plenty of interest, page-24

All,

The reason why you see AGL as a substantial holder is because they have a controlling stake in QGC. So their substantial in VPE is via the QGC stake (hence their holdings are exactly the same).

As for the 20% rule, I believe a company is only required to lodge a takeover notice once they have passed 20%. As I have seen several times in the past, predators sit just under 20% for a while and then look for the biggest block of shares available to them to kickstart their bid. After all, their chance of succeeding is far greater the more shares they hold to start with.

If you read back on some of my earlier posts, I pointed out that this possibility a while back - that ODN has become a listed investment fund by default, which is NOT part of its original objectives in their listing document. So unless they obtained a shareholder vote to change the nature of their company, or seek additional funds to explore the Spinel block, they would have had to sell out eventually. The risk has always been that QGC would be the most logical buyer of that block of shares as it would allow them to buy us out cheaply (just like their lowball offer for RPM). There was no way ODN would have offloaded their shares on market without killing the share price.

Having said that, this might just be the kickstart we needed to get the market to recognise our true value. We are a very different company to RPM - see my earlier post on what the implied value is for VPE from the RPM deal -

http://hotcopper.com.au/post_single.asp?fid=1&tid=689548&msgno=2978407#2978407

If you read that post in thread view, you'd see a long and detailed discussion back then as to the possibility of a QGC offer.

Bearing in mind that since my post above on the implied value of VPE from thr RPM deal, we have had significant success at Growler which has resulted in sharp increases in cashflow as well as reserve, and additional cashflow from Cuisinier. Now that Warhawk has found oil, and the Growler-Wirraway-Warhawk story may eventuate (though still early days), we have indeed turned a corner.

Why wouldn't QGC and ODN make a deal? QGC gets VPE for 150mn say (38cps), keep all VPE's CSG asset and flog off the oil asset to ODN (who would be VERY interested since they have absolutely nothing of substance) at say AUD25 per barrel of 2P reserve which, given the reserve upgrade at Growler to 3MBO, will bring VPE's total 2P to about 2.5MBO (including Jingemia, Cuisinier, Western margin fairway, etc). This comes to about 63mn. So ODN gets all the oil producing asset as well as acreage cheaply, and QGC walks away with VPE's CSG acreage for a mere 87mn.

Win-win for everyone except VPE holders. Of course, I suspect if this is the case, QGC will do this via scrip swap and pump the idea that we'll be able to share their growth upside. But what we have to consider is that our leverage is completely shot. A 200BCF reserve certification will result in far greater value-add for a 70mn company than a 4bn company.

Anyway, this is all conjecture for now. Let's see who bought that 15.4% stake. For those who haven't quiet clicked... ODN's 50mn share did represent over 18% of VPE, but this was diluted to 15.4% after the large placement to QGC.

This article by Peter Strachan was posted on the NDO board by another poster. It highlights just how cheap small caps oilies have become -

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:I9GfKRiTn8UJ:www.wabusinessnews.com.au/story/2/66929/Short-term-gain-long-term-pain-ahead+Short-term+gain,+long-term+pain+ahead&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au

Have a good weekend :o)

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