There’s a new twist in the battle for Hunter Valley coal miner Australian Pacific Coal.

Suitor Nathan Tinkler is understood to be back, this time as part of a $1 a share takeover bid from a private syndicate called Pacific Premium Coal.

PPC, which is backed by a number of former senior Peabody executives and Tinkler, has lobbed its offer, which is nearly three times the price of previous bids from Matt Latimore’s M Resources and Tinkler’s now defunct Nakevo consortium. It’s also about three-times the price of an underway equity recapitalisation.

The bid is understood to have Shaw and Partners behind it, offering to underwrite both the acquisition and restart funding, and law firm DLA Piper.

Former Peabody executive John Canavan is understood to be involved.

Sources said the PPC deal would also allow lender Trepang Services to convert its debt and stay directly involved with the asset, so they could see it brought back into production.

Trepang, an entity controlled by Nick Paspaley and John Robinson, was another party trying to get its hands on Australian Pacific Coal’s Dartbrook mine. It had a deal to swap the asset for the $60 million or so in debt they were owed.

Coal kings tussle

The deal comes as Australian Pacific Coal’s board had moved past the Trepang, M Resources and Nakevo offers, and instead gone to market with a $100 million entitlement offer to recapitalise the company.

The entitlement offer involved some of the major players behind both the M Resources and Nakevo bids, but not Tinkler, and is still being finalised. It was also subject to a side-deal with M Resources, which would see it oeprate the mine in return for half of the economics.

The entitlement offr structure would see it hand half the equity value of the mine away to M Resources, while raising $100 million to finance the other 50 per cent of the mine.

The bid would see the company sold for $1 a share at a time when its shares are at 34¢.

The board has a big call on its hands.

It’s the second time in less than a decade that Tinkler has turned up at Australian Pacific Coal. The last time was in 2015, when he was appointed managing director, and he resigned in February 2016.

While it was a short stay for Tinkler, it was during his tenure that Australian Pacific Coal signed a deal to acquire Dartbrook. “Dartbrook is a high quality asset and we look forward to progressing our plans further in consultation with the local community,” Tinkler said in a statement to investors at the time.

Article source: AFR, 8 September 2022