Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Those of you who have faith that this company will eventually accomplish something useful to the point that you will show a profit on your shares should read my post #1198 from December 5, 2019. This company is extremely media oriented and posts any positive news they can find while not mentioning that they have taken far longer than advertised to get their plant running and have had seriously reliability problems with it. The oil sands they are processing only contain about 7% oil so they are processing a lot of sand to get smnall amounts of oil. As I said in the previously mentioned blog, if their process was so great a major would have snapped up the company by now. The fact that no one has indicates that their process is either not feasible or not economical, or both.
It is on the west side of Utah state highway 45 about a mile north of the Green River. From the satellite pictures it does not look like there is very much going on there.
That is not surprising that there is still no interest. I especially liked the part in their news release that they will build a Zero Energy Ready building company with an "aggressive acquisition strategy". How is a company with little money going to acquire other worthwhile companies. It is more likely that if STHI really had anything going for it (patents and other intellectual property for example), then an established home builder would have bought them by now. That hasn't happened so they are left with only the prospect of trolling the true believers to buy more shares and keep the scam going. A purported new business direction is an excellent way to divert attention from past failures.
The food at Luby's has improved somewhat over the last few years, although the fried fish is still reheated and the fried chicken is still overcooked.
The food quality issue, which has been more or less there for at least the last 20 years is due in large part to very poor management by the Pappas Restaurant group, which owns a large part of Luby's. Luby's prospered for many years because Bob Luby was an entrepreneur, not a bean counter. Cost control in any business is important, but cannot be the driving force behind a business. Only entrepreneurial thinking will increase revenues, which is ultimately what is needed for any business to prosper. Pappas Restaurant Group lacks entrepreneurial thinking, and they lack it in spades. Their solution to increase revenues was to buy Fuddruckers (dud #1) and then Cheeseburger in Paradise (dud #2) and load the company up with debt.
Given the decreasing revenues of the company I have questioned for several years whether the debt load was really serviceable in the long run or if Luby's was dying a slow death. It may not be a question much longer. With the COVID-19 problem Luby's has closed over half of the stores and the ones that are still open are probably not breaking even. While they have delivery and drive through to help during the crisis, I actually go in and order at the serving line when I get food to go, and I eat there 2-3 times a week right now. There is seldom anyone else in there when I go through the line. Luby's looks to me like a probable victim of the COVID-19 crisis unless they can reopen in the normal fashion pretty soon. It would also help mightily if it were possible to kick out the Pappas people. As I write this the news is the J.C. Penney is contemplating bankruptcy (no surprise there). Is Luby's soon to follow?
If worked on CO Springs I would live in CO Springs and not commute from Pueblo, let alone live in Pueblo in a tiny house I paid big bucks for...
Another problem! They got land in Pueblo to develop! LOL! Who wants to live in Pueblo? That place has been on the skids ever since the steel mill shut down with no recovery in sight. Add that to STHI's stupid designs that I have already mentioned (lofts you can't stand up in, etc.). Pueblo is waiting with open arms for people stupid enough to pay $100K for a 300 square foot home with a 100 square loft you can't stand up in. Plus the houses won't hold up any better than any other manufactured housing does in a storm. Their pricing excludes the traditional manufactured housing crowd and their designs have very limited appeal to people who can afford them. Their "plan" to have $150M in sales in two years is a pipe dream. They will have to sell 1,500 of their horrible houses to people who want to live in Pueblo. Good luck. Assuming that they manage to build and sell some of their horrible designs, I am just waiting for them to get sued over their dangerous staircases and ladders in the designs with lofts.
This company (STHI) is not going anywhere. Their designs are stupid. Who want a loft you can't stand up in? It would make more sense to extend the frame and have everything on one level. But, if they did that then their houses would not be "cute", they would just look like another mobile home. Floor plans for mobile homes/manufactured housing have been worked on since at least the 1940s, meaning that the range of what is possible in a given floor space has been pretty well worked out now. STHI's houses are VERY expensive for the square footage and at least to me, do not appear to be well constructed either. If you want a small portable house, buy a conventional mobile home. You will get more for your money and it will likely be better quality too. There is a reason their stock price has collapsed. The investment market and the consumer market has figured out what I have just said. It is difficult to stay in business by manufacturing and attempting to sell unmarketable products, so I would not expect STHI to last much longer. I could be wrong though. There are a lot of scam companies that just stay in business by selling stock to pay their bills. If this company is doing that they can last as along as they can get suckers to keep buying stock.
