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TORONTO – The shareholders of Osisko Mining Corp. face a tricky choice: take the clean takeover bid and walk away, or take a more complex deal with a disputed value that management firmly believes is better.
Goldcorp Inc. hiked its hostile bid for Montreal-based Osisko on Thursday to $3.6-billion, or $7.65 a share in cash and stock. The dollar value is roughly $1-billion more than Goldcorp offered in January, when its own share price was significantly lower.
That bid is going up against the multi-faceted transaction Osisko unveiled last week with Yamana Gold Inc., in which Yamana will buy 50% of Osisko’s assets and Osisko will receive funding from two pension funds. The result is that Osisko would distribute about $1-billion to shareholders while continuing to operate its flagship Canadian Malartic mine in Quebec.
To determine which offer is better, investors must decide what they think the new Osisko would be worth after the Yamana transaction. And that is a source of considerable debate. When Osisko announced the deal with Yamana, it assumed a valuation for the new Osisko (“Osisko 2” or “O2”) of $3.35 a share. That gave the whole transaction a value of $7.60 a share, which is very close to Goldcorp’s bid.
But Goldcorp chief executive Chuck Jeannes said Thursday that the real value of “O2” would be lower than $3.35. He noted it would be a single-mine company with considerable debt and a gold stream arrangement that would cut into revenue. He said Osisko assumed the new entity would trade at a similar multiple to other mid-tier gold miners, which is too aggressive.
Mr. Jeannes also noted the market seems to agree with him, as Osisko was trading below the implied offer price in the Yamana deal until Goldcorp raised its bid.
On the other hand, Osisko CEO Sean Roosen maintained there are serious problems with Goldcorp’s asset base, and investors would be much better off with direct exposure to Canadian Malartic through “O2.”
“It has a higher upside than Goldcorp ever will,” he said in an interview.
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