Trying to explore some reasons why baosteel might want to take ioh out.
Clearly you you have synergies from the buck lands deposit being contiguous to the Aquila deposit.
They might see see bci being a lowball offer particularly with iohs cash backing of 50m and iron valley about to produce. They paid roughly 500m for a 15 mtpa share of the aqa joint venture. Bucklands will produce 8mtpa. Bci are paying around 150m for that if you take 50m in cash and say 50m for iron valley from the 250m offer. Seems quite cheap on that metric. Clearly though back of the envelope calcs.
Then they probably more importantly can control how the west pilbara gets developed. Mothball Cape Preston so that juniors have no alternative but to use port anketel or use it as a potential alternative project. Rail access to a 20mtpa Cape Preston port perhaps. But are they willing to pay for this control when there is billions to be spent on anketel? And particularly when not surprisingly bci is already flagging joining the aqa rail solution. Seems all a bit far fetched and not surprisingly the market thinks there won't be a counter offer. But an all cash bid at a premium to the bci offer would be very interesting indeed.
IOH Price at posting:
$1.33 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
