Whilst I am logged in, I thought the following graph might be...

Whilst I am logged in, I thought the following graph might be instructive. No doubt those who believe that the right price for a takeover of STX is north of $0.80 will immediately start to offer dark mutterings about my motives. I also accept that with all charts, there is plenty of room for different views and interpretations. What is however clear is that Strike's share price did not start to climb above the long run $0.25 per share when it launched its bid. It was not until Hancock launched its bid that its price started to rise. It plateaued somewhat when it appeared that Hancock were not going to increase above $0.28 a share and then climbed a little. In early February 2023 when the Hancock bid was increased to $0.36 a share, the Strike share price had reached parity with WGO at $0.36 by dropping from $0.41. It is irrelevant for the purposes of this analysis what happened afterwards. We all know that the STX price increased, and then collapsed as soon as bad news emanated from SE2 and 3.

My point in posting this is simply to question how much latent value the market might actually see in Strike's share price. Undeniably, it rose fast from running in parallel with the Warrego bid escalator - but did the market perceive anything of material value beyond the potential of a merger with WGO? Another way of looking at this is to note that the share price now is back nearer the pre-Warrego takeover auction froth. (The X axis on the graph for those without an electron microscope is 10 Oct 2022 to 7 Feb 2023).