Thoughts on TakeoverNot too sure if a takeover is in the works here. What management has said as to why the JV is delayed does make sense (ie. working through the agreement and detailed spending allocations). Furthermore, if Murphy was interested in Ath altogether I don't think the JV would have been announced in the first place - they would have just announced a sale agreement when ready (I am sure they would have opened with the takeover offer which got whittled down to JV discussions).
If a takover were to happen, a 30% premium to the share price right now is certainly not going to do it and I am confident the Board would say no (and rightfully so) due to other companies being opportunistic. HS1 is not making money currently but any valuation would still need to take into account the future cash flows of this asset at higher commodity prices (whether it be based on forward curves etc). I am confident that given the operating horizon of the project it is positive NPV (and buyers that are not capital constrained have clear line of sight to expansion). Last thing is the massive tax pools they are sitting on ($2.8b) - a tax loss buyer would assign $2.8b * 25% = $700m in value to this immediately. Mix all of those factors together with high cash balance, if a takeover offer were to be put forward today, I would suspect it would need to be in the $3 range to get it done and approved (possibly slightly higher).