Excellent thread UTOilMan
It mostly echoes what I have said about their process possibly being feasible, but not economical. I am not an engineer but I do know the difference between producing something in the lab (chemistry) and producing mass quantities of it (chemical engineering). It also makes sense as the thread pointed out that PQEFF is either having oil recovery problems (the claimed 99+% recovery looks fishy given the low grade of the ore) or solvent recovery problems, or both.
Got it! Thanks.
However, Google Earth has not updated the area in a while and from the satellite photos I have available most of the equipment is at the site off 121. Apparently they moved the plant after the last Google Earth overhead update. The pictures from the side of the road are no help either because they are even older than the satellite images.
Thanks.
I was more interested in the plant location though. The locations you showed me both look like mining operations. I would say the place on 45 definitely is, am not quite sure about the operation on 121. The only thing in the area that I found that looks like it might be their plant is at the west end of 1500 S.
Is the PQEFF plant at the west end of W 1500 S? I have been looking for it on Google Earth since they don't tell you where it is.
If PQEFF really had anything a major would have bought them by now. I heard of this company through a banner advertisement as some financial web site in 2017, probably Google or Yahoo. One has to wonder why a startup company is advertising on financial web sites. There is no reason to do that other than to pump up their stock price so the next time they have to issue shares to pay their bills they get a little bit higher price. To the extent they do any advertising at all it probably should be in trade publications like the Oil & Gas Journal.
Regarding their stock manipulation, they were going to do a 1:5 reverse split to get their share price back above $1. The reason you have not heard any more about that is that the stock price collapsed to about $0.16.
Until I see other evidence I am sticking with my theory that their technology may work but is not economical. If it was I can guarantee that Suncor or another major would either buy or license it. Nobody is interested. I am certain of that, because given the tireless self-promotion that PQEFF does, the minute a major did express interest the entire world would hear about it.
Caveat emptor when it comes to Rise Gold.
Rise Gold Corp. (OTC:RYES) is allegedly going to reopen the Idaho-Maryland gold mine in Grass Valley CA. The mine has been out of production since 1956 and is flooded. The 3 surface pads RYES owns as part of the underground claim are all in what is now a residential area. Anybody that restarts this mine is going to get a demand from the State of California to clean up the tailings piles left over from the 1950s.
Before RYES came along, Emgold Mining Corporation (OTC:EGMCF) was going to reopen the mine. They spend several years trying to get permitted and failed. Their plan to deal with the tailings was make clay tiles from them but they did not bother to mention that the tailings had all been run through a cyanide process gold extraction plant. When EGMCF did not get permitted they abandonded the project in 2016, at which point RYES picked it up.
RYES has only about C$250K in the bank and all of 2 employees but we are somehow supposed to believe that they are going to obtain all the permits they need, clean up the tailings piles, build a water treatment plant to they can drain the mine, drain said mine, re-timber some or all of the 75 miles of underground tunnels, install new winding equipment, air compressors, tools, lighting and ventilation equipment, and post the required reclamation bond which is likely to be at least US$100 million. Also, the good core samples they are advertising come from about a 5,000 foot depth when the mine is only about 3,400 feet deep so quite a bit of new tunneling will have to be done to get to the ore. All this in the face of teething opposition from the residents of Grass Valley who do not want the mine reopened.
Also, the mine next door, the Empire Star, is now a state park but the minerals are owned by Newmont. Newmont is not interested developing those mineral rights anytime soon and Newmont has the deep pockets to do so. If the Idaho-Maryland mine was is such a good deal then a major miner should be snapping it up. Nobody is. RYES did manage to sucker a couple of million dollars of new investor money last year though. Looking at RYES' financial statements I would like to know what kind of creative accounting turned the Idaho Maryland into a C$14 million asset in only about 3 years when RYSE is basically broke. All they have done so far is take core samples and the cost of that does not run anywhere near C$14 million.
Conclusion: caveat emptor when dealing with RYES stock. You can expect further dilution of your equity because the company has to sell stock to pay its bills. Plus, they will never get permitted to reopen the Idaho-Maryland mine.
I believe you are probably right. I have also noticed that even though they operate in the US they go to great lengths to avoid SEC regulation. Their PETROBLOQ division also has to be a joke. There are real companies like IBM that are pursuing blockchain technology and have the deep pockets to do it. PQEFF is probably just in it because blockchain is a current hot buzzword.
