldn't be investing
It IS a positive RNS. Those of us here who actually follow the company and analyse what's going on had very little faith in Verde from the outset and its a pretty simple closure at no cost to something which never happened in the first place. May as well just delete all the RNS's which mention Verde. They mean nothing.
Absolutely deluded, but it's your money
"A further update is expected to be made in due course, although there is no guarantee that the anticipated longer-term financing solution will be concluded or as to the terms of any such financing".
Things very much in limbo imo.
Care to elaborate? We've binned a flakey company wanting a bit, avoided dilution and are on track to getting the same funds with no cost to shareholders.
The company lost momentum, no real development, tech still "doubted" (no one knows how many hours Italy plant is working per month).
From my perspective is doomed, gasification is a difficult tech, so far only few plants in the world are up and running.
Another fantastic week for Palumbo and the BOD and the loansharks with €6k getting delivered into Palumbos mitts today.
5 years as CEO and not 1 project up and running continuously earning a profit as admitted in last weeks RNS .
Palumbo might be awful at ever delivering a project finished and running continuously on time or bringing in revenues but he has a tremendous knack of making sure his pockets get filled every Friday strangely enough.
Definitely in minor limbo but one i think they will be able to get out of. As soon as Northfork bankruptcy is resolved we should have a minimum 25% stake in a minimum $20m plant and Larissa is almost live based on updates. Loan can also be linked to idex that seem a far more credible partner. Getting rid of this death spiral of debt into equity and then dump on the market will make a huge difference to the momentum as its been 3 years of strategic investors dumping shares. The only question is why.
That's easy Simms. The company was desperate for funds, when no cash was available. Venture capital funders came in and made what were little more than bets that they'd get their money back. They invest and are given warrants. They immediately dump their shares and the profit (and in a lot of cases, a lump of the primary capital) is tied up in the warrants.
It's an approach I grudgingly accept, given the alternative would have been considerably worse.
The company now is right on the cusp of stepping beyond this form of raising, and given the clause in the RNS, possibly has made that step. The next equipment supply RNS will complete that and we will be clear. Then we can move to a situation of SPV's with venture capitalists investing in individual projects rather than the company as a whole. This will reduce individual project profits to the company, but not devalue shareholders.
This is where we're heading.
"The company was desperate for funds, when no cash was available. "
But why was it desperate after £50m -£55m of funds through shareholder dilution?
Eqtec Website https://eqtec.com/eqtec-team/
This company burns only shareholder money - Caveat Emptor , and many congratulations to David Palumbo.
The alternative and what most private companies do is cut costs and work overtime to close deals. Company is turning around now that easy options are removed. Board should take not take salaries and employeee should be offered shares in lieu of salary. This normally peps the team up to close deals and remove wasteful cost. Hopefully DP flies economy to visit sites. Revenues are going well if minimum £200k a month so it is not too hard to balance the books. Debt holders can wait until Logik closes and we see some returns from Italy and Northfork. Surely Northfork will have signed a decent ongoing maintenance contract. News on Idex will be huge from this £2m market cap minnow that has had £50m lavished on it.
Verde clearing off is definitely a positive
Altair and Pitcole escaping being burned by their latest trough dive is a disappointment
God knows what Dumbo has up his sleeve with regards to the dog sh it deal , being no conversation rights means they will have to pay through the nose or offer something else as collateral, not sure there is much left after the last round of refinancing.
The Z-listers not increasing their voting rights is another positive too, Dumbo Palumbo must be really nervous now for the AGM re-election vote.
I wonder if we will now get to hear if Altair and Pitcole have been selling down their holdings on the promise of getting some more on the cheap.
If we get news of the Logic payment on time, then should be ok for 6 months without that Dumbo surely must resign before being pushed!
The immediate term risk is how Riverfort choose to play their £5m debt. As part of the refinancing this was converted to a loan secured against the assets of the company last November with repayments of circa £200k per month deferred unit this month (May). The company previously warned of the risks of default in this regard.
It has been agreed that Riverfort will immediately get £400k from the logik settlement plus convert £200k of the o/s debt. Looks like they are covering the first 3 months of repayments due with this set up. The big question is what do Riverfort then do and how long do they leave it before calling in their loan and seizing control of the assets.
My instincts are not long. With the company currently losing c.£500k per Qtr they would be burning their way through c£1m cash per Qtr incl. loan repayments. Simply not sustainable. Riverfort will not want to sit back and watch DP reward himself using the logik funds. I suspect they will give him a bit of time to see if a rabbit can be pulled out of the hat with this new potential funding option before pulling the plug. Deals will be struck and the inevitable ensues.......
The main issue now is that no one can work out what is going on, how much debt they have, how much revenue they are generating, what any margins are on that revenue, how sustained it is?
Does anyone have a breakdown of shareholding percentage and total shares issued as of today?
Riverfort will be happy to keep racking up the high interest rate and take the portion of the £2m from Logik. The £2m will be very handy for cashflow management. The key to todays RNS is that they have already agreed a term sheet to presumably try and get rid of all these sharks that DP has been feeding. We just need for this to convert. My expectation this relies firstly on £2m from Logik. Secondly it probably will be secured against the IDEX contract or potentially North Fork or Larissa. We do have assets so secured lending shoudl be possible. We have 50% of Italy so this is now generating cashflow that could also form part of the security. The sooner we can jettison the likes of Pitcole, Catalyse, YA and Riverfort the better as they have been killing the share price the last few years. I am feeling a lot more confident that the secured lending will be secured and hopefully we should be moving to a positive cashflow position as Idex will advance money and we will then supply equipment. it is then a totally different company. However we need to see some of this happen before investors might see some light at the end of the tunnel.
Is it worth starting to average down from 0.20 or should I wait for more positive news hmmm
The company is still a gamble either way you look at it. If your trying to claw back some extra then try it. Personally I would hold fast and await for end of year audit results. Company is still sound despite our resident whingers but its going through a transition back to a service company that originally floated at around 30 p a share years ago. I posted on my other holding in PHE that these sorts of gasification plants has a history of taking over a hundred years to turn from candles and whale oil lamps to gas lighting from coal into town gas for lighting. And then onto to North Sea gas for a multitude of lighting, heating and business use. Its not going to happen overnight. If anyone thought this was a quick profit route try spending 50 years in my construction trade of electrical engineering and then you may understand the difficulties of putting such plants together.