I posted this on Advfn but it applies here too...25 Feb 2020 05:55
People really do need to stop worrying (unless they’ve invested more than they can afford to lose, which is the cardinal sin of investing) and go back to their normal lives.
CITIC were on board months ago (albeit not formerly engaged) working on a deal behind the scenes. The sp had jumped from 0.5p up to 7p on no actual news, just speculation. There’s been very high numbers spat out about our sale price and the market was getting volatile off the back of no news.
We have a huge asset worth a large amount of money (even without the flanks as that still hasn’t been confirmed). It’s obvious negotiations are taking place and we may / may not have already engaged CITIC formerly already. The reason for the suspension is that anything that may materially affect the sp has to be RNS’d. If trading is suspended, updates do not have to be provided. An example being if an offer came in, this has to be publicised and could severely reduce you negotiating positions with other parties. One party could put an offer in for us for $500 million, we would then have to publicise the information. Party number 2 will definitely not be offering $2 billion if he knows what else is on the table. If there was only one interested party or offers were going to be similar in nature trading wouldn’t have been suspended. Considering here we may potentially receive an offer of £1/share (which would shoot us up to near that value), we may end up accepting an offer of a nothing other than a JV with a free carry to production (which would drop us potentially back to lower than 10p).
It’s unlikely that we’ll go back on the market at all, unless we do indeed enter into a JV. The most likely outcome is a couple of offers come in, a general meeting will then be held to vote on acceptance (which will get passed).
We could be here for days, weeks, months and potentially even in to next year. Worrying for this amount of time isn’t heathy. Just remember the fundamentals, we have billions of dollars of materials in situ (even without the flanks). If no sale emerges and we don’t get the flanks, who cares, we’re still worth considerably more than the last share price.
Last point to note, don’t listen to any doom & gloomers, they are just trolling you and feeding off any worrying they can sense. So stop worrying and sit patiently for the good news coming our way! :)