Shaft Sink Share Discussion Threads

[reks] 02/8/2014 01:05

$800m claim v SHFT has been laughed off by the SHFT BOD . How can you claim $800m when they were less than 100m down and a month into a 3.5 year contract with Eurochem. The most they could get, if successful would be $4-5m. Read past RNS and you will see SHFT gave Eurochem an alternative but they refused.

Anyway the way the company is modelled, it was never the arbitration which was going to cause issues, it was the strikes in SA. This is now sorted and let's see who SHFT are backed by......

International Mineral Resources, a company owned by a trio of oligarchs – Alexander Machkevitch, Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov – sits on a 48 per cent stake in Shaft Sinkers.
They are the very same individuals behind ENRC, the colourful Kazakh mining giant. Their stake in Shaft Sinkers has plummeted from £40million-plus to around £1m......you think top class businessmen with massive ego will walk away with a loss like that? They will do all they can to finance the company especially with the revenue it generates and the contacts they have in the mining sector to gain contracts!!! The contracts for this company are not small but huge, they range from £2m to £15m each!!!

Director also bought in 3 times 6 months ago around 42p mark.....the financing will not be an issue with the 3 billionaires involved and with Eurochem being a Russian company the backers in SHFT I am sure will do some background deals to sort it out.

All I'm saying is that the potential here is great. IPO 3 years ago at 160p plus and has rebounded off bottom just below 6p. £150m revenue with £270m order book. Mcap just £3m.

15p in the next few weeks as finance is sorted then by end of year with more contracts will be 50p. If Eurochem case falls over then cooks be looking at £1, which would still only give around £60m mcap which is still peanuts compared to the business and contracts they win

[reks] 01/8/2014 14:23

SHAFT
afternoon surge on the way

[reks] 01/8/2014 14:23

Looking good
well oversold with financing due any day now
£150m revenue and £7m contract just signed last week...all for £3m mcap!

[buywell2] 01/8/2014 12:52

On a bad day at Blackrock ..... up

[trek3] 01/8/2014 12:49

Must say, looking at the chart, it`s worth a punt,
gap down from around the 12p, gaps are usually filled,
so from here to 12p, decent upside, where it goes from
there who knows!

[technofiend] 31/7/2014 11:17

LOL

Yes.

This dog has taught me the brutal reality of selling when you have the chance. The longer you leave it the more difficult it becomes to sell. So true. Cut your losses folks

I do actually think this will turn out in shft's favour but I do not expect to be getting my money back.

This is one hell of an agonizing drawdown though.

[buywell2] 31/7/2014 10:10

So have you been holding this POS ?

[technofiend] 31/7/2014 10:05

He seems rather sue-happy.

I'm betting this case collapses in Shft's favour but I am not as confident as I once was.

[buywell2] 31/7/2014 09:37

He could buy this then for the price of the undercoat

[buywell2] 25/7/2014 17:59

I have to say I am surprised that SHFT has not sunk lower than this.


''I am surprised that SHFT has not sunk lower than this''

[hedgehog 100] 24/7/2014 20:33

23/07/2014 07:02 UKREG Shaft Sinkers Holdings Plc Additional Work Awarded

[muckshifter] 20/7/2014 17:14

You haven't addressed a single point Hedgehog. So here's another one:


""Hedgehog 100

16 Jul'14 - 18:49 - 2523 of 2524
In being dishonestly attacked by Muckshifter I am in very good company: the respected Mineweb Russian correspondent John Helmer -

From 9 October 2007:
"An interview with Mineweb Russian correspondent John Helmer
He's the doyen of the foreign press corps in Russia, and a tough, no-nonsense investigative reporter.
... If mining correspondents do their job, they must act independently of the mining companies who sponsor and advertise in the mining media. It isn't the job of the mining correspondent to be friendly; it's his job to be truthful. ... "
"

I think most people would question the sanity of someone persistently calling a respected journalist dishonest with such a lack of substance to justify such attacks.""



OK Hedgehog, I realise it is pointless arguing with you because you refuse to address points, change the subject, twist anything I say, ignore facts, make up your own "facts" to suit your argument, etc, but I'll just give a quick example of the dishonestly / incompetence in Helmer's article for others to consider. I'm not at all surprised that you are such an admirer of Helmer because you both are deliberately economical with the truth / lie, distort what other say, etc. Helmer, to his credit, hasn't sunk to your level of childish name calling.

And of course his publisher says he's a good investigative jouralist – surprise, surprise!

