Past year: ▲ 0%(0.01c – 0.01c USD)
Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
10 Apr 2019asset acquisition disposition▼ BadMajor
Short of working capital, Arete sold five small Kansas and Wyoming working interests for $300,000 to a truck-wash company half owned by its own chief executive, with the remaining directors negotiating the price. Its bank line was cut to $523,000 and extended to 2020 - and this turned out to be the last report Arete ever filed.
5 Dec 2017auditor change▼ BadMajor
Hein quit after a single year, having warned of substantial doubt about Arete's ability to keep operating and of material weaknesses in its controls; Haynie & Company took over. Three audit firms in eighteen months, with a going-concern warning attached to the last one.
31 Aug 2016auditor change● Neutral
Hein & Associates picked up the audit a week later, so the 2016 accounts had a signer.
24 Aug 2016auditor change▼ Bad
Causey Demgen & Moore declined to stand again - the second time the same firm had walked away from Arete, after 2004 - reporting no disagreements over the accounts.
23 Feb 2016asset acquisition disposition● NeutralMajor
The Wellstar purchase closed on 30 December, paid for with $1.7 million raised from a new 7% preferred issue. On the same day Arete settled with the Tucker, DNR and Tindall group for $303,329 in cash plus preferred shares, closing out what was left of the 2011 deal and ending five years of entanglement with director Charles Davis's companies.
3 Dec 2015material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Arete agreed to buy producing oil leases in Sumner County, Kansas and Kimball County, Nebraska from Wellstar for $1.1 million cash plus a million shares - its first acquisition since 2011 and, unusually, from a seller with no connection to its own directors.
10 July 2015listing compliance notice▼ Bad
ARETE INDUSTRIES INC withdrew a registration statement, abandoning the offering it covered.
11 July 2014material agreement▲ Good
Arete took roughly 1.45% and 0.33% interests in two more Wyoming horizontal wells, and confirmed the three wells it joined in November 2013 had been drilled, completed and were producing.
21 Feb 2014material agreement● Neutral
Arete bought back 1.2 million of its own shares - 8.9% of the register - from Burlingame at $0.19, with Scheidt, Prosser and Stewart taking a further 260,000 from the same seller. Insiders had converted debt at $8.00 a share three years earlier; the price now tells the real story.
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.
2 Jan 2014asset acquisition disposition▲ Good
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.
27 Nov 2013material agreement▲ Good
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.
5 July 2013capital raising announcement▼ BadMajor
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.
3 May 2013debt financing▼ BadMajor
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.
4 Oct 2012debt financing▼ BadMajor
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.
6 Feb 2012asset acquisition disposition▲ Good
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.
22 Sept 2011material agreement● Neutral
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.
29 Aug 2011asset acquisition disposition▲ GoodMajor
Arete sold part of the package it had only just bought for about $5.0 million, booking a $2.66 million gain, and put $3.7 million of it straight back to the sellers. The acquisition was in effect being paid for by breaking it up.
17 Aug 2011material agreement▼ Bad
Eleven weeks after closing, Arete could not make the first instalment on the $9.5 million seller note and had the deadline pushed from 15 to 31 August - the first of several extensions from a seller who is also a director of the company.
12 Aug 2011auditor change● Neutral
Arete dismissed Ronald Chadwick and brought back Causey Demgen & Moore - the firm that had stepped aside in 2004 - to audit the enlarged company. No disagreements were reported.
31 May 2011material agreement● NeutralMajor
The purchase first announced in 2009 finally closed at $10 million - but Arete put in only $500,000 of its own cash, with the sellers financing $9.5 million on a note due five weeks later and secured on the properties themselves. DNR is owned by Arete director Charles Davis.
2 May 2011capital raising announcement● Neutral
Three officers converted $500,000 the company owed them into 62,500 shares at $8.00, clearing debt without spending cash just as Arete was trying to fund the long-delayed DNR and Tindall purchase.
29 Apr 2009material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Arete signed a definitive agreement to buy 243 wells - 46 producing, 197 undeveloped - from the same DNR and Tindall group it first dealt with in 2005, far bigger than anything it had attempted before. The wells feed the Wyoming pipeline Arete already owned, but the deal would not actually close for another two years.
29 Sept 2006asset acquisition disposition▲ GoodMajor
Arete paid $330,000 for the TOP gathering system, 4.5 miles of pipeline in Wyoming's Powder River Basin carrying gas from 33 wells at about a third of its capacity - its first infrastructure asset. The $400,000 needed came from two of its own directors and one outsider, on terms that had not been agreed when the filing was made.
29 Aug 2006listing compliance notice▼ BadMajor
A late quarterly report got Arete thrown off the OTC Bulletin Board; it paid a $4,000 fee, appealed and won a hearing. Chronic late filing would follow the company for the rest of its life.
15 June 2006dividend declaration● NeutralMajor
Arete distributed its Avatar Technology Group subsidiary to shareholders as a share dividend, one Avatar share for every 975 Arete shares held - shedding the last of its non-energy businesses as it narrowed to oil and gas.
21 July 2005material agreement▲ Good
A third bolt-on in three months: $50,000 for working interests in five Chesapeake-operated Oklahoma wells, continuing the strategy of buying small producing cash flow instead of drilling.
30 June 2005material agreement● Neutral
The subsidiary bought a pool of small mineral and royalty interests across Colorado, Wyoming, Texas and Oklahoma for a $200,000 secured note - from a company owned by its own president, William Stewart, so not an arm's-length purchase.
23 May 2005material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Colorado Oil and Gas, Arete's majority-owned subsidiary, agreed to buy 13 producing wells across five Colorado fields from Tucker Family Investments, DNR Oil & Gas and Tindall Operating - the smaller, fundable deal promised when the Texas and Oklahoma prospects were dropped in March. Those same three sellers would be Arete's principal counterparty for the next decade.
