It has been a truly fascinating few weeks for STX. I am...

It has been a truly fascinating few weeks for STX. I am embracing the fact that corporate activity has finally kicked off in the PB. It feels like we have been speculating of potential strategic plays and the myriad reasons for and against for a number of years... and I am part relieved, part anxious, part excited that this is all playing out. One thing is for sure, there is much more to play out here across the whole PB IMO.

FWIW I have been fortunate to have been involved in a number of O&G M&A transactions some moons ago... have been holed up in a few data-rooms myself.. It was a very interesting and at times very intense experience, and learned a great deal from the corporate advisors that you were holed up with... think lawyers, bankers, technical ops guys, geos etc. Fascinating to understand what to look for from a technical, commercial and financial perspective and how to strategise for the big picture of either a) maximising your sale price or b) minimising your purchase price - depending which side you were on of course. The games played were at times genius. Masterstrokes like what we saw with STX share swap for WGO earlier this week - cracking move really. I liken it to a game of chess... at times you sacrifice the pawns to ensure you can out-maneuver to grab the King or Queen.

So from what I have observed the last few days, all eyes are now clearly on STX, the hunter has become the hunted. But I reckon the board knew this was happening and was always going to happen and I don't think it is any secret that there are bigger fish circling the PB. And IMO I think our board has take the right aggressive approach, get on the front foot and attack whilst also getting ready to defend.

So to get to the point, today we saw:

• 52 week high SP of 38c
• 52 week high volume of 33.7m shares traded - in particular the last hour of today's trade (the hour of power) we saw ~8.6m shares traded... someone was keen to load up, not even bothering to "bide their time".
• in the last 7 days of trading ~138m shares have been traded or circa 6.2% of STX SOI. And this spike in volume all began immediately after Hancock lobbed their offer for WGO on 30th Nov. How long until a substantial notice is lodged I wonder.
• Share price has appreciated in these last 7 days by ~55% from 24.5c to 37.5c.

At the end of the day, and as a relatively LT holder here, I am happy to sit tight and watch this play out. I think STX has much further to run here and IMO the bigger fish are about to show their hand. I look forward to the next instalment.

GLTA