Now, hummms. You made a bold statement - “No hostile takeover would ever succeed.”
As much as I hate typing and am at an age where I need to take a nap at the end of each paragraph, I’ll use copy and paste to provide this information.
You do know,
IRD’s major shareholder with a combined holding of over 70% are the Sentient Global Resources Funds. Sentient is recognised as patient, long-term focused and committed business builders in the resources industry across the globe. The majority of Sentient Fund IV’s US$1.3BN capital was raised from US institutions. Sentient were early investors in the advent of coal seam gas developments in Queensland via Queensland Gas (QGC) which was ultimately taken over by British Gas in a multi-billion dollar transaction. Similarly, Sentient were early investors in Andean Resources in Argentina which was also acquired in another multi-billion dollar transaction by gold industry major Goldcorp. Sentient has had a position in IRD since providing seed capital prior to IRD’s 2008 IPO.
If I knew how I would have highlighted the words taken over and acquired above.
I’ll put it to you that I don’t think that Sentient will be holding their shares until dividends are paid by IRD after successfully going to production. I can’t also see them selling a few of their 577,679,589 shares to fund their annual Xmas party. It’s more likely that when the time is right a negotiation may result in someone else buying in to get that majority ownership, with mutual benefits to all other share holders, of course.
I respect your level of research that enabled you to direct me to an ASX announcement from 2013 to make a reference to the Gawler Craton iron project. That’s 8+ years and 300+ announcements ago. That’s impressively freaky.
It’s not the first time other parties have shown interest in the resources but it may well be the first time IRD has actually provided terms to a party interested in a farm in agreement on Gawler!
As Goldstar mentioned previously, a farm in would be exceptional as it would unlock non-dilutive funding for IRD. CEIP is the flagship project and it’s unlikely IRD would touch Gawler anytime soon, if ever given the long LOM at CEIP.
NOTE : the info about Sentient was taken from the Wiseowl analysis of IRD, a good read if you are new to IRD and need a summary
https://wise-owl.com/reports/with-a-rocketing-iron-ore-price-it-could-be-irds-time/
