Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Westgold Resources has officially launched its takeover offer for fellow listed Musgrave Minerals, offering one of its own shares for every 5.37 Musgrave shares held.
Westgold flagged the unsolicited and conditional takeover offer for Musgrave, which implies an equity value of A$177.3-million for Musgrave, or 30c a share, representing a 30.5% premium to Musgragve’s five-day volume weighted average share price and a 33% premium to its 30-day volume weighted average share price.
In its bidder’s statement on Friday, Westgold argued that combining the assets from the two companies would provide a rapid, lower risk and capital efficient means for Musgrave shareholders to see the development of the company’s Cue gold project, and would materially reduce the capital burden timing and complexity associated with Musgrave seeking to independently finance, construct and operate a standalone processing hub within close proximity of two existing, fully operational processing hubs.
The suitor also stated that the transaction would remove inefficient duplication of processing infrastructure, reducing the A$121-million capital cost expenditures at Cue, while also expediting the benefits and increasing the certainty of employment, commercial opportunities and royalties that would flow into the community.
Musgrave on Friday again urged shareholders not to take any action, saying the company’s directors were carefully considering the unsolicited offer and would provide a target statement in the coming weeks.
Musgrave in April released a prefeasibility study for its Cue gold project, in Western Australia, estimating a gold production of 337 000 oz over the five-year mine life, with the first three years averaging 80 000 oz/y. The study estimated that the project would require a capital investment of A$121-million to develop the 500 000 t/y operation, with the pay-back period estimated at nine months.