It’s with a certain amount of ‘I Told You So’ that I pen this epistle….
There’ll be no wailing and gnashing of the teeth from Ascent Resources (LON: AST) shareholders at the demise of the God awful ‘Bushmills vampire’, Colin Hutchinson, finally receiving his much deserved metaphorical stake through the heart. I just hope that the ‘Slayers’ (new team) double checked the stake had gone right through when they sprinkled holy water over the corpse. Always best to be certain when it comes to Vampire killing…. Gleaned from watching the Netflix series, Van Helsing
So what next for the Slayers, Ewen Ainsworth, James Parsons and Leonardo Salvadori? Well with the cancellation of Riverforts $421,943 note into a two-year zero-coupon bullet payment loan, convertible at 7.5p per share when ASTs share price exceeds 10p per share for more than 5 days, which represents a potential 100% increase from last weeks placing price of 5p now makes AST a fairly comfortable trade/investment, you can buy at 4.p ish. However, that’s not why I bought in.
As most of you know, who follow my site and twitter, I’ve been a fierce critic of Ascent Resources. I know this company inside out and everything that’s happened to AST I’ve correctly predicted. Clive ‘carve ’em up’ Carver with his crusty sidekick, hapless Colin Hutchinson, destroyed the company. They had no regard whatsoever for their own genuine shareholders. It was never about getting the Slovenian gas asset into full production. Ascent became a ‘confetti machine’ for the likes of Darwin, Henderson Global et al.
The new team who came in last week are some of the corporates I was talking to on behalf of the defunct shareholder action group, set up 18 months ago. Suffice it to say that the market and value of the company has somewhat changed for the worse. Shareholders gave up. And who can blame them? But hope has now been revived
🧛♂️Bushmills vampire🧛♂️
Ascent are basically debt free, ‘Bushmills vampire’ free, generating limited cash from their gas production in Slovenia (which is at the moment mired in a legal controversy the ‘Vampires’, not only created, but failed to address) and now have a team that can sort the mess out. Make no mistake the ‘Slayers’ have already started the process of righting the AST ship. The word is that a delegation is heading to Slovenia pronto! Expect news on this shortly.
News has also reached ‘Yours Truly’ that the new team, pre taking control of the Company, have been in talks with several production/exploration cash strapped oilers, one being Humber Oil & Gas. You may know Humber as a partner in one of the biggest onshore O&G discovery’s in the UK: West Newton and have a stake in the soon to produce Wressle discovery. You may not know that they’re desperate for cash having paid all their West Newton drill costs. All their assets are up for sale. Including West Newton. Enter one Jon Fitzpatrick, (X Macquarie Capital) the negotiator rumoured to be working on behalf of the Lang family. At what stage any of these talks are isn’t known. But talks, there are. Now remember it’s your money not mine. That means investors/traders can buy, sell, hold, derisk or ignore at their own discretion.
If the new team had taken over 18 months ago the SP would probably have made it back to 2/3p. Fast forward today post the consolidation and placing, we have an SP of 4p ish with a resetting of the ‘stock clock’ to 46,196,484 shares in issue. The market cap’ is sub £1.8M. Once the corona virus ‘deflating’ effect passes & the spooked herd stop burning the house down, we’ll see an inflation, subject to sorting out Slovenia & depending on what comes into Ascent, 10p/15p, maybe more, looks achievable……
Now don’t let me have to write another ‘I told You So Epistle’ when it reaches 10p!
“Mother Hubbard there’s nothing in the cupboard” So goes the sad sorry tale of Ascent Resources (LON: AST). Today’s 7am RNS announced accounts for the year end December 31 2017. The problem was that the accounts were not released within the RNS and directed investors to their website which funnily enough never had the accounts on. READ ACCOUNTS HERE
Now call me a cynic! ‘You cynic Levi!’. But surely if an RNS states that the accounts are on the company website then that is where they should be. But no. Several calls to the AST Nomad, Aim reg team with a follow up email seems to have done the trick. Accounts in all their gory details now on the website 3+ hours late and no wonder why….
I Want Your Cash! Again & Again ad infinitum to pay my fees for failure…
The accounts lag behind real-time by some 5 months. It’s glaringly apparent that Ascent Resources are close to the bone and running on fumes. The cash burn is what’s important here. £1,032,000 in Directors/Employees remuneration, £1,966,000 loss for the year with a measly £699k left in cash as of 5 months ago which doesn’t reflect their £210,000 of liabilities 5 months ago.
Serial Failure…. Gave himself massive pay rise.
