Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
3 Feb 2014material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Arete got its first bank money: a $1.5 million CityWide Bank line secured on seven wells, a third party's $500,000 deposit and the personal guarantee of chief executive Nicholas Scheidt. It also turned the scattered director advances into formal notes and pushed back what it owed Burlingame.
Another Campbell County well and its three leases went for about $1.0 million, a $380,000 gain, with a 1.75% royalty retained - more of the 2011 package sold to raise cash.
Arete took working interests of about 1% each in three horizontal wells to be drilled in Campbell County, Wyoming - its first step back towards drilling after two years of selling assets, though at stakes too small to move the company either way.
Burlingame Equity Investors Master Fund, LP, Burlingame Equity Investors II, LP, Burlingame Asset Management, LLC, Blair E. Sanford reported a ARETE INDUSTRIES INC shareholding of 1,460,000 shares (11.10% of votes) in a periodic institutional filing.
To escape the 15% preferred issued in 2011, Arete cut its conversion price from $3.35 to $0.75 and holders - the Burlingame funds plus directors Davis and Scheidt - swapped 497.5 preferred shares for 5.2 million ordinary shares and gave up their dividends. Heavy dilution bought an end to the dividend drain.
A second and larger loan from Scheidt's Apex Financial, $1 million at 7.5% on the same three-quarters-of-income security. Scheidt is now chief executive, so Arete's main lender and its boss are the same man.
Arete borrowed $455,000 at 12% from Apex Financial, owned by shareholder and consultant Nicholas Scheidt, pledging three-quarters of all oil and gas income and of any future asset-sale proceeds. Expensive insider money, on terms that leave little cash for anything else.
Arete sold a Niobrara County, Wyoming well and its 1,897-acre lease for about $1.1 million, a roughly $750,000 gain, keeping a 2.575% royalty. The pattern set in 2011 continued: fund the debt by selling off pieces of what was just bought.
7 Oct 2011asset acquisition disposition▲ GoodMajor
Arete made the final payment on 30 September and completed the DNR and Tindall purchase, funded by breaking escrow on a private placement that raised $5.2 million of 15% convertible preferred stock. A deal signed in 2009 was finally paid for, at the price of expensive preferred ranking ahead of ordinary shareholders.
A second amendment pushed the September instalment back a fortnight but pulled the final payment forward to the same date - the sellers effectively demanding the whole remaining balance on 30 September.