The BHP Group announced an update to its merger with Australian gas company Woodside on Friday, which included an explanatory memorandum and notice of a meeting for the Woodside shareholder vote on 19 May 2022.

Woodside also released the independent expert’s Report, which had drawn the conclusion that the merger was in the best interests of Woodside shareholders, short of a superior proposal.

The BHP Group confirmed that the merger’s completion was on track for 1 June 2022, pending approval by Woodside shareholders.

The company added that BHP would receive 914.8 million newly issued Woodside shares upon the transaction’s completion, and decide a fully franked in specie dividend of Woodside shares to BHP shareholders.

BHP said that company shareholders would be entitled to one Woodside share for each 5.5 BHP shares held on the Record Date.

According to the energy firm, Woodside’s current share price of 25,550c and BHP’s implied value of $23.4 billion would bring an in specie dividend of $4.62, with $1.98 in franking credits set for distribution per BHP share and a total of $10 billion in franking credits.

Woodside is reportedly set to retain its primary listing on the ASX, and is aiming for a standard listing on the LSE, alongside a sponsored Level 3 ADR program on the NYSE once the merger has been closed.

The disclosure release also said that a share sale facility would be in place for eligible BHP shareholders who decide to participate and for shareholders who are also not eligible to receive Woodside shares.

Woodside’s explanatory memorandum for shareholders advocated for the beneficial outcomes of the pending merger with BHP, including an anticipated $400 million in pre-tax synergies per year upon completion of the deal.

“Woodside Shareholders are being asked to consider this transformative opportunity and approve the Merger and the associated issue of New Woodside Shares,” said Woodside chairman Richard Goyder.

“After carefully considering all aspects, benefits and risks of the Merger and the Independent Expert Report, the Woodside Board unanimously recommends that Woodside Shareholders vote in favour of the Merger Resolution at the Meeting.”

“This is a significant decision for Woodside’s long-term future. The case for the proposed Merger is compelling, bringing together the best of both organisations to create a global independent energy company with the scale, diversity and resilience to create value for shareholders and increased ability to navigate the energy transition.”

Woodside shares were down 1.5% to 32.4 AUD and BHP shares were up 1.7% to 51.9 AUD in early morning trading on Friday, following the announcement.

Ferrexpo reported the company’s production report for the first quarter of 2022 leading the iron ore miner’s shares to gain 8% to 181p in early morning trade on Friday.

Ferrexpo had a total iron ore pellet output of 2.7m tonnes in the first quarter of 2022, down 11% from Q4 2021 due to operational and logistical restrictions resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is ongoing.

The group’s output continues to be fully composed of high-grade iron ore, with a Fe content of 65% or more.

Ferrexpo scaled its production efforts to satisfy accessible pellet demand in Q1 2022, resulting in sales of 2.6m tonnes.

The group’s logistics routes to Europe through rail and barge remain open, however, operations at the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi remain halted.

As of 31 March 2022, Ferrexpo had a net cash position of roughly $159m, with consistently available financing lines having a minor influence on the debt position.

The group has managed to maintain an acceptable liquidity balance between offshore and onshore funds, ensuring that payments for the group’s staff, operations, and tax obligations are completely paid on schedule. 

Ferrexpo’s top focus continues to be the safety of its employees.

The miner will continue to produce and transport its goods in compliance with the Government of Ukraine’s call for economic operations to continue as long as the capability continues and it is safe to do so.

Jim North, Chief Executive Officer, Ferrexpo said, “The safety of our workforce remains our highest priority.”

“Our operations and local communities are outside the main conflict zones within Ukraine, enabling us to continue our activities, including the delivery of iron ore pellets to customers in Europe via rail and barge, which have historically represented approximately 50% of sales.”

“The port of Pivdennyi in southwest Ukraine, where the Group’s berth is located, remains closed, and we are reviewing alternative methods of delivering our products to seaborne markets.”

The oncology drug development consultancy, Physiomics signed on the Servier Group, an international pharmaceutical company headquartered in France, as a new client on Friday.

Servier’s key therapy areas include cancer, with a particular emphasis on immunotherapies and monoclonal antibodies for difficult-to-treat diseases with significant unmet medical needs.

Physiomics will use its Virtual Tumour software platform to study and simulate the effect of a range of immuno-oncology combinations in development utilising Servier medicines in pre-clinical and clinical settings.

The project will be completed in the next 7-8 months, according to the forecast.

“We are delighted to have been selected by Servier, one of France’s leading pharmaceutical companies with a truly global outlook as its partner for this modelling and simulation project focused on pre-clinical and translational modelling of a novel immuno-oncology agent in development.  We look forward to working with its talented scientists,” said Physiomics CEO, Dr Jim Millen.

