SYDNEY (Dow Jones)--ROC Oil Co. Ltd. (ROC.AU) Chief Executive Bruce Clement said Monday the oil and gas producer would be happy to consider takeover offers for the company.
Clement said advisor Gresham Investment House has been working with ROC since the start of the year on a strategic review of its business.
"Clearly one of the alternatives is ownership and that includes raising equity and if someone comes along with an offer, we'd be happy to consider it," Clement told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.
Clement declined to comment on whether ROC is opening a data room. "We're not at liberty to discuss details of what we're doing, but we're looking at alternatives," he said.
"There are lots of alternatives available to us, and like we should be, the board is considering all of them."
Earlier Monday, ROC said in a statement that it hasn't received any takeover proposal.
"Consistent with previous public statements, ROC continues to evaluate all strategic alternatives concerning the company's assets, ownership and capital position in the current operating environment," it said in the statement.
Clement told Dow Jones Newswires that ROC was partly prompted to make the statement by a near 33% rally in its AIM-listed shares in London on Friday.
"We haven't been specifically saying we're out doing equity deals or anything like that, but that we're considering our strategic alternatives and that's equity as well as debt and assets," he said.
"I don't think that should come as a surprise because we've had a lot of feedback in terms of our balance sheet - we had just under US$100 million net debt at the end of the quarter."
"Whilst we feel we can manage that for 2009 without any problems, we need to think about longer term development projects in BMG (Basker-Manta-Gummy) and China that we want to pursue."
ROC said last week that cost cutting has helped it reduce its net debt by US$16.8 million to US$97.7 million by March 31. The company said that it's secured additional debt funding from Commonwealth Bank of Australia through a new 12-month US$35 million bridge facility.
ROC Price at posting:
61.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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