RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Owning COS vs SUSupply and demand is what sets prices. And right now, there's not a lot of company in the position as Suncor and Imperial that have cash and a reasonable share price to take advantage of low oil price to buy out weaker companies. If there's 25 interested parties out there, than we're wasting our time debating this as COS should get an offer over 9$. Right now, investors are not overly optimistic as it's trading below Suncor's offer.
Depending how bad Suncor wants the assets, they will up their bid at least to the level they made the offer in April 2016 as I don't think shareholders will sell at Suncor's current offer. But it goes both ways; if the barrel of oil would have increased to $100 from the 50$ back in April, COS would tell Suncor it will take 30$ a share now for a buyout. Suncor made an offer below the April offer because oil prices are lower than back in April. There's nothing wrong paying a premium to today's valuation to get an assets you want; the question here is what should be the valuation in the current environment. Again supply and demand and how badly Suncor wants it should determine this. If there's no other offer and Suncor refuses to up it's offer than COS will have to continue as an independant company. And without no take over premium it will more than likely trade lower unless oil price starts reversing their trend.
I found funny that people calls out Steve William for wanting to take advantage of the situation; this is business and when I buy shares of companies on the stock market, I hope management is smart enough to get the best offers when it goes out and buy out other companies. Does it make investors bad people for not wanting to pay $350 for Valeant in August but taking advantage of the situation and buying them at $100 in the past month. Who knows, Valeant could have more problem and trade at $50 in a month just like oil prices can stay low for a longer period or Syncrude continue to have operating problems.
COS has a higher beta and should outperform Suncor in an rising oil price environment; but we can't forget that operating issues at Syncrude will affect COS share price a lot more than it would Suncor's as it wouldn't be the only asset for Suncor as it is for COS. What I am saying is just because COS has an higher sensitivity to oil price than Suncor, that alone doesn't guarantee you outperform Suncor which is exactly what happened from 2008 to 2013 when Suncor outperformed COS in an rising price environment