So let’s be generous ’cause I’m a real generous type… Directors/Employees Remuneration is running at circa £1,000,000 per year. Five+ months have since elapsed so circa £500,000 as per their D/E Remuneration cash burn has now been paid but’ lets only take off £400,000 from their cash position that leaves them £299,000. Hang on I here you AST trolls scream ‘we’ve got revenue now!!!’ ‘Ok’ say I, I’ll add that in… The Ascent gross margin was £411,000 that is to say the actual cash received and held by AST. So you have £411,000 per year but your running at a £2,000,000+ loss! Ergo there’s a £1,600,000 funding gap that has to be bridged to survive this year!!!
Old Mother Hubbard LOL!!!!!
Where is that money coming from because it’s not coming from the production is it? Production is declining because there isn’t the cash to spend on it. What an absolute fooking mess the corporate shysters carve ’em up Carver & Hutchinson have made. They’ve cleaned the company coffers out and annually trouser hundreds of thousands of pounds while awarding themselves huge pay increases for failure. You can be sure of one thing whatever happens to AST these corporate shysters will continue to bleed it dry until they are booted out of the company.
Ascent Resources are running on fumes and regardless of what these two fookers are spinning to you, the mug punters, if they don’t raise cash and raise it quickly then they will be insolvent. Massive Discounted Placing on the way as sure as night follows day! And guess who will be getting the discounted stock? Come on down Mr Henderson and Mrs Darwin. with their bastard child Primary Bid in the bolloxs!!!
I’ve been very quiet on Ascent Resources (LON: AST). Hoping that the SP would rise. Sadly it’s not. It’s just drifting. I’ve noticed a cacophony of wild bleating coming across my social media platforms by various ill-informed crack-pots. So let’s get it all out in the open. Shall we?
Clive Blames 6 week ‘SHAG’ for his 6 years of failure!
Now I’m going to make myself very clear. Indeed crystal clear. The Company are where they are because of years of shockingly bad management. Colin Hutchinson and the greedy corporate shyster that is Clive Carver have ‘Apparently’ told investors in the one way investor conference call (the put up job where no fooker can ask questions and basically all questions are screened) that the abysmal SP is because share-holders have joined a share-holder action group with a ‘criminal element’.
Now if that doesn’t take the biscuit as the biggest crock of corporate bullshit ever spoken in the history of AIM then I’m best mates with Donald Trump!
I’ll remind ALL AST investors and long-term holders. Clive Carver was put into AST by Henderson Global. Mr Carver is or was Chairman, he’s now a Non Executive Director of Darwin Strategic, a Vulture Finance outfit owned by Henderson Global. They take discounted shares and forward sell them into false rises created specifically with the connivance of the company! That is what they did during every single Equity Finance Facility (EFF) they issued with every single company daft enough to sign up for an EFF, a Death Spiral.
This is how an EFF worked. For 15 days traders at Darwin would secretly flood the market with shares in false rises deliberately orchestrated by the company. For 15 days the company would over-promote through RNS, paid for articles, videos, podcasts and presentations. This was done to deliberately sucker in gullible investors so that Darwin could sell stock at inflated prices into the liquidity. Then ZAP! RNS drops announcing a drawdown. A dilution. Darwin would take their cut and then pass the cash onto the company. The regulators put a stop to the Darwin EFF’s.
Darwin then had to come up with another solution to allow them to carry on. Take a bow Primary Bid. Primary Bid is the bastard spawn of the EFF, Darwin and Mr Clive Carver. That is a fact.
Mr Carver elevated Colin Hutchinson to the position of INTERIM CEO. The shares in issue were circa 1Billion. The share price was 32p-34p when Mr Carver took control and was installed by Henderson. It is now 1.5p! Virtually every single placing and virtually every single Convertible Loan Note have been issued and converted by Darwin/Henderson. They have made tens of millions of pounds while Long Term Holders (LTH) have been wiped out. If you had bought 1,000,000 shares on the day of Mr Carvers stewardship you’d have paid £320k-£340k. Those shares today would be worth £15k.. Yet we have a Board that issues themselves performance options!!! By what stretch of their imagination do they believe they are entitled to issue performance/bonus options, bearing in mind the absolute abysmal, historical raping of the company? Their management has been a disaster for share-holders. That’s because they are not Oil & Gas savvy. They’re corporate financiers and they couldn’t give a flying fook about their shareholders. Shares now in issue fast approaching 3,000,000,000.
CEO ‘Jelly Fish’ Ducked out of presentation.
Yesterday Colin Hutchinson spent circa £5,000 on shares! That should tell you all you need to know. I hold shares in this company and regardless of the consequences of my telling you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, investors need to wake up. Interim is 6 months it is not 5/6 years. Mr Carver gets paid by AST and receives payment from Darwin and bonus payments from Darwin. That is a massive conflict of interest and needs to be addressed. Mr Carver runs Ascent Resources. Mr Hutchinson is a spineless Jelly Fish. A CEO who ran away from a presentation because he knew I would be there to ask tough questions on behalf of the AST Shareholder Action Group. He was instructed by the AST Board chaired by Mr Carver. That is a fact. A man who posts photos of £152 bottles of Bushmills whisky telling us all ‘Job Done’. What job have you done Mr Hutchinson? The share-price is tanking and it is going to remain ‘choppy’ because you’ve just told every man, woman and their dog that you need £10,000,000-£12,000,000 in finance to build a gas processing plant. Pray do tell us all where and WHO you are going to get £10,000,000-£12,000,000 from?
