People were not converting Options. The Company was purely making a Call of the outstanding amount payable on PARTLY PAID shares, i.e. 4.99c per share, from the original 0.01c per share paid when the company 1st issued the shares.
Issuing partly paid shares, to my knowledge, seems to be a rare event nowadays amongst micro-cap or small-cap miners & oilers. Maybe just happens amongst similar-sized companies in the industrials.
Also, you can also instantly determine whether holders of listed Options are choosing to exercise them due the stocks' code being suffixed by the letter/s O then OA, or OB etc. e.g. PRMOB, ECTOE, THROA.
The letter O signifies the expiry date of the 1st Options issue by a company.
The letter A after the O usually signifies the expiry date of the second options issue by the same company, and
the letter B = the 3rd, e.g. GNMOA, GNMOB.
The website
https://aus-listed-cios.github.io/ provides these codes for all currently tradeable listed Options issues, and their expiry dates. THis list I note usaually gets updated once monthly.
(20min delay)