Just taking, from the Helmer article you've been pushing endlessly:


One more dishonest example, which was a very important contributor to Helmer's fairy tale, was his assertion that the work had been stopped because of the potash price:
"On August 30, 2012, it was clear the Russian mine project had stopped:"

This is absolute rubbish. Eurochem had made clear at the end of 2011 that they were changing over from the failed grouting technology (and I think I know why it failed!) to the more conventional use of ground freezing to deal with serious aquifers within the intended shaft line. They had said that they expected the changeover would take approx fifteen months, which I considered ambitious at the time, knowing roughly what had to be done, here:


And sure enough, the latest news is that they have reached 253 metres of cage shaft construction through frozen ground and 82 metres on the phase 2 skip shaft which has been started earlier than anticipated and has also had ground freezing installed.
See page 4 here:


Work on the rest of the project has continued on a 24 hour a day basis, where critical, ever since shft's contract was suspended, as reported elsewhere.
Note the date on which, according to Helmer, it was clear that the Russian mine project had stopped.

So is that ineptitude, incompetence, or just plain old dishonesty on Helmer's part? It is obviously one of several key tenets of his theory which absolutely ignores reality. What explanation have you for that one Hedgehog?

[hedgehog 100] 20/7/2014 16:52

muckshifter 19 Jul'14 - 09:03 - 2534 of 2540 0 1
"Here we are then Hedgehog, a comparison of Helmers explanation of the termination with yours:
Helmer:
In fact, as much later announcements from Eurochem revealed, Eurochem told Shaft Sinkers it was terminating their contract at Gremyachinskoye on April 20, 2012
Hedgehog:
Shft cancelled the contract in April 2012, but after EuroChem suspended operations in December 2011: legally this may constitute a de facto contract cancellation by EuroChem.
Wouldn't have taken much effort to explain reality would it?
But it wouldn't have helped create his fairy tale of the wicked client and the innocent contractor quite so much would it?"


muckshifter 19 Jul'14 - 14:50 - 2537 of 2540 0 1
"So, just as I expected and predicted Hedgehog, you change the subject and come out with tired diversionary waffle which you've posted many times before. You compare, in that waffle, two entirely irrelevent mistakes (900 instead of 800 and Russian instead of Khazak) I made, which didn't in any significant way change the point in my original post, but was your original diversionary response, with something written by an "investigative journalist" which is incorrect, and does mislead. ..."


No Muckshifter, those errors by you were not really material and did not mislead ... but someone with an agenda, and/or too blinded to be open-minded, could argue the opposite.

I.e. that you were dishonestly exaggerating the size of the claim to make it look even worse than otherwise, and calling the IMR oligarchs Russians to try to make them look more dodgy than otherwise.

It's easy to paint such things with a sinister intent if you want to.


As regards explaining the details of how precisely the contract was ended: yes, he could have done, but why should he? In effect it was EuroChem who ended the contract, and going into details would clutter up an already fairly long article unnecessarily.

Journalism needs to be readable: as I have said, it's not a legal document.


I have also dealt with the substance of your criticism of John Helmer's thesis previously, in the following posts on the thread "SHAFT SINKERS The thread for debate not bile. (SHFT)":

Hedgehog 100 29 Jun'13 - 21:17 - 52 of 280 0 0 edit
Hedgehog 100 30 Jun'13 - 20:35 - 60 of 280 0 0 edit

There seem little point for me to keep on repeating them - they are there for anyone who wants to read them.

If you want to identify any points that you have that are not addressed there then I will look at them.

[muckshifter] 20/7/2014 15:36

""Hedgehog 100
16 Jul'14 - 18:49 - 2523 of 2524
In being dishonestly attacked by Muckshifter I am in very good company: the respected Mineweb Russian correspondent John Helmer -

From 9 October 2007:
"An interview with Mineweb Russian correspondent John Helmer
He's the doyen of the foreign press corps in Russia, and a tough, no-nonsense investigative reporter.
... If mining correspondents do their job, they must act independently of the mining companies who sponsor and advertise in the mining media. It isn't the job of the mining correspondent to be friendly; it's his job to be truthful. ... "
"

I think most people would question the sanity of someone persistently calling a respected journalist dishonest with such a lack of substance to justify such attacks.""


OK Hedgehog, I realise it is pointless arguing with you because you refuse to address points, change the subject, twist anything I say, ignore facts, make up your own "facts" to suit your argument, etc, but I'll just give a quick example of the dishonestly / incompetence in Helmer's article for others to consider. I'm not at all surprised that you are such an admirer of Helmer because you both are deliberately economical with the truth / lie, distort what others say, etc. Helmer, to his credit, hasn't sunk to your level of childish name calling.

And of course his publisher says he's a good investigative jouralist – surprise, surprise!

Just taking, from the Helmer article you've been pushing endlessly:


One more simple example of deliberate deception from that article, where just after reporting what had been said at contract award in 2008, he says:
"For the next four years what seemed obvious was that everything was going swimmingly."