Physiomics’ shares fell 1% to 4.5p on the announcement of its contract with the Servier Group.

WANdisco announced a $213,000 contract win with a leading personal computer vendor on Thursday.

The software company commented that its LiveData Migrator solution would help its new customer to migrate a subset of data sourced from its existing Hadoop environment to cloud-native systems which can be run within the public cloud.

The group said that its current opportunity is to migrate 1.35 petabytes of data, with the figure set to grow over time with normal production usage, which means that there is reportedly potential for revenues to grow higher as more data is migrated.

According to WANdisco, the new customer selected its technology due to its capability to keep the data up-to-date without the requirement to manually refresh the new environment, which gave it the edge over its competition.

The group highlighted that its real-time updating gave it the advantage of less business disruption, alongside data consistency and security over the process.

“There is a clear business need for companies across sectors to move increasing amounts of data to cloud native systems,” said WANdisco CEO David Richards.

“Our LDM solution supports complete and continuous replication of data sets at any scale, ensuring these critical migrations can take place quickly with zero business disruption.”

“This capability makes WANdisco well placed to continue converting on a strong pipeline of cloud migration opportunities.”

The news follows the company’s $720,000 commit-to-consumer contract with a top-ten global retailer to use its LiveData migrator solution to create a focused work environment tailored for machine learning and other analytical tasks.

“We are delighted to announce another deal with one of our key retail customers, representing yet another proof point of the strong demand we are seeing from organisations across various sectors to migrate data to the cloud,” said Richards in a corporate statement released yesterday.

WANdisco shares fell 1.1% to 299.5p in late afternoon trading despite the positive update.

Greencoat Renewables announced the acquisition of 21MW Soliedra Wind Farm in Spain from Alfanar Global Development, bringing the company’s total installed capacity to 1,014MW on Thursday.

This deal marks the renewable infrastructure company’s second renewable energy acquisition in Spain.

The wind farm, which has been operating since May 2021, is located in Soria, Castilla y Leon, Spain, and consists of six GE-137 turbines. Long-term operations and maintenance will continue to be provided by GE.

The Soliedra Wind Farm is now contracted as a merchant asset, however, it has the option to contract the power produced through a corporate PPA in the future.

Greencoat Renewables’ European growth strategy is supported by this deal, which follows the company’s expansion into France, Finland, Germany, and Sweden.

Greencoat Renewables’ total borrowings will account for 40% of its Gross Asset Value following the transaction.

Paul O’Donnell, Partner at Greencoat Capital said, “We are delighted to secure such a high-quality asset from Alfanar and have sight of further value-accretive opportunities in Spain.”

“As the renewable generation market continues to develop, we expect to see greater opportunity in the unsubsidised renewables market and believe Greencoat Renewables is well positioned to benefit both across mainland Europe and in Ireland.”

Greencoat Renewables shares rose 1.5% to 117.75¢ on the acquisition of 21MW Soliedra Wind Farm in Spain.

Jamal Wadi, Managing Director, Alfanar Global Development stated, “We have been in Spain for many years now and are committed to its energy transition. This deal marks another milestone in our ambitious plans for the European markets.”

Cadence Minerals shares were up 0.9% to 18.2p in late afternoon trading on Thursday after the company announced that DEV Mineraco S.A had resumed the sale and shipment of its iron ore stockpiles from the Amapa Project in Brazil.

The mining group said that the shipment represents the first iron ore export since the firm vested its 27% equity interest in the Amapa Iron Ore Project in early 2022.

The company currently works in collaboration with joint-venture partner Indo Sino, which owns the other 73% of the mine.

The two firms own the mine through joint-venture company Pedra Branca Alliance, which owns 100% of DEV Mineraco S.A’s equity.

Cadence Minerals confirmed that it currently expects the shipment’s completion in April, with DEV set to continue with the shipment and sale of the 58% iron ore stockpile in the current economic conditions.

The company also said that DEV has continued to provide ship loading and transport services for the third party owned stockpile at its port.

SEEEN closed the first quarter of 2022 by signing three more contracts as announced on Thursday driving the company’s shares to gain 7% to 15.5p.

The company that provides a platform for video optimisation, SEEEN offers ‘proprietary technology products and services‘ to clients to help drive value to their videos assets.

SEEEN’s video monetization technology and YouTube optimisation services, which are supplied through its MultiChannel Network (MCN), have gained new customers in important vertical markets, building on earlier customer success in the fourth quarter of 2021. 

SEEEN’s Contracts

A7FL Sports League

The A7FL Sports League, which debuted in 2014, is a US sports league that aims to provide an alternative to the NFL. 

SEEEN has agreed to use CreatorSuite to drive all videos on A7FL’s website beginning with the start of the new season, as well as access to SEEEN’s YouTube optimisation services as part of its MCN.

