RE:RE:RE:RE:Question please Akita trades about 25,000 to 30,000 shares per day. In order to establish a meaningful position (for a wealthy person) of at least say 250,000 Akita shares, a person would have to buy every share available for at least 10 full days or half the daily shares for 20 full days. This would be very time consuming and would also move the Akita stock quite a bit, especially when people got wind that an “insider” was buying Akita shares. The only way for insiders to buy “meaningful” Akita positions is when an entity sells a block of shares or else bid for all of the shares of Akita. Linda Southern-Heathcott purchased such a block of 1,630,000 Akita shares 2 years ago at $1.50 per share. So obviously she believed that Akita shares were worth much more than $1.50 per share then. But, if she purchased the same amount on the open market it would have taken 65 days (1,630,000 shares/25,000 shares per day) of buying all the average daily shares available or 130 days of buying half the average daily shares available. And, of course, the Akita share price would have moved sharply higher after a few days when the market “caught wind” that she was buying.
The fact there have been no block purchases by the Southern family in the last few years could mean that there have been no substantial blocks available at current prices as there are no better alternatives in which to invest any Akita sale proceeds. It could also mean that the Southern family do not want to purchase the “blocks” available and are willing to have the Akita share price go down in order to soak up the blocks of shares for sale. The reason why the Southern family may want the Akita share price to go down is that they would want to make a bid for the 84% of Akita shares they do not own. The timing seems good now as the only time the Akita share price has been lower than the current $1.28/share in the last 20+ years was in 2020 and 2021, during covid, when the price of oil actually went negative. The prospects back then in 2020/2021 were probably the worst they have ever been for Akita and currently they are close to the best prospects that the drilling industry and Akita has seen in at least the last decade.
The $64.5M (33.6M shares X 1.28 per share X 1.5) purchase price for the 33.6M (40M X 84%) Akita shares not currently owned by the Southerns would represent a 50% premium to the current $1.28 Akita share price. If this price was rejected by the Akita shareholders, it would at least result in a floor for the Akita stock going forward of at least $1.92 - $2.10 per share. Therefore, it would be a win either way for the Southern family. Also, the Southern’s could easily pay for the $64.5M purchase price as they own well over $1 billion of Atco Ltd. stock which pays a 5% dividend each year, or about $50 million yearly to the Southern’s.