There are 2 parties; that is clear. One should be SFR and the other could be IGO or WGX or MLX or OZL.
The fact that specialised corporate and mining solicitors have been consulted sends a clear message that this is serious corporate stuff, but it's not necessarily a takeover situation imo. On that particular subject, there would be absolutely no point in making an overture like that without having canvassed most, if not all, of the top 20 holders and got their OK. They are the ones that would have to be swayed so as to give it some traction. I have the feeling though that that has not happened. However, I am not top 20, so that's a guess on my part.
The company has stated this in previous releases:
Potential to develop worthwhile synergies with regional players. The regional players are SFR, WGX, IGO, THX and HOR. A non-regional player such as MLX may suit a synergy too because of it now being a copper producer in WA at Nifty, although about 400kms north of the Bryah Basin.
SFR is the stand-out interested party. It has a quite new (5 years) copper plant at DeGrussa and is chasing feed.
HOR is a merger possibility but I hope not for a few reasons..
THX looks like it has lost interest in Red Bore and so not it. Its Bryah assets are for SFR to consume anyway.
IGO has been slowly exploring for VHMS near Peak Hill to the west of DeGrussa in a farm-in with ALY but doesn't seem very active, so I'm counting it out too.
WGX is a dedicated gold explorer and producer owning, amongst others, the Fortnum plant and surrounds, but it recently relinquished its 1st right of refusal over all RNI tenements so it has to be a query. Why it dropped that right is still a mystery though so it could be involved somehow. This frame is from a very recent Preso in Europe.
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It is about to produce gold. There is gold at F-W-BB, but for the 80% owned by RNI (FEL 20%), WGX has the gold rights. That fact puts RNI and WGX inextricably together until they agree to terminate the arrangement. Therefore, there is an existing contractual relationship between RNI and WGX. How that works out from a cost-sharing view should minable gold be found is not known; but what is known is that FEL is free-carried until "Decision to Mine". That will an interesting situation should that event occur.
The fact that WGX already has the gold rights at F-W-BB and is a dedicated goldie should mean that it would not be interested in any 'new' synergy.
That leaves a non-Bryah resident in MLX as a potential interested party and being a copper producer now in WA gives it some cred. It's also a sister company of WGX; same non-exec Ch in Peter Newton etc etc. It could very well want to go copper exploring in the Bryah and RNI would be the only real target for it and also WGX has stepped aside for it maybe.
Another party could be Oz Minerals - OZL. It was a big holder in SFR following a placement some years ago and sold at a profit, but only after it failed to get a rep on the Board, or so I hear. Maybe OZL wants in. This is from its website and it has a market cap of 2.45b
OZ Minerals headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia, is a world-class mining business that focuses on copper extraction.
The company owns and operates Prominent Hill – a high quality copper-gold mine, and Carrapateena – a copper-gold exploration project at an advanced development stage – both in our home state of South Australia. The company has a substantial cash balance and is debt free.
