Interesting question. Caveat: everyone's investment positions and situations are different, but you asked for personal perspectives. I've also been in the register for some time.
To me, investing is a business, and you need to be dispassionate about it. Whether I like what the Golden invest people are doing or not is irrelevant to the decision on what is best available option for investors like me. Likewise, an offer is only "compelling" relative to the other choices I have with respect to my money, whether in these shares or other ones.
I did sell some of my shares down in the market during the offer (but not most) and am leaning towards accepting the bid tomorrow for the remainder for the following reasons:
*Low hanging fruit already plucked, and am doubtful this stock can offer the "multiple baggers" return again that it has already done for me. Junior mining companies usually offer outsize returns for a few reasons: (i) superior assets, (ii) operational decisions (optimizing said assets) and (iii) improvements in underlying commodity(ies) markets and prices. I think that the Isaac Plains acquisition was great, great job bringing it into production and all of that, together with excellent timing re: coal market recovery, got the stock to where it went last year. But we've already "re-rated" from explorer to producer, and you can only do that once, you don't get the same pop again from the markets for that sort of operational change. Going forward, I see most of the upside in the stock going to be coming from continued coal market improvement only, I don't see management pulling another "IP rabbit" out of their top hats...
*Opportunities to try to recreate similar returns with other plays / other options using proceeds. Unlike Stanmore, there are other companies where I can try to get similar returns from both operational performance and commodity markets, where they will get re-ratings from bringing assets into production, as well as benefit from leverage to coal prices. So I can take my offer proceeds (and don't need to pay broker fees on the sale either, which is worth a couple pennies too), and either (i) invest in an earlier stage company which has better chance of having similar return profile, or (ii) if SMR share price goes down, I can consider reinvesting then (returns profile still constrained but maybe at a lower price than $0.95, it would be a compelling yield play, if share price goes back down to say $0.70 I might consider it for dividends and limited capital appreciation).
*Other large shareholders sold out (perhaps for same reason). Last year we saw Third Wave Investors sell their entire position (I think was c.15%) at around $0.80, and Great Group sell down almost all of their holding (although maybe they have sold remainder by now, not sure) at 0.95. And the company founder, and the MD when we bought Isaac Plains, Nick Jors, sold down most of his shares (St Lucia Resources) last year at prices below this Golden offer price. This is the guy who created the Isaac Plains complex strategy, seen him speak before, very impressive guy. And he thought last year was the best time to sell basically 5% of the company, after his own Isaac Plains asset was brought into production. So all of these larger investors (not that I always think that larger = smarter, but these are people with investment analysts, teams, who probably study the company as much or more than I do), some of who were in leadership or had director positions and were highly involved with Isaac Plains, they all decided to leave, in whole or in significant part, not to try to wait for $1.90 per share. That is telling to me that they probably disagree with current management / Board about the extent of future prospects (although I don't think the current Board believes in $1.40 to $1.90 either, that's just takeover bid defence tactics, not real numbers).
*Share price constraints going forward. While I know some people think the share price will immediately go up, I believe there is much more likely a chance of it going sharply down when the takover offer is over. And in the future, this stock will, because of what the Golden invest guys did to get a big stake already, never be able to get an "M&A target" premium in its shares again. The Golden guys are big coal miners in Asia, strategic investors, and our company will never get sold unless they agree or negotiate the price. That is obvious from the takeover bid, our advisors I'm sure spent months trying to get another acquiror at higher price (or I hope they were, that's their and the directors' job) but nothing every happened. I doubt this is from lack of effort, think the answer is that its almost impossible for a competing bidder to do something here. That will continue to be a limiting factor on the stock in the future. And this share buyback, while it might be good for share price short term, but we all need to realize that unless the Golden guys sell into it, this will only increase their shareholding in the company (using our money...) and make it even less likely that anyone else would try to buy us.
Anyway, everyone has different investment criteria and personal circumstances, but you asked for personal views, trust this was helpful.
SMR Price at posting:
95.5¢ Sentiment: Sell Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
