Big lick of Liontown shares trade amid takeover; eyes on Gina Rinehart
Street Talk spotted some unusual trading activity in takeover-target Liontown on Thursday morning.
Tim Goyder is a large investor in lithium hopeful Liontown Resources. Trevor Collens
Western Australian stockbroker Euroz Hartleys traded around 1.7 per cent of the company’s stock across five large blocks at $3 per share. piquing the market’s interest given the shares were trading at $2.90 apiece.
Trading volume also spiked to 85.6 million from 15 million on Wednesday.
The identity of the buyer was not known, and Euroz declined to provide details. However, fingers pointed to Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart – who holds a stake in Liontown just under the substantial threshold of 4.9 per cent – as the logical vendor.
The share sales, which were pegged at a 3.5 per cent premium, come just days after US lithium heavyweight Albemarle lobbed a non-binding $3 a share bid for Liontown, valuing the company at $6.6 billion.
Albemarle has been in pursuit of Liontown since October last year, when it made a $2.20-a-share offer that was not made public at the time.
The $3-a-share offer endorsed on Monday was at a 14.5 per cent premium to Liontown’s closing share price on September 1, and 20 per cent higher than the $2.50 offer rejected as far too low in March.
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