I think @@CEOChair has hit the nail on the head. The last traded...

I think @@CEOChair has hit the nail on the head.

The last traded share price is irrelevant. The only price that matters is the price that shareholders will accept. If your neighbour from down the street knocks on your door and wants to buy your house then he doesn't set the price you transact at. You do. He might say the house next door sold for $100 so your house is worth $100 but it's irrelevant if you don't want or need to sell. If you want $150 for your house then that's the price. If he doesn't like it then he can move onto other options.

The issue with WSA and IGO is that we are not comparing apples and oranges. IGO has traded like a lithium stock ever since they bought the share of Greenbushes and Kwinana.

Imagine you're an apple farmer and the farmer down the road owns a farm that grows some apples but mostly oranges. You grew apples because you think the price in the future when you harvest your apples will be higher. The other farmer is offering to buy your farm by giving you a piece of his farm. If you accept, you will a minority owner of the combined farm. You have gone from being an apple farmer to owning a share of a farm that does both apples and oranges. You may not believe orange prices will be going significantly higher in the future. So in order for it to be interesting to you, the other farmer needs to at least meet your value expectation for your farm (and probably pay a bit more), unless he can convince you that by combining the farms your share will be worth more afterwards. If he's offering cash then it's different because you can then use the cash to go buy another apple farm if you want (or a boat!).

I bought into WSA because I liked nickel not lithium. I like lithium (I bought into IGO when they did the Greenbushes acquisition) but I don't love the upside from current spot levels. If I wanted lithium exposure I would have bought Pilbara, Sayona, or similar, not Western Areas. If I accept an IGO takeover offer I am diluting my exposure to nickel with exposure to lithium. This is not an immediately attractive proposition.

I think a lot of WSA and IGO shareholders also own lithium stocks anyway because if you believe that the world moves to net-zero then all these stocks share broadly the same tailwinds and will be worth a lot more in the future. But the point is that some current WSA shareholders (like me) may believe the future supply/demand characteristics of nickel sulphide from here are more attractive than lithium. If that's true then we're not actively looking to trade our WSA position for lithium exposure. But the potential IGO bid is interesting because the argument that the combined company (WSA+IGO) is worth more in the future under IGO's management is probably true (in my opinion).