"The issue is Not whether they raised, the issue is whether...

"The issue is Not whether they raised, the issue is whether after the raise, whether they can add value.  That comes down to the quality of management and a bit of luck with the drill."

More than that, add in luck with oil price. Patience of investors wanting to see first oil etc.

These hype cycles around companies remind me a lot of Ophir, Karoon and companies like that which had fantastic runs of discoveries, a huge amount of good will built in, an oil crash, slow down in exploration and lack of real success following led to a valuation of less than 10% previous highs. It is rare for a company in the stage of the cycle that CVN is in at the moment to actually get to production and grow from that. Possible - yes, but there is a huge amount of luck that has to go CVN's way.

The bet with CVN / any small E&P is that 1) they continue making discoveries (thus hold investors interest), 2) oil price holds up, 3) investors remain patient that raising aren't at too low a price, 4) that appraisal wells are positive. Any of these 4 points fail, and no quality of management helps. Two or more of these points fail, like we've seen with Ophir and Karoon, it's easy to see a world where CVN is forced seller of it's Dorado asset in a weak M&A market, and back to a 3c explorer. In fact in offshore oil and gas, this happens far more often than that companies actually make it through to production.

My point on talking about CVN CR is that valuing assets on a per share basis is not really a good approach with micro-caps because they don't have the funds to go to the next step, WPL raised to fund a development which has a high ROI and is a growth avenue for the business. The last time WPL raised before this was for Pluto, raising for a growth project where the return on investment is significantly above the dilution is normal in business, and really not comparable to raising for day to day operations. How can you value Dorado per share if you don't know how many shares will be on issue at first oil - assuming CVN takes it to first oil. This is a very different question.

I'm more than aware a lot of CVN shareholders benefited with the Dorado discovery, but we are talking about the future not the past and the whole premise of this thread has been on long term holding. In 10 years time - what is the chance you will have made money on CVN if you bought now? what about 20 years? Any discussion on spec stocks should not preclude talking about the risks in spec stock investing - yet you seem to argue that I shouldn't raise these risks. The last thing I want to see is people going to blue chip forums and taking risks they didn't fully understand with microcaps. You are trying to sell an investment thesis based on the past success, but that's a formula proven unreliable in this business time and again.