Petrofac Limited (PFC)

[Bouleversee]

I'm going to write to my MP. It's outrageous the SFO can sit on this for so long. They are as useless as Action for Fraud. On the other hand, have all these debts got anything to do with that? What do we know about Asfari?

[ReallyVeryFoolish]

Crikey, it's worse than I thought. My holding is split over 2 ISAs and I've just woken up to the fact that I am losing nearly £20k (around 80%) and that's not including my children's holdings. I looked for news on the IWeb website and this came up:

https://www.markets.iweb-sharedealing.c ... 4&type=bsm

Looks like we could lose all our money. What to do, now?

And it's not the only one for me either, RVF. Very far from it!

What I don't understand is why it was being tipped as a buy as recently as August. I hadn't read anything about all this indebtedness.

I've suddenly lost my appetite, for supper as well as investing.

The way I read that article, it's not PFC who are indebted but customers not paying? After the non core business disposals the last couple of years, PFC is pretty much a debt free company IIRC. If PFC aren't getting paid then Wood, KBR, Bechtel, Worley, Jacobs etc..... aren't getting paid either are they? I still don't understand why PFC value has slumped like this and peers haven't. PFC is a well run company with a very flexible and low cost base. And why the suggestion that Asfari is on the way out? Where's the evidence for that? There isn't any?

RVF

[Bouleversee]

Crikey, it's worse than I thought. My holding is split over 2 ISAs and I've just woken up to the fact that I am losing nearly £20k (around 80%) and that's not including my children's holdings. I looked for news on the IWeb website and this came up:

https://www.markets.iweb-sharedealing.c ... 4&type=bsm

Looks like we could lose all our money. What to do, now?

And it's not the only one for me either, RVF. Very far from it!

What I don't understand is why it was being tipped as a buy as recently as August. I hadn't read anything about all this indebtedness.

I've suddenly lost my appetite, for supper as well as investing.

The way I read that article, it's not PFC who are indebted but customers not paying? After the non core business disposals the last couple of years, PFC is pretty much a debt free company IIRC. If PFC aren't getting paid then Wood, KBR, Bechtel, Worley, Jacobs etc..... aren't getting paid either are they? I still don't understand why PFC value has slumped like this and peers haven't. PFC is a well run company with a very flexible and low cost base. And why the suggestion that Asfari is on the way out? Where's the evidence for that? There isn't any?

RVF

Having read it again, all I can say is that it is not very well written. One might conclude that the reason PFC is indebted is because it is not being paid by its own clients but you can't get away from "In turn, Bernstein stated this meant Petrofac now owed the most money to suppliers in its own history." Maybe PFC WAS a debt-free company but it doesn't sound as though that is the case now. However, I cling to the hope that the writer of that article didn't know what he was talking about or someone was trying to manipulate. Why are we not reading more about this in the press if things are so dire?

[ReallyVeryFoolish]

Crikey, it's worse than I thought. My holding is split over 2 ISAs and I've just woken up to the fact that I am losing nearly £20k (around 80%) and that's not including my children's holdings. I looked for news on the IWeb website and this came up:

https://www.markets.iweb-sharedealing.c ... 4&type=bsm

Looks like we could lose all our money. What to do, now?

And it's not the only one for me either, RVF. Very far from it!

What I don't understand is why it was being tipped as a buy as recently as August. I hadn't read anything about all this indebtedness.

I've suddenly lost my appetite, for supper as well as investing.

The way I read that article, it's not PFC who are indebted but customers not paying? After the non core business disposals the last couple of years, PFC is pretty much a debt free company IIRC. If PFC aren't getting paid then Wood, KBR, Bechtel, Worley, Jacobs etc..... aren't getting paid either are they? I still don't understand why PFC value has slumped like this and peers haven't. PFC is a well run company with a very flexible and low cost base. And why the suggestion that Asfari is on the way out? Where's the evidence for that? There isn't any?

