Wednesday 13 December 2017

Maxwells Mysterious Marketing (5)

The company announced:


" .... Beijing Taojin Law Office had on 11 December 2017 tendered their resignation due to the difficulty faced by Beijing Taojin Law Office in conducting the due diligence in relation to the litigations investigation such as (i) the Courts had not been cooperative; and (ii) the number of court cases and the amounts claimed cannot be conclusively determined yet at this juncture.

In view of Beijing Taojin Law Office’s resignation, the subsidiaries of the Company, Jinjiang Zhenxing Shoes & Plastic Co. Ltd and Maxwell (Xiamen) Co. Ltd, have appointed Guangdong Kingbridge Law Firm in the People’s Republic of China, who are familiar with Guangdong and Fujian provinces area legal matters, to conduct special due diligence on the litigations investigations involving the subsidiary of MAXWELL.


Guangdong Kingbridge Law Firm will also conduct special due diligence on the cash deposits placed with the asset management company and Maxwell (Xiamen) Co. Ltd’s advertisement expenses.
The Company has requested Guangdong Kingbridge Law Firm to issue the special due diligence legal opinion report by middle of January 2018."



This is a case that is dragging on for more than two years. Shareholders should not expect to get the clarity that is very much needed suddenly in one month time.

Monday 11 December 2017

Sapura Energy "eking out profits in the majority of quarters"?

Article in The Star "Blip for Sapura Energy", one snippet:


"The stock ..... has been eking out profits in the majority of quarters since the collapse of crude oil prices in late 2014 ......"


Strictly speaking, this is correct, the majority of the quarters were indeed positive.

But ..... overall the company has bled a lot of money over those same quarteres since the losses were much larger than the profits.

The exact amount of the losses over the last 11 quarters is RM 800,000,000.00.

That is a lot of money and that would describe the current situation of Sapura Energy much better than "eking out profits in the majority of quarters". Good journalists should perform this kind of checks to give a more balanced picture.

Other interesting facts that are not revealed in the article are the total amount of liabilities of Sapura Energy (RM 22 Billion) versus only RM 1.9 Billion cash, and the rather high rewards for the controlling shareholder while the company is bleeding money.