RE:TAKEOVER?A TO of AZX has been speculated by various people. The main reason seems to be that management seems to be entrenched in its old way of doing things, and does not seem to be able to unlock the value of the land packages. This is typical for a founder of the company who would consider that the company is his own. We have quite a few examples around, including one recent one was ER where the was a shareholder revolt, resulting in ICG coming in as a white knight... and founder and his wife were pushed out. This could happen here.
AZX has an excellent land package and proven deposits to show the world...a total RE of almost 2.5 M oz Au and AuEq is nothing to sneeze at. Even though they are scattered around many provinces, with some discipline and strong focus on the core business, some of the non-cores could be divested to get some cash to its treasury (e.g. two deposits in Manitoba). Mangement has been talking about it but is reluctant to bite the bullet. One exception is the recently announced JV with PRB. But, the NR could have written in a much more positive, rather than a half-hearted way. They should concetratre on the JV, by stating all the details (don't make people guess that Sleepy is part of the package. This is fine, it's just like selling 60% of Sleepy for $5M exploration money by PRB and PRB has to do all the work on the JV land). For those interested in more details, here is the link to PRB NR.
https://www.probemetals.com/news/2016/probe-metals-options-the-cadillac-break-east-property-from-alexandria-minerals-corporation-1/
So, PRB has a foot hold in AZX. It would be a fair to guess that PRB knows a lot about AZX and would consider AZX a juicy target for acquisition. It would not be a hostile TO, but a friendly merger.
Essentially, it's a change in management direction to unlock the value for sahreholders. According to the 1 November 2016 Corp Presentation (slide 15), the lead holder is AEM with 9%, Teck & IMG have 2% each, management 8%, other high-networth investors 50%.
If PRB came with a reasonable merger proposal it would have the support of AEM and the other two major companies (PRB is in good term with AEM...and G, which has 14% of PRB) and other shareholders as well, since they want better value for their investment, noting that the SP has been in the range of 0.02 to 0.05 with a brief peak at around 0.115 during the last year. The price tag is not really a big deal (PRB stock swap could be advantageous for better tax management), a reasonable premium of say around 30%, say between $20-30M (for a total of 500M shares, the higher limit would include the 100M shares from the latest PP) would get a yes vote, even from management if the founder is offered a reasonable position in the future arrangement.
The AZX horse is good, but a different rider may have a better chance to win the race.
PRB is one potential suitor. the next door neighbour ICG is the other one. Just observing.
GH