Picking upon cmark’s point – if I were to start acompany today...

Picking upon cmark’s point – if I were to start acompany today in any sector I would look for private funding to take it all theway – only selling out when the time was right to offload. This is purelybecause although floating a company allows the early private investors to getreturn of capital whist normally retaining a substantial holding in the company– that short term benefit quickly is over-shadowed when automated trading doesit’s damage even though only a small percentage of the shares are in thehands of those that are purely focussed on making short term margins andcontrolling the market. It’s that small traded percentage that makes the shareprice and as the market cap is purely a multiplication exercise of the pricethe last share traded by the amount of issued shares - it’s easy to see why ourmarket cap sits where it does.

Moving forward - it’s far easier to borrow moneyfrom a commercial lender when they do the work and number crunch figures to establishthe net asset value of a private company – whereupon it’s a different ball game whena PLC with a market cap that sits well below it’s net asset value is going forfunding. Commercial lenders who in the main are risk averse find it difficultto look beyond the market cap when assessing the true value of a PLC when itcomes to lending – certainly by no means impossible – but the options arelimited thus many PLC’s looking to raise capital doing so through the issuanceof more shares.

Although I’m no expert when it comes to raisingcapital in the gas pre-production market – with our reserve base which Iunderstand is ‘bankable’ future borrowing should not be a problem –however in the mean time we have to try and remain immune to the bots that areplaying with a small percentage of our company’s shares spinning them betweenthemselves so they make the market attempting to make it expensive for us PI’sto buy in and doing what they can to short-change us when we sell – making theirmargin between both those points. PlC's for you!

I’d never take the 'King’s shilling' in today’smarkets even though I built my career 30+ years ago taking a heavy stake inundervalued PLC’s and then doing what we could working alongside companymanagement to implement changes until such time that the net asset value wasreflected in the market cap at which point we exited. That being said I remaininvested in the markets supporting the likes of COI who I believe are hugelyundervalued purely for the aforementioned reasons – so I sit back waiting forthis story to unfold knowing that we have a strong management team and a greatreserve base with more to come.

Thoughts from S.W. France this evening...