By Richard Jennings, CFA

A shiny, happy ToR Jnr

It’s a rainy January Saturday afternoon here in God’s own county of Yorkshire and I am at a loose end – much to “ol Tone” O’Reilly Jnr’s no doubt chagrin! What better way to spend such an afternoon than to pore over Providence Resources historic accounts and see what little gems we can unearth re ToR Jnr’s tenure…

Here’s one glaring, overpowering, bald statistic:  over the period beginning 2012 to the start of 2016 “ol Tone” has taken the grand sum of 2.245m euros out of the Company and which is broken down below by year:

2012 – 741,000 euros

2013 – 494,000 euros

2014 – 516,000 euros

2015 – 494,000 euros

This figure excludes the 2016 entry (yet to be revealed) but an accurate guess is that it is around 400,000 euros. Throw in expenses etc and it is fair to assume we are getting some way towards 3m euros. In contrast, during the beginning of 2012 to beginning 2016 period, his direct share interest moved from just 112,470 to 242,470 (it is now just over 500,000 – although incredibly still a miniscule 0.11% of the total equity).

For PVR’s long suffering shareholders, I enclose the chart below from Jan 1 2013 to Dec 30 2016 which sadly illustrates their very different fate… From 690p to 15p – a near 98% wipeout over the period ToR Jnr enriched himself to the tune of near 3m euros and in the recent cap raising stuck in an insulting and derisory circa £30k.

I believe I have made the statement before but the story of ToR Jnr and PVR is worthy of many a business case study. It flies in the face of executive accountability that this magnitude of a sum could be taken out by one man whilst the company’s market cap has been decimated to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds and it has, for a good period of that, been starved of capital.

Let us not forget also that in bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy last year with the Transocean litigation award that once the institutions decided to spin the wheel again and inject circa $70m into the company to drill the Druid prospect, ToR Jnr and his board of sycophants decided to award themselves tens of millions of options at much lower rebased levels so under water were their current ones. “Heads we win tails you lose” is a phrase that springs to mind.

There have been so many promises of “watch this space” in relation to the now infamous Barryroe data room that my afternoon would disappear in a thrice should I list them all but I again point ol Tone to this piece HERE written by me and his statement to the supposed O&G analyst Malcolm Wood in the esteemed (sic) publication TipTV last year that the Barryroe farm in would be concluded by the end of 2016.

I am perhaps living in a parallel universe, but on the assumption that I am actually in the real world it is now 2017, for PVR management to allow yet another promise to fall into the ether and, at today’s date – some 3 weeks later than ToR’s self imposed farm out deadline, for the company not to have put out any update in relation to this really does illustrate the abject disregard I perceive for the real capital providers (as opposed to capital consumers) of the company.

I have called upon ToR Jnr multitude times to look in the mirror, look at the stock price and reflect back upon his own statements to the market in relation to the company’s prospects all of which have simply not come to pass and thus to, finally, do the right thing and resign. That he STILL hangs on beggars all belief and I wonder at what point one of the institutional investors finally does bare their teeth and calls time on this sorry show.

Simple fact is the company has material assets worth multiples of the stock price. ToR Jnr has been unable to monetise these for over 4 years now. It is long past his sell by date and it is time for him to go.

CLEAR DISCLOSURE – The author, who is a Director of Align Research Ltd, holds a personal position in the equity of Providence Resources and is bound to Align Research’s company dealing policy ensuring open and adequate disclosure. Full details can be found on our website here (“Legals”).

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