I can't see any chance of them being an attractive takeover target.
Considering your points if you don't mind..
1. Low m/c as they only have Working Interests (WI) in ALL of their projects, none of which are more than 35%, the lowest being only 10%.
2. Similar to no.1 - higher m/c companies (but lower production) most likely, imo, own 100% of their exploration and production tenements - therefore more scope for much higher income on success.
3. Takeover, substantial holders - over 3.2 billion shares on issue with the top20 holding less than 25% between them - 75% in freefloat isn't a good look, though it would be easy to accumulate a substantial holding over time as revenue is only rising at a snail's pace. Indeed, there's only one entity that holds more than 2% from the top20 - Blue Sky Resources at almost 9% is the latest figure I could find.
Again, as in no.1, their WI's are with THREE different producers/explorers.
Their WI's are in THREE different countries.
This would make it difficult for any prospective buyer to negotiate keeping those WI contracts.
One of their largest prospects, Borba in California - part of the 'Dempsey Trend' (33% WI), hasn't been monetised since discovery around TWO years ago. No updates on this except crap like 'oh, we're looking into what could be done with this valuable asset' blah blah.
Some of the directors are common to their JV partners' boards also which seem to have higher priorities with their positions on those boards than here at XST.
Last month, 3 of the BoD here have allowed their options (120million between them) to expire.
All those oppies were at 0.5c so it's no wonder they dropped them, however, we don't know if they bought on market instead at half the price.
I also don't know the conditions of vesting those oppies but if they were performance related, the evidence is there to see that they failed in their performance targets which obviously means they failed their shareholders.
Look, the BoD might well be keeping Borba up their sleeve as a bargaining chip in a potential t/o offer.
Slowly increasing revenue and suppressed market cap could well make it an attractive t/o target and I'd love to see it run by a completely new BoD with a bit of enthusiasm and energy, otherwise it's going to continue to just plod along in an industry where there are so many more attractive options for investors.
Easy to see why the s/p is depressed for that exact reason with shareholders moving on to those more lucrative opportunities.
Good luck all
AE
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