The AMM directors don't give us much to talk about, so in the...

The AMM directors don't give us much to talk about, so in the interests of keeping this board ticking over I'll try and be a little creative. Here goes...

1st half financials show 539M shares on issue, 272M options on issue i.e. there will be a one third dilution for existing shareholders if 100% of options are exercised.
Effectively AMM has a voluntary capital raising running until the end of CY09, up to a maximum of $46M.

Lets say, for arguments sake, that 75% of the options are exercised. This would raise $35M. My understanding (pls correct me if I'm wrong) is that AMM currently holds approx. 33M shares of the 151M on issue in IIN (~22%). So to take a controlling interest AMM would need to acquire approx. another 43M shares. Lets assume they could pick this stake up at $2.30 per share i.e. total cost ~$100M. Based on my (somewhat shaky) assumptions AMM would need to raise another $65M from debt/equity to make this happen. With both companies currently conservatively geared around the 12.5% mark, you'd think a newly combined (and growing) group could comfortably service considerably more debt.

Alternatively, they could just use any funds raised from the options for incremental network expansion and further reduction of debt. Would probably keep the bean-counters happy but wouldn't give us nearly as much to speculate about!