Freewest Resources (FWR-V) president and CEO Mackenzie Watson says he will “absolutely” reject a hostile takeover bid from “Ring of Fire” rival Noront Resources (NOT-V), once he receives the official offer, sometime during the next two weeks.
“(Noront management) are hired guns and hired guns are not out there to find anything, they’re out there to grab something,” Watson says.
Watson flatly denies Noront’s suggestion in its Oct. 5 press release that “friendly” takeover negotiations for Freewest had broken down.
“There are a lot of lies in there,” says Watson, in reference to Noront’s release. “They (only) called me after I had left the office on Friday. You can’t believe everything they say.”
Noront is offering one share for four shares of Freewest. The bid implies a price of $0.3975 per share, a 51% premium to Freewest’s 30-day volume-weighted average price before Oct. 2. The offer valued Freewest at slightly less than $90 million.
Shares in Freewest closed at $0.40 on Oct. 6, a day after the bid was announced. Noront shares, meanwhile, closed at $1.61 for a market cap of about $264 million.
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This should be an interesting fight.
I wonder what John Kaiser thinks of this considering his comment that Noront reeks of an old boys, insider pump and dump play. They obviously do have something but is it being “played” at the same time?