Hi Cas68erIt's higher than that as the 11M figure you quote only...

Hi Cas68er
It's higher than that as the 11M figure you quote only accounts for the Australian listed shares. The Australian listing is a secondary listing...the primary listing is still on the TSX in Canada. According to the company website, there are 354M shares on issue, so more like a $35M market cap.

Still a small morsel for DEG, but there are probably a few reasons why they haven't gone down this route. NVO management are not exactly the best in the business, they have delivered little after many years, and presided over massive value destruction chasing after "conglomerate gold" and every other hot story under the sun (battery metals, rare earths etc), and shown little respect for shareholder funds.

I suspect NVO may also have some liability for cleaning up their Nullagine Gold Project and mill site (which they wasted over $150M on and never got it running at a commercially viable level). So it might be better for DEG just go slow on the drilling over the 4 year timeframe allowed by back-ending the spend, and patiently wait for NVO to squander their remaining cash on further flights of fancy, then buy out the other 50% when they're desperate to raise further cash to keep the lights on.

NVO claim to have $11M in cash and another $46M in securities, but it's all in speccy high risk stuff, and according to their last presentation, $45M of this $46M is in unlisted securities which may have very imaginative, inaccurate valuations and which almost certainly can't be converted to cash any time soon. So realistically, NVO have slightly more than $11M in cash...and their share price is in the toilet, so a cap raise is going to be very dilutive if they can even get one away. I'd wager NVO will be a forced seller within the 4 year timeframe DEG have available to do such a deal.