"It is the movement in the price that matters to my argument,...

"It is the movement in the price that matters to my argument, not the number of shares on issue."

So you are saying that if a company's share price stays at 10c over the course of 5 years say, but its total SOI has increased from 100mn to 1bn, it doesn't matter even though its market cap has increased from 10mn to 100mn?

"I would comment that I do try to avoid completely subjective assertions such as yours about the market applying a management discount to Warrego."

You are correct in pointing out that is my subjective assertion. At the time when STX launched its bid for WGO, STX was trading on around 1.20/GJ 2P while WGO was trading on 0.75/GJ 2P. Given its the same asset they were holding, they were only two main points of differentiation - one being the company and how it was managed while the other was STX holding operational control over the project. Even allowing for some premium for operatorship, it doesn't justify the huge gap between those valuations. Hence my subjective assertion.

"Well, not for the last time the price drop followed a series of announcements by Strike. I do not think anyone can deny that the West Erregulla have been well over hyped by Stuart. You can see prior announcements from Strike referring to over 1TCF of gas in the West Erregulla. HC contributors at the time were frankly contentious of Warrego's announcement of its more moderated view of the reserve potential. Then, surprisingly, it wasn't over 1TCF, indeed it was rather less. Ditto the South Erregulla."

Agree that STX was overly optimistic with its marketing wordings of WE and SE potential. I'd stated before that I do not like the use of gross gas in place figure being thrown around and would prefer them to use potential recoverable volumes. With WE, I recall the market had priced in around 400PJ (800PJ risked at 50%). We are now sitting at 422PJ and ED1 has the potential to convert 139 2U recoverable to 2P, which could potentially bring the total field 2P to 561PJ.

With SE, the fill to spill potential was a distinct possibility. The original drill results from SE2 and SE3 were supportive of that thinking. So I don't think STX was wrong in thinking of that possibility at the time. Obviously the appraisal results haven't fallen its way, so it's easy to go back in time, with the benefit of hindsight, to pick on what they had believed at the time.

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