Five years ago, almost to the day, the Punter invested $1620 in Petratherm (ASX code PTR), which was then one of the shining stars of the fractured-hot-rock geothermal industry of the future. His investment is now worth $10.
This week he bought a quarter of a million more Petratherm shares. It is entirely possible that he has rocks in his head.
Petratherm’s South Australian and Spanish hot-rock projects have been on little more than care-and-maintenance for years and its desperate diversification into oil and gas tenements in Tasmania has gone nowhere.
There was a flurry of interest in Petratherm when it was selected by a digital start-up as the vehicle to use to get a stock market quotation. MSGooroo describes itself as a human resources technology company. In effect, it computerises the business of assessing job applicants. This fledgling, to become Gooroo Ventures, was to raise $1m through a convertible loan and then use Petratherm to raise a further $3m on the stock market.
The deal was officially terminated on Monday last week, for the somewhat unusual reason that Gooroo is now confident of being able to come to the stock market in its own right through an initial public offering (IPO) of shares. The convertible loan issue must have gone well – which suggests that the IPO could be a big success.
Petratherm will be compensated for the costs it incurred on the cancelled deal, and moreover any Petratherm shareholders who apply for shares in the Gooroo IPO will be given priority over applications from the general public.
The Punter was impressed that Petratherm appeared to have teamed up with a winner. Perhaps more significantly, at the time of writing, five investors were queuing up to buy 18m PTR at 0.3 cents – one of them prepared to plunge $30,000 on this penny dreadful.
Meanwhile, The Punter has been delighted to see some of his old favourites blossom.
AACo shares (AAC) have finally passed the $2 mark, and his shares in Sea Farms Group (SFG) are at last showing a profit.
Flushed with this success, he has decided to buy another 5000 Australian Dairy Farms (AHF) ahead of the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) tomorrow, largely in the hope that all the bad news is out and an upbeat statement is likely.
Items on the agenda at the EGM include a resolution to approve financial assistance for the Camperdown Dairy Company transaction.
• The Punter has no financial qualifications and no links to the financial services industry. He owns shares in a number of companies featured in this column.
