I received a response from Arc indicating that my emails had not...

I received a response from Arc indicating that my emails had not been received.

So I forwarded a copy of the three emails I had sent to Arc, but was not able to forward a copy of the email sent via their web site.

Shortly thereafter, I heard from the company and obtained the following information:

1. Franking credits:

Estimated at about $24 million as of December 2006. This works out to about 10 cents a share.

2. Write Off:

Around 10% of the value was attributable to assets acquired under the Voyager merger. Activity subsequent to the merger triggered the write off, which was primarily drilling results on WA 327P.


So with the above information one can add up the cash Arc has, the stake in ADI, the franking credits, and come up with a value assigned by market to Arc's oil and gas properties.

At the current Arc share price, this is well under a buck a share.

I was surprised about the level of franking credits and thought that would have been higher.

Now if one looks on page 48 of today's Australian Financial Review, one can see that Arc makes an unwelcome appearance.

The company shows up as number 6 on the worst performers list of shares in the ASX 200 with a loss of 24.3% year to date.

Bendigo Mining is number one with a 53.6% loss, number two is AWB with a 52% loss, number three is Kimberly Diamond with 37.1%, Cons Minerals at number four (37.1), number five Centennial Coal at -27.8% and then Arc.

The only other oil company that makes the list is Santos at number nine with a 20.3% loss. We all know that Santos has had a number of problems and the decline in the share price comes after a pretty good jump in price the previous years.

As a shareholder I am happy that I received a reply from the company, but I am still very unhappy about the fall in the Arc share price and the reaons for it.