One of the benefits of conversion is that shares actually have...

One of the benefits of conversion is that shares actually have voting rights and allow for taking part in share placements, whereas options typically do not. The other benefit as opposed to selling shares before they expire is that the capital gains tax can be deferred that way.

Right now anyone buying for the long term would be better off buying heads at 0.7 than options at 0.1 ... but once they are over the line, you might have times where the heads are 1.5 and options 0.4, and options may effectively end up cheaper than heads itself, even including conversion.

Also, there may be a large number of holders that have options they never got rid of from before, and they may want to hold for longer in light of this exciting-new-project-tm ;)

And then there may be holders that will decide to sell part of their options and convert the rest with the funds from that sale.

I doubt CFR will complain if only 400m get converted, netting them a 'mere' $4m ;) ... we'll see what happens.