Local privately held oil company, Lease Operators, has reached an agreement on the terms of a recommended cash acquisition for 100 per cent of Trinity Exploration & Production, a company listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in London, which operates in T&T.
In a news release on its website yesterday, Trinity Exploration said that its shareholders would be entitled to receive £0.6805 per share for a total consideration of approximately £26.4 million (US$33.79 million at yesterday's GBP-USD exchange rate).
That consideration represents a premium of approximately:
* 19.4 per cent to the closing price of £0.57 per Trinity share on August 1;
* 41.8 per cent to the closing price of £0.48 per Trinity share on July 24, 2024, which was the date on which the indicative offer of Lease Operators was announced;
* 89.0 per cent to the closing price of £0.36. per Trinity share on April 30, 2024. That was the day before the announcement of the first bid for Trinity Exploration, which was made by Touchstone Exploration.
Touchstone Exploration, which is listed on Toronto Stock Exchange and the AIM market of the LSE, made an all-stock offer to acquire Trinity earlier this year.
In the news release yesterday, Trinity Exploration said: "On May 1, 2024, the date on which the Touchstone offer of 1.5 new Touchstone shares in exchange for each
Trinity share was announced, the Trinity directors considered, at the time, that it was in the best interests of Trinity shareholders to recommend the Touchstone offer.
"At the time of its announcement, the Touchstone offer represented an implied value of £0.619 per Trinity share, a significant premium to the then prevailing
price of a Trinity share.
"On July 17, 2024, the Trinity directors consider that the Acquisition provides Trinity shareholders with an opportunity to realise a certain valuation in cash at a significant premium to the unaffected prevailing price, which reflects the current strength and future potential of Trinity. The Trinity directors also consider that the Acquisition is a material improvement for Trinity shareholders over the Touchstone offer and accelerates, without further capital investment, time or operational risk, the delivery of fair value to Trinity shareholders."
Trinity said its directors have withdrawn their recommendation of the Touchstone Offer with immediate effect. The Trinity directors intend to unanimously recommend that eligible shareholders of the company vote in favour of the scheme at the court meeting and in favour of the resolution to be proposed at the general meeting.
Lease Operators is a member of the Well Services Group, which began operations in 1967 as a single company called Well Services Limited. It was founded in Trinidad and Tobago by Charles Anthony Brash Sr., who is still active in the Well Services Group and is currently the chairman of Lease Operators.
Meanwhile, in an operational update, Touchstone Exploration announced that its Cascadura natural gas facility expansion and the construction of the flowline from the Cascadura C surface location to the facility are progressing as scheduled.
Touchstone said the company continues to target initial production from its Cascadura-2ST1 and Cascadura-3ST1 wells before the end of September 2024.
"As part of our ongoing production optimisation efforts at Cascadura, we performed a recompletion on the Cascadura Deep-1 well by adding perforations above the previously completed pay intervals. The well was shut in on June 24, 2024 and resumed production on July 4, 2024. Prior to the recompletion, the Cascadura wells produced an aggregate net field estimated rate of 3,463 boe/d (barrels of oil equivalent per day), and current combined net field estimated production is approximately 4,082 boe/d," the company explained in a statement on its website.
