Roll up! Roll up! The OZ Minerals show is about to get under way.
OZ Minerals boss Andrew Cole has booked investors for 90 precious minutes on Friday, where he’s expected to make an impassioned plea to keep the company independent and out of the grasp of $214 billion gorilla BHP Group.Sell-side analysts have cleared their diaries. They can live without too much on OZ’s half-year numbers, but are keen to hear what Cole has to say about creating value without any help from BHP.
Of course Cole’s just warming up to his role as OZ defender. He started on August 8, when the company disclosed and rejected BHP’s confidential bid, and stepped it up last week with a speech to a room full of contractors and engineers that drew much more market interest than would normally be the case.
Perhaps his best line last week was: “As I often say to my team, capital is not a constraint for good projects. There’s a shortage of great projects, not capital.” Apparently, it went down well. Contractors love to hear that there’s lots more work coming from aspirational OZ, a miner shooting to get to 344,000 tonnes of annual copper equivalent production over the medium term.Friday’s audience is likely to be a bit more circumspect.
OZ, advised by Macquarie Capital and Greenhill, would be reviewing its funding options. Raising equity would be just one. Of course BHP will also be watching Friday’s call closely. As offended as it was by OZ’s decision to disclose a non-binding $8.4 billion takeover offer, the mining giant hasn’t gone away. You could sense both sides bristling on Thursday ahead of the update.OZ shares closed at $26.19 on Thursday, well higher than BHP’s approach at $25. BHP’s bid was timed to coincide with a lull in the copper market.
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