Oil and gas producer Harbour Energy (HBR) is in a sellers’ market, especially given its European base of operations. Its key shareholder, EIG Asset Management, of which Harbour chairman Blair Thomas is the chief executive, is selling as well, offloading £5.6mn in shares in the last week of July as part of a broader restructure of its holdings in the company.
The timing was not perfect – the company’s share price has fallen 29 per cent since May – but this is small beer for the North Sea company’s main shareholder, which had already cut its holding in Harbour from 37 to 15 per cent last month.
That was because EIG handed its fund investors direct stakes in Harbour. “As EIG is still the largest shareholder following the distribution, we remain committed to the sector, confident in the company’s current strategy and supportive of its management team,” said Thomas. The holding is now worth just under £500mn.
The share price drop follows a wider industry sell-off in recent weeks, driven by recession concerns and a slightly weaker oil price. Of course, gas prices remain astronomical and even in the US, where petrol and diesel prices have risen from comparatively low levels, demand destruction has been limited.
Harbour itself has had a dramatic few months at a corporate level, too, landing in the FTSE 100 in May on Ferguson’s (FERG) demotion and then dropping back out last month because of GSK’s (GSK) spin-off of Haleon (HLN).
Chief executive Linda Cook also appeared before parliament’s environmental audit committee alongside local bosses for Shell (SHEL) and BP (BP.). In that company, Harbour is an outlier in that it is not also investing in renewables and other green technology. Cook told MPs that was not the point of the company: “We are acquiring relatively mature assets from larger, typically major, oil and gas companies that they are no longer investing in and which are no longer strategic for them,” she said.
Buys | ||||
Company | Director/PDMR | Date | Price (p) | Aggregate value (£) |
Advance Energy | Larry Bottomley (ce) ** | 26 Jul 22 | 0.1 | 40,000 |
Advance Energy | Mark Rollins (ch) ** | 26 Jul 22 | 0.1 | 40,000 |
Big Technologies | Daren Morris (cfo) | 22 Jul 22 | 230 | 92,000 |
Brickability | Arnold van Huet (PDMR) | 21 Jul 22 | 81 | 100,035 |
British American Tobacco | Kandy Anand * | 27 Jul 22 | 3,428 † | 123,563 † |
C&C Group | Ralph Findlay (ch) | 26 Jul 22 | 195 | 49,484 |
Conduit | Stuart Quinlan (coo) * | 27 Jul 22 | 334 | 43,789 |
Conduit | Neil Eckert (ch) | 27 Jul 22 | 342 | 99,861 |
Dechra Pharmaceuticals | Ishbel Macpherson ** | 21 Jul 22 | 3,430 | 29,978 |
EnQuest | Amjad Bseisu (ce) * | 22 Jul 22 | 25 | 100,393 |
Fintel | Neil Stevens (joint ce) | 25 Jul 22 | 195 | 97,365 |
Fintel | Matt Timmins (joint ce) | 26 Jul 22 | 197 | 94,873 |
GSK | Dr Hal Barron | 22 Jul 22 | 3,524 † | 42,916 † |
Haleon | Sir Dave Lewis (ch) | 27 Jul 22 | 317 | 239,699 |
Haleon | Bart Derde (PDMR) | 28 Jul 22 | 301 | 60,148 |
Haleon | Marie-Anne Aymerich | 28 Jul 22 | 299 | 24,902 |
Haleon | Deirdre Mahlan | 28 Jul 22 | 555 † | 111,002 † |
Insig AI | Richard Bernstein (ch) | 28 Jul 22 | 28 | 32,200 |
Jupiter Fund Management | Matthew Beesley (PDMR) | 29 Jul 22 | 119 | 48,398 |
Jupiter Fund Management | Roger Yates | 29 Jul 22 | 125 | 125,240 |
Jupiter Fund Management | Dale Murray | 29 Jul 22 | 124 | 24,873 |
Jupiter Fund Management | Nichola Pease (ch) | 29 Jul 22 | 126 | 50,392 |
Mountview Estates | Mhairi Archibald | 21 Jul 22 | 13,300 | 39,900 |
Rio Tinto | Jakob Stausholm (ce) | 28 Jul 22 | 4,857 | 485,687 |
Southern Energy | Steven Smith | 26 Jul 22 | 55 | 69,225 |
The Restaurant Group | Loraine Woodhouse | 25 Jul 22 | 51 | 24,863 |
THG | Matt Moulding (ce) | 26 Jul 22 | 70 | 820,974 |
Venture Life | Paul Mcgreevy (ch) | 25 Jul 22 | 35 | 96,999 |
Wizz Air | William Franke (ch) | 22 Jul 22 | 1,901 | 1,901,000 |
Wizz Air | Andrew Broderick | 27 Jul 22 | 2,165 | 66,574
|
Sells | ||||
Company | Director/PDMR | Date | Price (p) | Aggregate value (£) |
Calnex Solutions | Ashleigh Greenan (cfo) | 25 Jul 22 | 158 | 33,223 |
Harbour Energy | R Blair Thomas (ch) | 20 Jul 22 | 349 | 5,567,290 |
Wise | Harsh Sinha (cto) | 21 Jul 22 | 424 | 106,083 |
*Spouse/Family/Close Associate. **Placing/open offer †Converted from $ / C$ |