Wildcat Petroleum plc (LON:WCAT) Chairman Mandhir Singh caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss share price, being back on track, a successful fundraise, cryptocurrency and final words to shareholders.
Q1: Recently, there’s been heavy and persistent buying of Wildcat Petroleum shares, but the share price hasn’t really moved. Is there any reason for that would you say?
A1: Well, the reason for that is there’s a technical term called the ‘share overhang’ and what’s actually happened is someone has put in a large sell order for some reason into the market, consider it like a block of ice on top of the share price, it’s keeping the share price down, and every time someone buys shares it’s chipping away at that sell order.
So, hopefully when the sell order has been cleared out the market and we get persistent and heavy buying again the share price should shoot up. It’s a bit of a technicality and that’s why heavy buying has had no effect on the share price but once that actual order has been dealt with then hopefully buying in the future will cause the share price to go up.
Q2: Now, you said in your newsletter that your company’s back on track, what exactly did you mean by that?
A2: Originally, this year, we were planning to sign a deal around May/June time but then the totally unexpected, attempted coup attempt in April, which has petered out and failed, that caught us off guard and it put us back two to three months.
The situation now is nothing’s really much happening in Sudan, the government’s relocated to Port Sudan, and the ministry is back open for business. We reopened our offices in Khartoum, the oil fields are undamaged, actually more oil is going down the pipeline than before the conflict and we’ve actually got people down at the bamboo field.
The slight hiccup we run into is getting hold of the technical data because a lot of people now are working from home and the data is scattered around but we’re getting the last scraps of the data in now and hopefully we should be announcing very soon a developmental deal on the bamboo field.
As a show of faith in things are well on track, I recently bought about 26.3 million shares in the company which took my holding back up to 70% so things are back on track and we expect to sign a deal this year. That deal should directly lead us to becoming a profitable oil producing company next year so things couldn’t really be better.
One of the unexpected consequences of the conflict is we’re the only game in town so there’s no one else really active there, we’re going to use that access we have and hopefully this time next year we’ll be a totally profitable, self-sufficient, dividend-paying company.
Q3: You seem to have had a successful fundraise in difficult market conditions?
A3: It came as quite a surprise, it was quite heavily oversubscribed that investors had to be scaled back. Originally, we only asked for £350,000 and up to £700,000/£800,000 was offered to us, so we eventually took £450,000 so investors wouldn’t be too disappointed.
The most important thing about the fundraise is it gives us more than sufficient money to see us through the next financial year, and all the costs associated with signing the oil deal.
So we’re not going anywhere and once we start pumping oil then we’ll be totally self-sufficient because of our extremely low cost base and it’ll be upwards and onwards in 2024.
Q4: Just going back to after you listed the company on the stock exchange, you were very active in the cryptocurrency space with various registered names. Now, with Bitcoin prices recently rallying, can you just confirm for us if you’re still active in the crypto space?
A4: I didn’t expect you to ask me about that. Well, we did mention the crypto blockchain in our prospectus and our intention all along was to issue a token or something in order to fund our oil development projects.
The FCA has requested us not to mention anything about what we’re planning to do until after we sign the deal so hopefully at the end of the year, after signing the deal, we will let shareholders know what we’ve got in mind in the future.
We haven’t been idle the last two years, a lot of work’s been going on behind the scenes but the FCA has requested us not to mention it until the deal is done and hopefully, once the deal is done, we will reveal to the market exactly what we’ve got planned.
Also, I have to mention you know we do need FCA approval for what we’ve got planned so mum’s the word and I can’t say anymore, watch this space.
Q5: Are there any final words for Wildcat Petroleum shareholders?
A5: This year has been not too good to put it mildly but hopefully, we’re going to try to end the year strongly and so shareholders have a Happy Christmas.
In my opinion, the market’s totally not understood what we’re planning to do, the sheer scale of what we’re going to do and the sheer profitability of what we’re going to do.
When the Minister initially offered me the deal, which we intend to sign, I nearly fell off my chair so next year we fully intend to demonstrate to the market the sheer scale and profitability of this deal. This deal was previously been run by three of the biggest oil companies in the world and now we fully intend to take over their operations.
I’m fully 100% happy with how things are going and next year hopefully, everyone will see just the sheer money-making potential of these deals.
