Hi Drifta
One point to keep in mind is that there is a lot of overlap on Entek's top 20 list and that of Elixir.
There are five shareholders who make it to the list of both companies: Didcal Pty Ltd, Alexander Holdings, Yea-Sayer, Jetmax as well as Scintilla.
James Wall and Dougal Ferguson, who seem to have been the chief instigators of the 2017 section 249D action, are amongst the top holders in Elixir. So I can't help wondering if the five holders named above, Scintilla included, might also be linked to the Wall/Ferguson faction who were behind the 249D move.
At the end of 2016, I remember seeing a sudden surge of interest in ETE shares: over several days in November and December that year, there was a sudden surge in volume, the like of which hadn't been seen for several months. In light of later events, I later assumed that this buying was on the part Wall and co.
But I wonder if some of my assumptions may have been wrong here. Is it possible that this buyer was in fact Scintilla?. Scintilla doesn't show up on the ETE top 20 shareholder list dated August 2016, but it does appear on the top 20 in the 2017 Annual Report.
The
Scintilla Website states that the Director of the Fund, Andre Marschke, formerly worked at Harleys. The significance of this is that Harleys placed the shortfall from the Entek Non-Renouceable Rights Issue in early 2017. Interestingly, this shortfall seems to have mostly wound up with Wall and Ferguson.
Although Scintilla wasn't a major holder of Entek in late 2016, it does show up on the top twenty list on the Elixir Annual Report of the same year, as well as on the top twenty list for 2015, and again on the list for 2014. So it would seem that the Elixir/Wall/Ferguson/Scintilla links go back quite some way.
I've suggested in previous posts that David Wall was the instigator of the coup against the former Entek management, but I am increasingly suspecting that Scintilla may actually have been the brains behind the operation. I would guess that Scintilla first bought into ETE in late 2016 (hence the high volume in the last months of the year), and then -I assume- they used their connections at Hartleys to make sure a large chunk of the shortfall went to their mates Wall and Ferguson.
This leads to the question: what is it that Scintilla and co saw in Entek?. Why were they so keen on the company in late 2016/early 2017?.
I think some recent moves by Entek might shed some light onto this question.
The recent ETE announcement of 13/12/18 stated that following a successful bid at a BLM auction, Entek's Alaskan lease acreage has expanded from 35,000 acres to almost 150,000 acres.
This is interesting, because when the faction first bought into Entek in late 2016/early 2017, Entek controlled a huge acreage position in the Niobrara relative to its size, some 50,000 acres.
The 249D action in 2017 occurred a day after Entek started giving away their assets. So clearly, the faction behind the move didn't seem to share the vision of the then Entek management. I think they saw Entek as an oil acreage play, whereas the previous management wanted to move into new territory and weren't interested in Entek's old assets.
In summary, it looks to me that Entek is now being re-created in the mould of an oil acreage play, the model which the faction (which presumably includes Scintilla) found attractive when they first bought into the company.
I find this intriguing, although it must be kept in mind that Alaska ain't Niobrara. Whereas at Niobrara you have plenty of infrastructure such as pipelines, as well as numerous population centres with skilled workers, Alaska is a bit of a wilderness.
Having said that, the location of the leases- near the north coast of Alaska- is curious. Is it possible that the management see some strategic significance in this location?. What I am thinking here is the impact of global warming, which is melting large sections of the Arctic ice, and as such is opening up
new shipping routes in the north.
I suspect I might be giving the management too much credit here, but it is an interesting thought nonetheless.