He would have been informed of the anticipated completion date at the time of the site visit in mid July 2008, ( ) and would have known from that visit that this contract was an absolutely key part of the overall construction programme, due for completion in January 2012, as noted here:


He should also have read about progress on the contract, as an "investigative reporter", before writing the article, and what would he have found?

Almost every shft RNS, update, AR / interim, etc, from and including shft's IPO document, made clear that things were NOT going swimmingly. Did he really think, looking back in mid 2013, that everyone thought "it was going swimmingly", when shft at contract suspension (end of 2011): had a shaft just 100m deep out of 1200m, in almost the full original contract period: the little bit they had built was full of water and therefore clearly leaking and faulty: they had not managed to get through even the first of several clearly anticipated water bearing strata?

Or was it perhaps just another dishonest little contribution to his fairy story about the wicked client and the honest contractor? Dishonest or incompetent? Which is it Hedgehog?

[buywell2] 20/7/2014 11:14

Sorry


seems to be





































the hardest word

[muckshifter] 20/7/2014 11:08

So, Hedgehog, when can we expect a serious response to the points made in this extract, from post 2529 above, rather than a load of waffle which has no relevance to anything in particular:

The second, of many Helmer points that deserve a serious look, for the same reason – invention of "facts" and twisting what others have said (just like his acolyte Hedgehog), would be the $500 / tonne that he invents as the market price of Potash that Eurochem need to "break even"

In this article:

Helmer gives this quotation by Strezhnev, Eurochem's chief executive:
"When we studied the profitability of this project, it was profitable even at a potash price of $500. We do not expect prices to go lower than $700-$800, so our investments carry almost no financial risks."

Note that Strezhnev doesn't say how profitable (imho, it would be very highly profitable @ $500 / tonne).

And Helmer then deliberately misses out this bit from an earlier article of his which explains why Strezhnev used the $500 figure; "He was responding to a market warning, issued a few weeks ago, by Bill Doyle, chief executive of Potash Corporation, the Canadian and world leader in potash production. According to Doyle, the price for taking delivery of potash at the minehead needs to increase to $560 to $570 per tonne to stimulate development of undeveloped deposits.", ie. Bill Doyle had set the $500 figure rolling, not Strezhnev.
This is Helmers earlier article:


Helmer then follows this omission by apparently changing the $500/tonne figure from profitable, but how profitable we do not know, to a "break even" figure in his business insider article, and then stating that:
"During the five years in which Shaft Sinkers has been excavating at Gremyachinskoye potash has failed to reach Eurochem's breakeven point." (Shft were excavating, or at least in contract before suspension, for just less than 3.5 years)
He then displays an infomine graph of potash prices:
which in itself shows that his statement is untrue, since the potash price is shown to have been above $500 for 30% of the operational contract period (July 2008 to December 2011).

My own rough estimates of the likely cost of Eurochem production, done in four ways last summer on the "Shaftsinkers the thread for debate not bile" thread, in posts 54, 66, 74 & 102 showed that the Eurochem mine would have been profitable at the prices shown in that graph for the whole period in question (and since).

Just another example of the methods employed by our "investigative journalist"

And of course a major contribution to his dishonest theory.

[muckshifter] 19/7/2014 14:50

So, just as I expected and predicted Hedgehog, you change the subject and come out with tired diversionary waffle which you've posted many times before. You compare, in that waffle, two entirely irrelevent mistakes (900 instead of 800 and Russian instead of Khazak) I made, which didn't in any significant way change the point in my original post, but was your original diversionary response, with something written by an "investigative journalist" which is incorrect, and does mislead.

But it is your way of changing the subject isn't it? You want to get away from serious points you cannot answer, and put a few posts on the board quickly to reduce the number of posters who see those earlier points. So you pick one of the least significant points out of posts 2528, 2529 & 2531 and respond quickly with diversionary waffle.

So when can we expect a serious response to the point made in this extract, from post 2528 above:

Just taking, from the Helmer article you've been pushing endlessly:


one simple example from that article:
"The Eurochem contract – Shaft Sinkers's biggest, representing about 30% of its order book – enabled Shaft Sinkers to move from private ownership shared between Shroder and black empowerment enterprise partners to an IPO on the London stock market in December 2010."

There used to be a short history on shft's website, which has now been removed. It made clear that at the time of negotiation of the Eurochem contract, ownership of shft was 54% IMR and Schroder owned no part of the company. This history is still there, however, on page 21 of the IPO prospectus, amongst other places.


It's hard to believe that an "investigative journalist" could get it that wrong, particularly as there was also a widely publicised case, by Eurochem against IMR as the 54% owner of shft at the time of negotiation and letting of the Eurochem contract, six weeks before Helmer's article was published.
Here is one of many articles about that case:


So why did Helmer come up with the theory that Schroder, a man who afaics, never owned any of shaft sinkers at any time, was co – owner with a couple of African companies at the time of negotiation and finalisation of the Eurochem contract?

