one way to look at the bg sale

OK, HDR have raised USD 132M by selling off 35% of their interests in PSC's A & B (ie the chunks they just acquired from ENI). So HDR shareholders' exposure to the value and potential value of those areas has been "diluted" by 35%.

If HDR had issued roughly 260M new shares at (say) $1.25, then HDR shareholders' exposure to ALL of the company's assets would have been diluted by the same factor, but HDR would have raised USD 260M.

Alternatively, if HDR had issued 130M new shares at $1.25, then the funds raised would be equal to the sale proceeds, but shareholders' dilution would have been only 17.5%.

Whether you think this sale is a good deal depends on:
- where you think most of the value in HDR lies : if you think the lion's share is in the core PSC A / B areas, then this deal doesn't look quite so good
- whether a capital raising of this magnitude would have been possible at around the current share price (I suspect not quite this big but perhaps they could have raised $50-60M US?)
- how much capital you think HDR will actually need over the next 3-4 years to fund ongoing exploration and development and how costly their alternatives might be (eg development project finance)

I have pretty mixed feelings. They have certainly reduced a chunk of risks associated with fundraising (and also reduced the risks if PSC A / B areas aren't quite as good as we all think, or if the oil price tanks - but in those cases perhaps we were never going to do well anyway as HDR shareholders). But as the figures above show, they have also given up a fair bit of upside, some of which could have been retained via a share issue.

Personally, I would have preferred to see a part sale of the ENI interest and a medium size capital raising to cover the funding issues. I wonder if Ted and co didn't get starry-eyed by thinking about how clever they would look when they sold the ENI stuff on for a 300% profit in one month, without fully thinking through what the best package for shareholders would be.