For the loan I think there was originally an interco and I suspect that on top of that the money generated by Gazonor was used to pay the company expenses and that it was treated as a loan, just a guess...
There is no question Transcor played hardball and that the GFC didn t help. I don t think however there was that much more value to extract from Gazonor even if they had kept the asset for themselves, maybe another few millions which would have not be very meaningful to the share price. To increase production you have to spend a lot of capex and you have many constrains in terms of amount of gas you are allowed to produce etc. They also have been talking to many other players and nobody came with a higher offer. I d love to see the valuation work on the asset done by Alvarez and Marsal. I d like to stress they keep the upside potential of the asset with the farm-in agreements.
My view is that the real value is in the exploration portfolio, mainly Lorraine, the CBM in Nord Pas de Calais and Jura. It certainly has more risks but the potential is enormous. In addition it has a strategic value for any global CBM company looking at Europe.
For the fund raising my guess is that they keep the shares suspended until all the paperwork has been signed and the shareholders' vote and that they work on a fund raising at the same time so they can announce the money has been raised when it trades again. My thinking is that if markets don t crash they do the fund raising around current prices. Let s see, next month should be interesting.
EPG Price at posting:
45.0¢ Sentiment: ST Buy Disclosure: Held