Good analysis, groovin123. Pretty accurate description of the situation.

One factor is that John R and family control a lot of the stock, so that a truly hostile bid without him would be seriously uphill.

I have no idea that the maximum for this stock is, as we don't know just what's in the new veins discovered on either side of the Sourdough, the richest veins so far. My calculations are that it's not worth more than about $2.50/share to Kinross internally, unless more new veins are discovered. Certainly $65 million is chicken feed to Kinross. At the same time, they do negotiate toughly for their shareholders. On the other hand, for sure any bid would have to beat the last offer.

Probably true that shortly before or after they announce another bid they will accumulate shares - there is nothing legally between the two companies preventing them from doing that. It is possible that they have them and are playing with Teryl's price, although they couldn't legally have more than 10% yet without disclosing that, assuming they play by the general rules.

Kinross was embarrassed that their profit/production dropped in 2009 vs. 2008, when all their major competitors increased. They have a huge new mine coming onstream in Brazil, but it has huge costs and is not generating profit while the Fort Knox just pumps it out, all the infrastructure paid for but fighting their very low grade ore, right near the cutoff of unprocessable. There is no doubt they'd like Teryl's 20% of the Gil to significantly sweeten that and make a lot more of their existing ore profitable.

Definitely the pieces are in the right position for this to come together. Markets can do strange things between now and then, depending sometimes on completely unrelated events on the other side of the world, but considering everything certainly the shares appear seriously undervalued.