This is entirely my view.
Wilsons Advisory has just set a price target for FID at $6.19. The share price is now around $4.74 but was around $3.90 before the final RC report. (shot up +21.5%)
If FID made an off-market offer for the entire shares outstanding in CAF at say $0.26 using either cash (which they have plenty of) or scrip (which is shooting up), they could extract from CAF $0.105 per share in cash, meaning they would only be paying $23m for the business. Furthermore, they could extract synergy after synergy after synergy - meaning at $0.26 they still get the business for free (NPV of a few million per year in synergies).
Now, you could say well....Thorney wouldn't accept it or controls CAF. The thing is, if FID (or anyone else) makes an off-market offer (i.e. hostile, not a scheme of arrangement), and 50% of CAF shareholders take the $0.26 and run, Thorney will be stuck there as a 'minority' shareholder.
The math: 50% of shareholders who accept the offer to be owned by FID, 29.5% held by Thorney, and 20.5% of remaining shareholders who didn't accept.
So Thorney's position is effectively useless in an off-market offer and they can't buy any more shares on-market due to the creep provisions.
So, if CAF management or the board want to keep their jobs, they have to get the share price up ASAP, otherwise they are all sitting ducks.
Declaring a dividend could help lift the share price up, but the situation remains the same ex-dividend.
They could do more financial engineering and sell Ventura at 6x EBITDA or $26.4million. This would work.
Or they could buy back shares until the share price is significantly higher to defend themselves, and have Thorney's stake gets closer to 50%. This could also work.
Now is not the time for stakeholders to be asleep...