In my opinion it was a "fact" that he simply made up himself, as he did with many other points in his article, because it suited his story of the innocent contractor and the devious client, and kept the notorious IMR out of the picture as far as the pre-contract events were concerned. It was also the fact that Schroder had conveniently left the company.

So perhaps Hedgehog you could explain how your hero got it that wrong, in those circumstances, without being dishonest or inept – but you won't will you – you'll try to change the subject as usual.

[buywell2] 19/7/2014 10:58

I am surprised this has not dropped further than it has

One reason I feel is the fundamental data as per in the thread header which now gives a very misleading picture of what is about to happen and the current trading prospects going forwards.

Most likely many OAP's that own these don't have a clue what is about to transpire plus bigger holders are now locked into the death spiral.

[muckshifter] 19/7/2014 09:03

Here we are then Hedgehog, a comparison of Helmers explanation of the termination with yours:

Helmer:
In fact, as much later announcements from Eurochem revealed, Eurochem told Shaft Sinkers it was terminating their contract at Gremyachinskoye on April 20, 2012

Hedgehog:
Shft cancelled the contract in April 2012, but after EuroChem suspended operations in December 2011: legally this may constitute a de facto contract cancellation by EuroChem.

Wouldn't have taken much effort to explain reality would it?
But it wouldn't have helped create his fairy tale of the wicked client and the innocent contractor quite so much would it?

[muckshifter] 18/7/2014 16:45

So, no answer to the points then Hedgehog, just the usual attempt to change the subject.

What about spelling mistakes, Hedgehog, surely you could find one or two?

[hedgehog 100] 18/7/2014 16:27

muckshifter 21 Jun'13 - 16:28 - 2090 of 2531
" ...Further to the arbitration for $900m, which is based upon non performance imho, Eurochem are suing IMR, the bunch of dubious Russians who effectively floated shft, also for $900m, but this case is, (imho) on the completely different basis of alleged corrupt actions by IMR in obtaining the contract.
Hedgehog can't get it out of his head that these numbers are the same and therefore Eurochem can't go after both, and the number must have been taken from a passing bus and used twice. ... "


Muckshifter,

Your figures of $900M. were wrong in your post extract I've quoted above: the correct figures were of course $800M.

And IMR aren't Russians, they're Kazakhstanis!

Does making minor factual errors invalidate an underlying thesis per se? No, of course not.


If indeed they are all errors, rather than simplifications.

SHFT cancelled the contract in April 2012, but after EuroChem suspended operations in December 2011: legally this may constitute a de facto contract cancellation by EuroChem.

So not really a 'mistake' by Helmer as such, but a simplification for readability. It's not a legal submission.

That sort of thing sums up your attack on Helmer.

[muckshifter] 18/7/2014 16:14

"Hedgehog 100
16 Jul'14 - 18:49 - 2523 of 2524
In being dishonestly attacked by Muckshifter I am in very good company: the respected Mineweb Russian correspondent John Helmer -

From 9 October 2007:
"An interview with Mineweb Russian correspondent John Helmer
He's the doyen of the foreign press corps in Russia, and a tough, no-nonsense investigative reporter.
... If mining correspondents do their job, they must act independently of the mining companies who sponsor and advertise in the mining media. It isn't the job of the mining correspondent to be friendly; it's his job to be truthful. ... "
"

I think most people would question the sanity of someone persistently calling a respected journalist dishonest with such a lack of substance to justify such attacks."



Two relatively less important points which Helmer distorts are his contention that:
"In fact, as much later announcements from Eurochem revealed, Eurochem told Shaft Sinkers it was terminating their contract at Gremyachinskoye on April 20, 2012."
which is untrue, but it obviously looked better to say that for the sake of his incredible theory.
SHFT terminated the contract unilaterally as announced in their 2011 AR, see chairman's statement here:



And his other contention:
"Eurochem's first public disclosure of the dispute was this announcement of October 5, 2012. The wording is important because of the claim that the dispute was a contractual one based on the technical claim about the grouting technology: "Shaft Sinkers was chosen as the contractor to develop the cage shaft of the Gremyachinskoe deposit but subsequently proved unable to fulfill its contractual obligations. Shaft Sinkers' grouting technology entirely failed, causing in excess of USD 161 million in direct costs and a delay to the project's completion date which was subsequently revised to 2015."

This announcement is also noteworthy because of Eurochem's calculation of the liability. It took several more months before it was disclosed publicly that Eurochem was raising the amount of its claim to $800 million to include purported lost profits because of the production delay."

Which is again rubbish.
Eurochem gave the $800m valuation of the claim on the day it was announced 5th October 2012, and it was widely reported at the time, eg.


Just looks like very poor "investigative journalism" to me, that one.