Financial Post - FCU now a 'Clear Takeout Target' Fission Uranium a clear takeout target after Alpha deal
By Peter Koven, National Post December 10, 2013 – 1:31 pm ET
Fission Uranium Corp. on Monday completed its friendly acquisition of Alpha Minerals Inc., which gives the company full ownership of the Patterson Lake South (PLS) discovery in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin.
This is important, because, as Raymond James analyst David Sadowski sees it, PLS is the last known “high grade, easily open-pittable uranium asset left un-mined in the world.” He also said it should operate with extremely low cash costs and still has plenty of exploration upside.
“Such attributes make it a top prize for many suitors, including the Basin’s existing major producers, miners considering a maiden Basin foothold, or even Asian nuclear utilities,” Mr. Sadowski said in a note. “Assuming exploration momentum continues, we would be surprised if a bid did not materialize in the next two years.”
Based on exploration to date, he calculated Fission and Alpha have identified 30 million pounds of contained uranium at a grade of 2.2%. However, he expects that estimate to rise by as much as five to 10 million pounds by the end of the year.
He is even more bullish after that. He thinks drilling results over the next six to 12 months will provide visibility on 80 million pounds of contained metal. And in the longer term, he believes that more than 100 million pounds is likely.
“However, we estimate the market is currently ascribing nil exploration upside,” Mr. Sadowski said.
He upgraded Fission to strong buy from outperform and hiked his price target 11% to $2 a share.