Icon Energy appoints Jeffrey Marvin to board after posting $4.36m HY loss, $4.25m liabilities

Listed Gold Coast gas explorer Icon Energy has appointed its first new director in more than a decade as the company sputters its way towards a crucial court hearing.

Unsuccessful resources explorer Icon Energy has appointed its first new director in more than 12 years.

In an announcement late on Friday, Icon said Jeffrey Marvin would join the board as a non-executive director effective immediately.

Laguna Beach-born Mr Marvin is also currently non-executive director at ASX-listed small cap Greenwing Resources, formerly called Bass Metals, which has lithium and graphite projects in Argentina and Madagascar.

Greenwing made headlines earlier this year when it finalised a $12m share placement to Chinese electric vehicle maker NIO.

Mr Marvin did not hold any shares in Icon at the time of the announcement.

Icon has not appointed a new board member since 2011, when Kevin Jih and Howard Lu joined.

Mr Jih resigned in 2019, along with Derek Murphy who had been on the board since 2009, while Mr Lu resigned in 2020.

Dr Keith Hilless bowed out in November 2022 after more than 13 years with the company.

Icon Energy on life support as court matter drawn out

March 31, 2023: The founder of listed Gold Coast gas explorer Icon Energy has tipped in $520,000 as the company sputters its way towards a June court hearing to salvage its last remaining asset.

Icon’s directors were left scrambling to rescue the company after it lost access to its only gas tenement when the Queensland Department of Resources rejected an application to renew its permit.

Icon’s ATP855 tenement, in the Cooper Basin, had already been in expensive limbo since a joint venture with Chevron and Beach Energy fell over in 2015 and the company has logged consecutive losses for at least a decade.

Shares in Icon, which traded as high as 52c in 2009, were trading at .07c on Thursday.

Icon has filed an application with the Supreme Court appealing the permit rejection and told shareholders it was confident of winning, despite being “advised that it has a 50 per cent chance of success”.

Ray James. Picture: Mike Batterham

The ASX suspended Icon from trading from March 17 until March 27 after it failed to lodge its half-year reports on time.

When it did lodge the reports, it revealed the bottom-line blow which landed when the licence was rejected.

Icon logged a $4.36m half-year net loss as the tenement was “completely written off” as an asset that had been worth $3.45m.

The company incurred $440,000 in administration expenses in the six months to December 31 and had $1.6m in cash.

While its assets evaporated, the opposite was true of its liabilities, with $4.25m in site restoration provisions shifting from non-current to current.

Icon is obliged to decommission and rehabilitate six wells on the tenement.

Icon had $1.9m in net liabilities and accumulated losses $2m more than its issued capital.

The reports revealed the company had renewed its office lease for another six months and founding director Ray James had given it a $520,000 unsecured, interest-free loan.

Icon has come under fire in past years for spending five times as much on staff expenses as it did on resource exploration.

In January 2020, the company elected not to renew the executive contract of Mr James, who had been paid as much as $649,000 a year.

Only Mr James and chairman Stephen Barry remain as founding directors after Dr Keith Hilless bowed out in November after more than 13 years with the company.