PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The directors of ASX-listed uranium explorer Energia Minerals have advised shareholders to reject a takeover offer by fellow-listed Cauldron Energy after an independent expert found that the offer was neither fair, nor reasonable.
In March, Cauldron made a play for Energia, offering shareholders one of its own shares for every eight Energia shares held.
When the offer was announced, it was a 30% premium to the closing price of Energia shares on March 14, and implied a value of A$0.034 a share.
However, Energia directors said in a letter to shareholders on Monday that the independent expert valued Energia shares at between $0.09 and A$0.26 a share. Based on Cauldron’s share price on May 22, the offer implied a value of A$0.12 a share for Energia’s shares, which the directors pointed out was a 40% discount to the company’s share price on the same date.
The letter also said that its largest shareholders and the directors, which hold a combined 51.97% of the company, would not accept the Cauldron offer, which meant that the suit would not succeed in its current form.
Energia currently had an inferred mineral resource of 16.9-million tons, at 350 parts per million uranium oxide (U3O8) for 13-million pounds of U3O8 at the Carley Bore deposit at its Nyang project.
Cauldron, in turn, recently announced an exploration target of between 30-million and 115-million pounds of U3O8 at its wholly owned Yanrey project, in Western Australia, which is adjacent to the Nyang deposit.