RVF

Having read it again, all I can say is that it is not very well written. One might conclude that the reason PFC is indebted is because it is not being paid by its own clients but you can't get away from "In turn, Bernstein stated this meant Petrofac now owed the most money to suppliers in its own history." Maybe PFC WAS a debt-free company but it doesn't sound as though that is the case now. However, I cling to the hope that the writer of that article didn't know what he was talking about or someone was trying to manipulate. Why are we not reading more about this in the press if things are so dire?

Because it's not news. PFC is not in this bad situation on it's own. The only logical reason I can see why PFC has been battered by the market way more than it's peers is growing short selling of PFC stock.

RVF

[Bouleversee]

Let's hope they get their fingers burnt, the shorters that is. . The price is up 7p today, following the market, but there is a heck of a long way to go. I notice the P/E ratio is 1.66% which is extraordinarily low. I would be tempted to add if I weren't already losing so much.

You might be interested to read this article, which emanates from Simply Wall Street. I haven't clicked on the links as I daresay there is a paywall.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/petro ... 03867.html

I should be interested to know your views, Monabri.

[Bouleversee]

Anything to do with oil has come down a lot this year. Look at James Fisher for instance. One of my stalwarts and have held for yonks. Dropped a huge amount this year. Much will depend on their ability to adapt their businesses to new circumstances. Leaving Covid aside, oil will be gradually phased out and renewables and hydrogen etc. will take over. I see that PFC expects to be emissions free by 2030 so they must think they have a long term future. I, on the other hand, will do my best not to be emissions free by then because I would really like to be around to see how it all pans out. In the meantime, I haven't a clue what to do about my investments. I didn't think PFC's last report was so bad as to justify such a fall in price but then I am pretty useless at reading such long documents and sussing out the correct conclusion. Something must have happened that hasn't been made public or shorters are manipulating the price without a valid reason.

[ReallyVeryFoolish]

Anything to do with oil has come down a lot this year. Look at James Fisher for instance. One of my stalwarts and have held for yonks. Dropped a huge amount this year. Much will depend on their ability to adapt their businesses to new circumstances. Leaving Covid aside, oil will be gradually phased out and renewables and hydrogen etc. will take over. I see that PFC expects to be emissions free by 2030 so they must think they have a long term future. I, on the other hand, will do my best not to be emissions free by then because I would really like to be around to see how it all pans out. In the meantime, I haven't a clue what to do about my investments. I didn't think PFC's last report was so bad as to justify such a fall in price but then I am pretty useless at reading such long documents and sussing out the correct conclusion. Something must have happened that hasn't been made public or shorters are manipulating the price without a valid reason.

It's pretty much too late to do anything now. I'll just sit and nurse the losses. PFC is a well run business and the only way I can see them disappearing is in a takeover. At the recent price levels, I imagine it's only sentiment and doubts over the short term that is stopping a takeover happening. And perhaps the holdings in the Asfari family, maybe.

RVF

[ReallyVeryFoolish]

Very nice to see PFC involved in a green hydrogen project in Australia. Share price is, as usual, not moving on this news. PFC is steadily building a decent presence in renewables. Something it's peers are not quite so obviously managing. But still PFC share price remains trashed. -

https://www.petrofac.com/en-gb/media/ne ... t=05-10-20

RVF

[ReallyVeryFoolish]

Lovely to see a bit of life in PFC today up around 5% from a very low base.

RVF

[spiderbill]

Petrofac CEO Ayman Asfari to retire at end of the year
https://www.sharecast.com/news/news-and-announcements/petrofac-ceo-ayman-asfari-to-retire-at-end-of-the-year--7672704.html

[ReallyVeryFoolish]

Good news for PFC and BP in Oman. PFC are big in Oman today.

https://www.petrofac.com/en-gb/media/ne ... er-in-oman

RVF

[Bouleversee]

I had rather expected the s.p. to have risen a little after those 2announcements but we have had the reverse. There must be something going on that we don't know about.