What is happening here is this. The company is imploding specifically because they are being used as a trading vehicle by Henderson/Darwin. Not because of an action group peopled by good honest LTH’s. To try to deflect away from their disgraceful connivance with Vulture Financiers, by using Black Propaganda blaming the 6 years of dilution and tumbling SP on a 6 week old Action Group is testament to the desperation of a Board that have been exposed as inept and deceitful. That Mr Carver is the only ‘Criminal Element’ involved or associated with OUR company. Share holders own AST Not you!. This board couldn’t run a toffee shop.
LTH’s are selling up and leaving in droves. This is because Mr Hutchinson is using well-known pump & dump promoters such as London South East and Vox Markets, who by the way have Darwin Traders as their share-holders. What a coincidence….. I emailed Mr Hutchinson several months ago telling him that if he continued to run promotes with pump & dump promoters then the P&Ders would attach themselves onto the company and LTH’s would suffer. Ascent resources are losing their LTH’s because of the Vulture financiers who are sucking the life blood out of the company and because of the increased volatility P&Ders are causing. That is a fact.
I also emailed Mr Hutchinson regarding my sources, telling me he was in talks with Henderson/Darwin BEFORE the recent placing. Hutchinson stated that I was wrong and he was not talking to Darwin/Henderson and was not raising cash. Weeks later he placed £1.5M with Darwin. I say Darwin because Primary Bid doesn’t exist it is a paper shell used to mask Darwin’s vulture finance. Operated out of Darwin’s office.
Now at the moment there’s a lot of horse shit on those well-known P&D troll infested platforms posting utter cock about myself going on the AST board etc. That is yet again more deceits being perpetrated to scare away LTH’s from the Action Group. No doubt that some of these BB LSE Trolls are being quietly briefed by Mr Carver & Mr Hutchinson. A Dirty tricks campaign against a shareholder who speaks out And tells it as it is. If you want to continue to conduct a dirty tricks campaign then be preferred for retaliation.
Those that know me also know that I am deemed persona non grata by the regulators. I have no chance whatsoever of ever getting on an AIM listed board. That is a fact.
However, as a share-holder I am fully entitled to be part or any share-holder action group and legitimately seek change for the benefit of ALL share-holders. Hence the Ascent Resources Action Group. And I can tell you ALL now there is not a cat in hells chance of the present Board ever achieving any thing other than failure. That is their record. Total Failure. They are not Oil & Gas people. And ladies and gentlemen that is well-known and mooted by many professionals in the City of London. Both of these chaps have ‘strung along’ AST shareholders for years! It is no coincidence that the massive over promotion was conducted as the CLN’s were being converted. How convenient was that for Henderson to sell ALL their CLN’s then take part in another placing?
There are people who the Action Group are talking too. Genuine Oil & Gas big hitters who could turn this company around within months, who are willing to assist Ascent Resources to get to where they should be. That is as a successful oil and gas producer with an SP at multiples of where it now languishes. These corporates have got their feet under the table and do not want to relinquish their fees and expenses. This would mean that Mr Carver and the two Directors, who are nothing but Ghosts, would have to step aside and allow ‘others’ proven Oil & Gas corporates onto the Board.
If the Board of Ascent want help then they only need to request a meeting with the Action Group and we will gladly arrange a tete a tete for them.
In the meantime I respectfully suggest that if you are a P&Der then you can go and fook spiders. If you are a genuine LTH then join the Action Group. That is the only way you can have a legitimate say in YOUR company.
Today I am launching the Ascent Resources (LON: AST) Shareholder Action Group. If you are a genuine investor then it is time to get organised and exert your influence on this Board. AST shareholders need a voice.
If you want to join up then please email [email protected] Provide your Name, Address, Holding and a contact telephone number. Change is coming to Ascent so make sure your voice is heard!
It’s with a certain amount of ‘I Told You So’ that I pen this epistle….
critic of Ascent Resources. I know this company inside out and everything that’s happened to AST I’ve correctly predicted. Clive ‘carve ’em up’ Carver with his crusty sidekick, hapless Colin Hutchinson, destroyed the company. They had no regard whatsoever for their own genuine shareholders. It was never about getting the Slovenian gas asset into full production. Ascent became a ‘confetti machine’ for the likes of Darwin, Henderson Global et al.
Viva
