Ann: BOARD UNANIMOUSLY RECOMMEND RE-DOMICILIATION AND US LISTING, page-170

The spike in oil is playing right into our portfolio hedging strategy ... provided we execute and don't get greedy ... and to quote EM
"it’s functioning the way we think that it should or the way we’ve designed it to function". All italicised text is taken from Q2 Earnings Call transcript. Any bolding is mine for emphasis

No telling where the stock price could have been had not the ILL-TIMED unanimous board decision been taken and announced.

Before jumping down my throat on this ....
note that SEA provided "a slide in here that talks to some of the reasons why we think that may be beneficial to our shareholders" and the key here is "may be beneficial" and not WILL BE.

"US listing allows us to have a US currency or accept the US currency for either an acquisition or in the case of you’re selling the company that makes it a lot easier to have two US domiciled companies transacting in script for stock based deals versus having a US and an Australian based company doing that."

That's the potential benefit for the monetization on exit ... accepting the script of another US company???. Say a well known successful EFS company like Marathon Oil makes a script based offer ... and now you have exchanged your new US listed SEA equivalent shares for MRO. Well OK then for everyone who touts its easy to trade US stocks (which is true) what the hell is stopping from buying MRO now? Go buy it. It already has all the advantages ... no need to cry that such advantages are not available to everyone right now ... they are there for the taking right now. You just have to buy the right stocks ... right?

"Certainly if there is an opportunity to increase scale by issuing our stock as we can find an accretive transaction which I think today is probably challenging but if we could find an accretive transaction, I think potential sellers will be much more likely to be interested in US stock at least from the feedback we’ve gotten.... the ability to issue stock to somebody if it make sense and in an acquisition. "

Now's that a far more likely thing to happen. Grow the company by issuing equity (just remember that it is a capital raise and dilutive to existing equity holders per se ... depends on the price of asset being acquired and the return it will generate). So the purpose of redomiciling is really about easier access to capital and we should all already be well versed in what that means, But as noted, finding such as accretive transaction is challenging presently ... making the comment about timing from Chris's broker all the more salient.



There is little to no cost savings in G&A for SEA ... as pointed out by the company

"I don’t think this is huge G&A impact to being listed the way we are today, there may be some savings around the edges but we don’t really anticipate a material difference, our staff today does both the GAAP and the SEC and the IFRS stuff in Australia that we need to and we'd really just be shifting staff from Australian compliance to US compliance. So, if we do make that shift, we don’t anticipate any major G&A savings."

So IMO the redomiciling process is motivated by the balance sheet. The broker comment wrt "we would then expect the stock to start to be re-rated on the Nasdaq (where it should outperform the poor implied valuation it has been trading on in Australia)" is a common one. The US markets are much more competitive. It might re-rate and it might not.

In summary, if you want to hold US stocks then just do it. I hold, amongst many, COP, RDS.B, CHK, DVN, CNQ, KMI, WMB and even SNDE... its not hard and its not expensive. Each investment has its own rationale. My owning SEA.AX is for an ASX portfolio. If I want greater exposure elsewhere I would do it directly and not indirectly via this redomiciling exercise and I believe there are many who feel the same way.

Is it too much to expect to crash through 30cps by end of week?