UTS Energy shares finished the day well above the $3.08 bid price Total SA agreed to pony up for the company, but it's not clear investors should take that as a signal to buy in hopes of a higher bid.
There are lots of reasons to believe that the bid price is all she wrote for UTS.
Those reasons include the fact that pretty much anybody who might want to bid has already been asked, as UTS says it spoke to more than 70 companies about a deal, and the fact that that Suncor Energy is on the record saying it doesn't plan to make a bid.
What's more, around 15 per cent of UTS shareholders have already agreed to support the deal, including the largest investor in the company, West Face Capital.
The extra 37 cents in the share price of UTS at day's end instead reflects the value that the market is putting on the leftover assets in UTS that won't go to Total, and instead will be spun into a new company called SilverBirch Energy Corp.
Street estimates of SilverBirch's values vary, but the upshot is that the market is pricing it at a bigger discount to its net asset value than some comparable companies.
That's going to be a bit of a disappointment to those shareholders at UTS who believe the SilverBirch assets should be worth $1 a share to an acquirer, but then again they are used to the feeling. UTS traded well below what holders and management believed to be its value for years.