energyplay, BPZ Energy (BZP) -- they don't have any convertible securities outstanding. Maybe someone is expecting a new stock issue but from what I can tell they won't need more funds until they have completed both their current well (that is near TD) and 1 more. This translates to November or so.
They do have some cheap options out that had been issued to the former managment/owners of Navidec, the shell that they reverse-merged into. Maybe the owners of these options have shorted stock in the open market in order to lock in their gains. As of 3/31 there were about .9 M of $1.30 options out and 1.2 M of $2 options out. So even if all of the options have been covered by shorts there is still a fair amount of naked short position outstanding.
Regarding your last questions, the answers are "yes & yes", at least to a degree. BPZ needs something like another $100 M to finance their gas-to-power project, but the plans are to get all of those funds in the form of straight debt from the IFC. But in order to keep their rig turning to the right after November, they will need some more financing of some kind. Given that, if they stay on schedule, they will only be about a month or 2 from getting into production by then, I'm thinking they might be able to do some sort of convertible preferred financing instead of straight common equity. This would reduce the amount of dilution, since usually the conversion price of the preferred ends up to be around a 25% premium to the common.
It was very encouraging to see the 169K share cross at $4.51, after market close today. Not sure why someone would be in such a hurry to buy that many shares, especially given what the short-term chart looks like, but I guess somebody with mucho dinero just decided they wanted to get these shares now.
Regarding the question you pose at msg. #88901, I have a hunch that we are seeing some sort of bear raid going on here. Let's say virtually all of the shares shorted are in fact naked shorts (nothwithstanding what I say above about the cheap options). The folks that shorted those 3 M shares could stand to profit quite handsomely by continuing to short the hell outta this turkey, during this period of relative news vacuum, and as long as they keep the stock price chart looking sucky they can rest assured that most of the retail crowd will avoid buying and probably even join them in shorting.
Needless to say I can't wait for this month's short interest to come out. |
