I think it is 99% certain they received the offer and rejected it,
prior to tapping the ATM. The answer is in the timing of today’s announcement.
When a company taps an ATM facility they have to issue three announcements:
- the price-sensitive announcement
- the appendix 2A ('application for quotation of securities')
- the secondary trading notice (declaring there is no information to be disclosed to investors)
These announcements always get released at the same time, and Galan has been no different. The exception is where they have used the 'offset' shares Acuity hold to draw down, so they only need to issue the announcement, not the appendix 2A or the secondary notice (for an example of this, see 30 August 2024). But in any other normal ATM tap, all three announcements come out together... except not this time. This time they release 1) and 2) on 28 March, but not 3). Three full trading days passed before they then have to release a price-sensitive secondary notice (very unusual) and admit there was some market-relevant information that had to be disclosed.
This strongly suggests the company tapped the ATM but then realized when it came to release the three relevant announcements, they would have to disclose the offer… and hence the time delay as the board determined how they should do this. This is why I think they have major disclosure problems. I'd opine that they had no intention whatsoever to even disclose this offer to investors, and were only forced to by the ATM tap, when the CoSec went to file a form and realised he had a problem. cc:
@GARETH78
(20min delay)