UK 05:48 Tuesday, 6 October 2026
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Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Today’s epic disaster of an annual report from Range Resources (RRL) cannot have come as a shock to anyone. Worse is still to come. By any stretch of the imagination Range is vastly overvalued. At 1.07p (last seen), Range is valued at £53.4million. The company has just announced a $102.5million loss, has never been able to cover its costs, has substantially written down the value of its “assets” and has just been forced to borrow another $15million (what happened to the “game-changing” LandOcean deal?!). To top it all off Chief Executive Rory Scott Russell made the hugely embarrassing admission the company is “unlikely to meet [his] previously stated target of an exit rate of 1,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of 2014”. Apparently Mr Scott Russell is now confident of achieving this goal in H1 of 2015. Given the steaming mountain of manure he has had to shovel his way through since he took charge of Range in February, perhaps Mr Scott Russell has earned a little leeway in hitting his production target. This doesn’t change Range’s overvaluation problem. Nor does it solve the cash flow problems. Nor does it answer a far more relevant question. Just what has happened to all of Range’s money?
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Comments
Duck and Dive
Come on – you boys are making this up. No BoD could be this incompetent, this profligate, this deceptive and still be running a market stall.
Mark
Ben, a very damning summary of range indeed. Could you tell me where this apparent £1m value for Texas is? I’m not having that at all, you’ve mixed up quite a few figures here, and let’s not forget as I pointed out to you last time, there is no OKAP, lots of these legacys are gone now, but obviously were still in place during the first few months of these accounts.
Ben Turney
@Duck and Dive – Indeed
@Mark – I’m happy to be corrected on any figures, but here is what you’ve asked for;
- The asset write downs are first described at the bottom of P.10 ($36.8million including Georgia and Texas)
- P.46 then goes on to say “At 30 June 2014 impairment losses of US$7,962,849…have been recognised in respect of Texas “
- Note 5 on P.48 confirms Range views Texas as a “discontinued operation”. It says “in 2013, the Company indicated that it is in the process of disposing of the Company’s North Chapman Ranch and East Texas Cotton Valley assets hence the transfer from producing assets to assets classified as held-for-sale in that accounting period.”
- Note 12 on Page 53 has a table of “Assets held for sale” – the line item for Texas says $1million, down from $8.7million the year before
- Page 70 has a table of continuing and discontinued operations, which confirms the $1million assets figure in the column for Texas
As for Okap, yes that is confirmed as a saving moving forward, but I don’t think you’ve read my piece properly. Read the paragraph after the list of expenditure.
Which other figures do you think are all over the place please?
Mark
Ben, iv no time today to go though some of your comments, I agree this is not the best time for Range, but I think your being slightly unfair as the company has changed since the old guard was booted out, these results include a multitude of disasters that were out if control of the new bod during the financial year, still agreed the new bod have let down us shareholders in many avenues. but barking on about some of the disasters of the past isn’t the fault of the new bod. Next set of results, yes, feel free to let rip
Ben Turney
@Mark – you entirely miss the point of this piece.
Range’s new BoD are to be congratulated on providing such a detailed set of accounts so shareholders finally can start to understand what the hell has happened to their money over the years. I expect to write follow up pieces comparing this set of accounts with previous ones.
As for the business model moving forward, what look like punishing royalty arrangements and the lack of increased production are serious challenges. These aren’t the fault of the current BoD, but it is no use pretending these facts don’t exist.
Please do provide a detailed critique of my piece, as I’m more than happy to defend the numbers I have presented.
Striebs
The previous administration took “director lifestyle” to a different level .
Absolute wrong’uns .
Bad things can happen to you when you mess with Perth’s underbelly .