There are other companies out there that seem to perpetually stay in the development stage as well. Check out Rise Gold Corp. (OTC:RYES). They are allegedly going to reopen an abandoned, waterlogged gold mine in Grass Valley California (Idaho-Maryland mine). The 3 surface pads they own are all in what is now a residential area. Anybody that restarts this mine is going to get a demand from the State of California to clean up the tailings piles left over from the 1950s. The last company that was going to reopen the mine was planning to make clay tiles from the tailings without bothering to mention that the tailings had all been run through a cyanide process gold extraction plant. That company did not get permitted and offloaded the mine to RYES. RYES has only about C$250K in the bank and all of 2 employees but we are somehow supposed to believe that they are going to obtain all the permits they need, clean up the tailings piles, build a water treatment plant to they can drain the mine, drain said mine, re-timber some or all of the 75 miles of underground tunnels, install new winding equipment, air compressors, tools, lighting and ventilation equipment, and post the required reclamation bond which is likely to be at least US$100 million. Also, the good core samples they are advertising come from about a 5,000 foot depth when the mine is only about 3,400 feet deep so quite a bit of new tunneling will have to be done to get to the ore. All this in the face of teething opposition from the residents of Grass Valley who do not want the mine reopened. The mine next door, the Empire Star, is now a state park but the minerals are owned by Newmont. Newmont is not interested developing those mineral rights anytime soon and Newmont has the deep pockets to do so. If the Idaho-Maryland mine was is such a good deal then a major miner should be snapping it up. Nobody is. RYES did manage to sucker a couple of million dollars of new investor money last year though. Looking at RYES' financial statements I would like to know what kind of creative accounting turned the Idaho Maryland into a C$14 million asset in only about 2 years when the company that sold it to RYES reported sales proceeds of only about C$300K. Wonders never cease. Maybe PQEFF ought to buy RYES. They could have a new division, PETROGOLD and see how much new money they could raise marketing their plans to reopen the Idaho-Maryland before people get wise.
Sorry for the digression, but I just could not help but notice the similarities between PQEFF and how some junior miners operate.
I would not get too excited about Petroteq.
PQEFF (OTC:PQEFF) supposedly has a 1,000 BPD plant but only recently have they managed to sell 250 barrels of oil with no indication of how long it took to produce. I would estimate that based on their current overhead, even if the company produced 1,000 BPD for 365 per year with NO downtime that they would still lose money at the current price of oil. Any realistic estimate of their output would have to factor in 5-20% down time for repairs and maintenance, which makes the picture even bleaker. If they can figure out a way to get their 3,000 BPD expansion financed and get production up to 4,000 BPD they might show a profit, depending on what the variable costs of mining the oil from their claims, refining it, and selling it are. Their financial statements don't have enough detail for me to estimate what their variable acquisition/production/selling costs are, and those are very important numbers to have when making investment decisions.
In addition, ever since I ran across this company, I have had one basic question which nobody seems to be asking. That question is: If PQEFF has such a great process why have major oil companies not jumped on it? I own a few shares in Suncor Energy (NYSE:SU), which owns a majority interest in the Athabasca tar sands project in northern Alberta. If PQEFF really has a superior method of refining tar sands the SU should have snapped up PQEFF by now. They have not done that. It is very possible that the PQEFF refining process, while feasible, may not be economical when compared to current tar sands recovery methods.
I am also concerned that in the 2.5 years that I have been following this company, that they have taken far longer to get the plant up and running than advertised and as of this date have sold only a tiny amount of oil. It is entirely possible that PQEFF is having reliability issues with the plant, or that the production capability they have now is more modest that what they expected it would be at this point.
Finally, I am very concerned with how this company is financed. The steady decline in the listed share price of PQEFF represents not only ongoing losses, but the issuance of new shares to cover those losses. That dilutes the equity of existing shareholders. In a nutshell, the company is staying in business by selling stock. I have seen this before. Junior miners do this all the time, and some last a long time doing it. Another company that did this was Toth Aluminum, which my dad had shares in. Toth went bankrupt in 2004. They supposedly had a proprietary process for refining aluminum that used very little energy. They built a small test plant in the New Orleans area and managed to sell a little aluminum chloride in the 1980s but never really got going. Their process, while feasible on a small scale, was probably not feasible or economical on a large scale, or someone would have bought them. After my dad had the shares several years (during which the share price steadily declined due to losses and equity dilution), he asked me if he should buy more stock. I looked at their financial statements and told him that it appeared that the company was staying in business by selling stock. He didn't buy anymore )thankfully as that would have been more money down the drain).
Conclusion: caveat emptor regarding PQEFF.