RE:RE:Buyout Price ??? - I would not worry much about the OS. I would pay attention to FD with many cheap wts and opts, since these would bring in significant dilution without much cash influx to the company Treasury. So, just take AZX with what it has, some 500Ms (see March Corp Presentation, slide 13, this slide seems to give the up-to-date numbers...AZX does not seem to pay much attention to consistencies. In some other pubilication they still have some outdated info, may be that the reason for one poster to quote some 300s M shares. So there is a need to verify/double check the info). If it has lots of shares then you would buy many shares. It the $ value that you would want to spend, as long as the shares are liquid enough, e.g. Cost of 100,000 shares is only $7k @ 0.07/s, and 1M shares would set you back 70k (now that is getting serious for an "ordinary" investor).
- Potential acquirers don't not care about how many OS shares AZX has, it the market cap plus a premium. They may look at the opts and wts and may try not to go beyond the exercise price, if the number is large. If not, they just don't care.
- If they offer cash, then they would be careful about the premium (50% premium). If they offer would involve share exchange the they would be a bit more generous with the offer, if they like the potential of the deposit in the ground (could be 70% or more).
- Prospect for AZX to be acquired? I would say there is a good chance, with the golden parachutes strapped on (400k, 300k and 275k for the 3 execs) and the appointment of the new Chairman (Gundy, with expertise in M&A). It all depend on the key major investor (AEM with 8%). It's the major player in the neighbourhood with Goldex just up the road (and a nice deposit in Akasba West they bought (cheap) from AZX for $5M). If AEM is not happy with Owens then it may want to initiate some kind of "change of control" to bring in some new player to run AZX more aggressively.
- Potential candidates: Two candidates come to mind: ICG or PRB. They/AEM just merge AZX with one of the companies with some reasonable premium (say 50%) and let deJong or Palmer to bring in more drills (say 6 drills,rather than just 1 drill) to make Swiss cheese out of Orenada (and go deep). You would need to think big to grow a big deposit, and either de Jong and Palmer has the track record. These two gentlemen, can raise serious money (not $5M at a time). Btw, if Sprott has a 50 - 70% premium offer, it may just sell its 8.5% stake, and happily walk away to start another deal somewhere else.
- It is not expected that AZX shareholders would get a huge reward in one shot. The first round would be a change of control, for 50-70% gain. The second round would come from the share apprecation from either ICG or PRB (or they can share
As a major producer, AEM would not want to take over AZX directly (too small), it just wants a more aggressive proxy like ICG or PRB to do the exploration, the heavy lifting, but mundane stuff and work, for them. AZX management has control of 2% and insiders/children/friends have about 4% for a total of 6%, but that would not be enough to block AEM and allies... and disgrunted/opportunistic shareholders (a 1M share count would give 0.2% of the company, 10 shareholders with 1Ms each would make 2% = Teck or Iamgold stature (see slide 13, Mar Corp Presentation).
GH