The season of the A7FL has just begun, and SEEEN’s services are expected to improve viewership of the league on its site and social media as it strives to reach a younger audience.

A7FL also hopes to boost engagement and revenue by monetizing crucial moments in its video output.

The A7FL customer win expands on SEEEN’s previous work with Sumitomo for the Rugby World Cup and the group’s MCN network’s own auto racing videos.

UK Financial Markets Publisher

SEEEN has also announced a new CreatorSuite customer who will use the software to power all of the videos on a UK-based financial markets publisher’s website.

The publisher plans to employ SEEEN’s CreatorSuite technology to boost the number of videos watched by the publisher’s 1 million monthly users while also improving advertising and subscription prospects.

SEEEN’s earlier successes with publishers, most notably the financial markets publisher contract announced in 4Q 2021, is built on this customer contract.

US Web Publisher

A significant US digital publisher has also signed on to join SEEEN’S MCN. The MCN has a critical mass of 10,000 producers and receives over 10bn video views per year.

Regarding the customer’s YouTube content categories and calendar, the company will use its knowledge and give direct consulting services. The customer will benefit from two of SEEEN’s technological products, CreatorSuite and Dialog-To-Clip, as part of this deal.

CreatorSuite facilitates the development of re-mixed videos from existing footage, while Dialog-To-Clip speeds up the creation of YouTube Shorts from key phrases.

This contract recognises SEEEN’s solution for publishers to improve their YouTube presence with new videos and YouTube Shorts created with the company’s unique technology.

Akiko Mikumo, Interim Co-CEO, SEEEN commented, “The commercial momentum for CreatorSuite, highlighted in our recent trading update, continues and we have demonstrated we are also able to cross-sell our YouTube MCN and optimisation services to many of these customers.”

“Content providers and the advertising industry have been looking for a fresh set of solutions to market short form video content.  We look forward to securing further contracts in these verticals, as well as leveraging our recently announced strategic partnership with Kinetiq to drive larger deals with multi-national clients,” added David Anton, Interim Co-CEO, SEEEN.

888 Holdings shares rose 18.5% to 227.6p in early afternoon trading after the company reported a price drop in William Hill’s non-US business from £2.2 billion to £1.95 billion.

The group said the alterations to the deal reflected the change in the macro-economic and regulatory environment since the transaction was first agreed, along with compliance issues including an ongoing review by the Gambling Commission of Great Britain (UKGC) impacting William Hill’s business dealings.

888 Holdings added that it expects the transaction to bring pre-tax cost synergies of at least £100 million, alongside £15 million in capex synergies by 2025.

The gambling firm noted that it presently anticipates the cumulative achievement of an estimated £5 million in synergies in 2022, with £54 million in 2023, £70 million in 2024 and £100 million in 2025.

The company also said it expects to incur one-time cash costs of around 100% of its annual pre-tax cost synergies, spread throughout the initial three years after the deal is completed.

888 Holdings confirmed that it has fully committed debt financing from several institutions, including J.P. Morgan Stanley, Mediobanca and Barclays Bank of around £2.1 billion, which will either take the form of senior secured term loans or alternative senior secured debt with the potential addition of junior debt and a fully-committed revolving credit facility of £150 million.

The betting company mentioned that in order to accelerate deleveraging, it is set to suspend dividend payments until the combined group’s net leverage ratio meets or is below 300%, or until the board decides to resume payments.

The technology innovator that delivers SaaS solutions, Access Intelligence signed several new contracts with companies such as Netflix and Nestle, according to its announcement on Thursday.

At the time of Access’ January trading update, the group mentioned the success it made in its core business. Since the beginning of the financial year, new clients have continued to join the company for its services.

Reddit, Amazon, Aston Martin, and KPMG are among those in EMEA and North America who have signed up with Access Intelligence.

Despite the obstacles pointed out earlier in the year by the group, new contract wins from major corporations such as Woodside Energy, Tiffany & Co, Netflix, Nestle, and Chevron, as well as new victories in the public sector working with government divisions in Singapore and Malaysia, are reassuring.

Access Intelligence launched Pulsar in Australia and New Zealand, and received a positive response from clients in the region, while in Southeast Asia, the group continues to refine its market positioning strategy in light of the country’s present socioeconomic conditions.

Joanna Arnold, Chief Executive Officer, Access Intelligence, said, “These contract wins demonstrate the strength of the combined Pulsar and Isentia offering to our clients.”

“We are delighted with the contract wins we have seen in Q1. We continue to trade in line with expectations and we look forward to updating shareholders further with the announcement of our full year figures to 30 November 2021 on 25 April 2022 ^“

Access Intelligence shares rose 2.3% to 107p following the announcement of the contract wins.