Over the past few weeks there has been a lot of speculation on the value of Connacher re a buyout, and the majority of figures I’ve seen are from $1 up to $1.50 give or take, these are from people who see the book value at around this area or have read that it’s around this area, even the so called analysts have been spouting this figure obviously for their own selfish reasons. As most of us know, book value is a measure of day to day operations taking into account the amount of production, sale price of bitumen, debt, and other costs of doing business etc etc, and is nothing to do with NAV.

Most people tend to forget that when a sale is anticipated NAV (net asset value) comes into play which is a totally different ballpark,

NAV is, ALL assets minus ALL Debts which in Connachers case is

Assets of 3.8 billion

Debt of 880million

Leaving a total NAV of 2.9billion or $4.98/share

We all know that we will not get the top price no one ever does, but as an investor since 1995-6 my average cost per share was $4.00 but recently I bulked down to $1.98/share so anything close to that would be liveable even though I have had no return on investment. $2.50 or $3.00 Plus would be more than acceptable.

My prediction/hope is that we would command a $3.50-$4.50 buyout price, maybe I’m a dreamer but the figures don’t lie.

Connacher made a big mistake by sticking to their projected timetable to reach a specific amount of production, within a finite time frame, instead of concentrating on pod 1 and fine-tuning until totally satisfied with the designed production, before going forward with more debt with Algar before this was achieved.

Just my opinion which is what this board is all about.