“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!!!
It’s all gone quiet on one of the hottest oil and gas plays out there. Currently Echo Energy (AIM: ECHO) are suspended pending a big South American transaction that constitutes a reverse takeover under Rule 14 of the AIM Rules for Companies.
Now there’s a lot of rumours flying ’round out there about just what’s going on. I can exclusively reveal that sources are intimating to me, from many different quarters, that there may be a big ‘numbers’ CPR on the way. And I mean big……. The company ‘maybe’ raising cash, the whispers, although not confirmed, are a £15-£20 million pound book-build (Placing) underway. Indications of a placing are many not least they’re on a ‘Roadshow’ touting their wares around the City. Another sign that something ‘financial’ is a foot… Is that a good thing? Well at this stage only time will tell.
However as a share holder I’ll tell you this: I am concerned that this book-build may involve Vulture Financiers, come on down Primary Bid, you’ll all remember them as the hat changing Darwin Strategic, Henderson, Lombard, all one in the same. I’ve emailed Darwin head honcho Anand, sadly Anand has failed to reply. Silence of the guilty. Their possible slice of the placing pie, £4/£5 million of discounted shares will hit the market from day one. Not good news for LTHs. Darwin have fooked over many a company over long periods of time, Ascent Resources (AIM: AST) being the latest example. Once these blood-suckers get their teeth into a company, good or bad, then it’s a racing certainty that problems develop. Strong management is needed. The next thing we know Clive Carve ’em up Carver will be on the Board! That will be the Death Knell and time for me to depart, rather smart.
As a shareholder, whispers that a whole host of bucket shop shysters may have been given a slice of the discounted placing pie, too many to name individually, don’t concern me too much, even though one of the bucket shops is ‘rumoured’ to be under investigation by The FCA. The whisper is that the Placing is at a 15%-20% discount. That means that there will be an overhang when ECHO return. I am hoping that the more ‘sticky’ Continental Investment Partners are involved… That would be a good thing.
Of course company’s need cash to progress, that’s a self-evident truth for a new company. Particularly one with a superb management team like Echo. However, when companies turn to Vulture Financiers the next thing we know they’re on all the pump and dump forums, such as LSE, Podcasts & Vox Markets, whose share-holder base has two well-known Darwin Strategic traders. Once you run with the P&Ders you lose credibility with LTH’s.
I’d also urge investors to listen to the ‘right’ people such as Malcy Graham Wood, Probably one of the best oil & gas analysts out there. I did say to Mr J Parsons quite some time ago that it would be a good move to stick Malcy on the Board…. Rumour is that some of these assets may have been introduced by him. This guy knows his stuff. Although I don’t ‘Have it’ with Malcy, he is respected by me as a professional. Knows his O&G. I believe there’s a presentation this very evening. Anyone there should ‘grill’ the lot of them.
Aligning your interests with share holders is the key to success. That’s a fact. AIM is littered with companies who only use retail investors as the financial meat in their sandwich. Just what has made them turn to the Vultures isn’t known. It could just be a quick financial fix trying to get Echo back out of suspension, asap. If it’s that then say so. Of course they’ll come out and explain. If it’s a one-off, then fine, but if a pattern starts to develop then problems of the ‘Ascent’ kind will rear their head. That’s a fact! So let’s hope the management take it on ‘board‘ their Board!
Echo has strong support from LTH’s and good, honest, genuine retail punters. They have a huge following and everyone, including the Board, wants it to hit £1. Knowing those in control, I believe that this is quite possible, any success with the drill bit will rocket their SP. There are a few quality O&G plays on the London AIM . Echo are one of a handful of companies with proven value driven corporates. Let’s keep it like that. Stay away from the darkside…. Otherwise Danksy is Offski.
Now I know that this company actually listens to its share holders. As evidenced by their communications and the fact they quickly ditched their previous Broker who was selling while telling people to buy. That’s a good sign… So if you’re reading this, a solution to the Primary Bid/Darwin problem is thus: Whatever slice of the pie these fookers take lock them in for 6-12 months.
Hey but who am I?
I tell it as it is. Good or bad. Which is why you’re reading this!
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.
This is the Man responsible for every Henderson, Darwin & Primary Bid AST Dilution! Time to go Mr Carver!
This is a call to all Ascent Resources (LON: AST) shareholders. Todays RNS is yet another kick in the teeth by a Board who’ve decimated the company SP by allowing wholesale slaughter of their very own sticky shareholders at the hand s of Darwin Strategic, Primary Bid in the bolloxs! Lombard and Henderson Global. Do not be fooled by the various names being used to dump cheap placing shares into the market. These are subsidiaries of Henderson and the Ascent Chairman Clive Carve em up Carver is the chief rogue. Clive Carver is the Chairman of Darwin Strategic. He gets paid by Darwin Strategic. He is massively conflicted. This man has to go! Where is the O&G experience on the AST BOD? They are financiers the lot of them! Which is why a full strategic review is needed! Make no mistake this Board doesn’t give a flying fook about its share-holders! It’s all about creaming it in for themselves and their corporate chums!
Clive Carvers Puppet on his Darwin string! CEO Colin Hutchinson.
Join the Ascent 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. We are close to 3%. Once we get there we will agitate for change. This Board have no ‘skin in the game’. You as share holders do! Regardless of what you think of myself this group is for the benefit of YOU! Join Up!
If you want to join up then please email [email protected] Provide your Name, Address, Holding and a contact telephone number. Value accretive Change is coming to Ascent so make sure your voice is heard!
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!
“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 
Viva
