Excellent bounce today on news of bid $$$ ...fair play to DAVY - they have consistently said SKG was undervalued and price seems to have moved up to around where they said it should be on the bid news. Wonder what value the offer put on the shares???
I wouldn't give a toss about Deutsche Bank selling down a big chunk of ISAT - they're probably being forced into divesting assets to try and sort out their small matter of a couple of hundred billion - yes, billion - of debt they have (include a few hundred million to one Donald J. Trump...)
@ascatix - yeah, I think people are underestimating the market for in-flight wifi - I think it's a massive opportunity to be exploited. Airlines are increasingly looking to ancillaries for revenue and selling the base seat cheap so it plays into this aswell provided ISAT has a good chunk of the wedge. There are barriers to entry for new aspiring providers of in-flight wifi also. I'm sticking with ISAT despite being down about 10% currently on average purchase price... GLA
Many people consider the Altman Z-score less relevant nowadays as it's based on an outdated sample of much smaller companies relative to today. Still, it may provide another data point to consider. However, the retained earnings has a powerful effect on the z-score and in ISAT's case increasing it by between 100m and 200m brings the z-score into the 'grey zone' which is inconclusive regarding likelihood of bankruptcy. And of course, a quick and simple, albeit painful, way to increase retained earnings is to slash the dividend by a similar amount. This would wipe the dividend more or less completely which they prob. won't want to do, but a cut of ca. 50% seems unavoidable soon.
The dividend might be one of the issues...i.e. it's currently not covered by profits @ 115% of same and this is projected to increase to 145% by 2021 according to Simply Wall St. analysis so it's reasonable to guess that it may be cut by between 25% and 40% leaving it much less enticing than its current yield. It would be more within the normal range of an income share trading at ca. £4 though....I hope I am wrong and this can move back up to closer to its value which is above £8 based on discounted cashflow method, again from Simply Wall St...
Results didn't seem quite as positive as DAVY were implying by talking up SKG the other day ... in hindsight, looks like a pre-emptive strike to counter some of the negative sentiment around the results announcement today ... that said, results seem steady enough despite some drop in the Americas, some of which must be -ve currency movements. Also, div increased so must be a bit over 3% annualized now. Seems more like a hold than a buy though around these levels...
London, 22 January 2018 -- Moody's Investors Service, ("Moody's") has today upgraded Tullow Oil plc ("Tullow")'s Corporate Family Rating (CFR) to B1 from B2 and probability of default rating (PDR) to B1-PD from B2-PD. Concurrently, the ratings on its USD650 million 2020 and USD650 million 2022 senior unsecured global notes were upgraded to B3 from Caa1. The outlook on all Tullow's ratings was changed to stable from positive. RATINGS RATIONALE The upgrade of the rating to B1 from B2 mainly reflects all the positive developments in 2017 which strengthened the financial profile of the company. Moody's expects adjusted gross debt/EBITDA to fall to around 3.2x in 2017 after peaking at 5.5x in 2016, mainly due to higher production from TEN and higher oil prices. The deleveraging was also a result of the successful rights issue raising net proceeds of $721 million in March 2017 which allowed the company to reduce debt. The company's liquidity profile was also strengthened after the successful refinancing of the Reserve Based Lending (RBL) facility in November 2017 with a three year grace period until October 2020. The B1 rating reflects the stronger financial and liquidity profile which should provide the company with greater operational flexibility to grow the business and consider the acceleration of investment in projects and selective growth opportunities. The upgrade of the rating to B1 reflects (a) its solid business profile with sizeable oil and gas resource base (b) its growing low cost production offshore Ghana, with TEN fields ramping-up in 2017-18 (c) successful exploration programme and strong execution track-record, with significant oil discoveries in Uganda and Kenya, that underpin the company's long-term production growth trajectory, and (d) proactive steps taken by the company to manage its liquidity position in 2017 and a prudent hedging programme which covers approximately 60% of its oil sales each year. However, Tullow's rating demonstrates a linkage to the sovereign rating of Ghana (B3, stable) given its sizable country exposure expected to account for around 69% of production in 2017 and therefore a further upgrade of the B1 rating is unlikely.
BofA Merrill Lynch upgrades Tullow on back of debt refinancing ... about time someone gave them credit ... Tullow has to be undervalued now with that major risk removed ... Target price 250p acc. to article in Irish Times this eve.
BassCadet: a big stumbling block to Hydrogen as with other "green" technologies is that it takes a lot of energy to provide them. By virtue of the fact that H2 is a good fuel - i.e. gives off lots of energy in its exothermic reaction with O2 also means that it takes energy to isolate it - 2nd law of thermodynamics etc so no free lunch - it's not found floating around in nature too much as it likes to combine with other substances but where does the energy come from to isolate it or reform it from other compounds? Fossil fuels, so how is that conundrum to be solved?