The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has granted relief to Goldway Capital Investment to extend the period for its offer for South African junior coal miner MC Mining to remain open.
The offer, which was due to close on Friday April 5, has been extended to April 19, Goldway said in a statement on Thursday.
In February, Goldway Capital offered to buy out the remaining MC Mining shareholders for A$0.16 a share in cash in a deal that, if passed, would result in MC Mining being delisted from all the stock exchanges, subject to regulatory approvals in all three countries.
MC Mining has accused the consortium of investors represented by Goldway Capital Investment of presenting misleading information to shareholders to encourage them to accept an offer that its independent board committee has said significantly undervalued the company.
The junior miner has a primary listing in Australia and secondary listings on the JSE and the UK’s Alternative Investment Market.
MC Mining has consistently urged minority shareholders to reject the proposal, which requires at least 82.2% of the shares in issue to go through. Since the offer opened on February 16, Goldway has received conditional acceptances from 8.29% of shareholders, taking its stake to 71.69%.
On March 25 the company issued a statement saying that since its independent board committee advised shareholders not to accept Goldway’s offer, the consortium had tried to dismiss the findings of independent experts, which assessed the share value before the offer to be between A$0.214 and A$0.356.
Goldway Capital had also, said MC Mining, “falsely claimed that the Vele Aluwani Colliery is under care and maintenance”.
Earlier in March, Vulcan Resources announced a nonbinding proposal to make an off-market cash takeover offer for MC Mining. Vulcan’s proposal was at an indicative price of A$0.17-A$0.20 a share, valuing MC Mining at A$69.34m-A$81.58m (compared with the Goldway offer, which valued the company at A$65.3m). However, a week later, Vulcan Resources said it was walking away from the deal.
MC Mining said in March that if Goldway failed to reach a combined relevant interest of 82.19% by April 5 the offer would lapse.
If this happened MC Mining would “recommence the capital and fundraising initiatives that have been stymied since early August 2023 due to the conditions imposed by Goldway in relation to its offer”.
The junior miner relies on the Uitkomst colliery in KwaZulu-Natal for cash generation, but its flagship project is the development of the capital-intensive Makhado project, which would be SA’s only producer of hard coking coal.
The Makhado project has been in the pipeline for the past decade, but MC Mining has been battling to secure funding for it.
With Denene Erasmus
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