ante4, Inc. announced a name change today to Voyager Oil and Gas, Inc., subsequent to the Apr. 16 merger of the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiary into the Nevada-based oil and gas explorer/producer via an acquisition investment of $28M in cash or equivalents – and will henceforth primarily be focused on developing existing assets while seeking to acquire additional acreage throughout the US Williston Basin.
The merger was approved by 100% of the acquired company’s shareholders, who waived their dissenter’s rights, yielding 0.86836131 of 1 share of common stock for each share of the acquired company held (as of the time of the merger, rounded up to the nearest share), with outstanding warrant holders in the acquired company receiving warrants to buy 0.86836131 of 1 share in Voyager (exercisable for $0.98/share).
Voyager issued 21,761,299 shares (468,916 of which are restricted to stock agreements) of ante4 common stock to shareholders in the acquired company, and warrants to buy some 4,689,153 shares of Voyager common stock to warrant holders.
Newly appointed CEO, Secretary, and a director of Voyager, James Russell (J.R.) Reger, was born in the same city as the Company’s HQ, Billings, Montana, and grew up there in a family of oil men that stretches back four generations, making him the inheritor of over 60 years of aggregate experience starting with his great grandfather, John Jones, who was VP/Land for Mobil Oil’s Rocky Mountain operations.
Mitchell Thompson was appointed Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Steven Lipscomb, Bradley Berman, and Lyle Berman became directors; and Terry Harris, Myrna McLeroy, Joseph Lahti and Loren J. O’Toole, Jr. were appointed to the board.
J.R. Reger thanked the ante4 board of directors for “the confidence they have shown in us by their $28 million acquisition investment and we look forward to using this capital to continue to expand our high quality acreage and drilling inventory”.
J.R. Reger pledged to fully exploit the highly liquid $28M cash or equivalent with no debt position to aggressively expand acreage while running the Company as a “very lean organization (low overhead and minimal staff) with virtually no cash burn and significantly all of its liquidity being deployed to high rate of return projects such as drilling in the core area of the Bakken”.
Those sentiments were echoed by Voyager Chairman Lyle Berman, who also made a point to comment on the strong and established record of success in this market, for which J.R. Reger (who comes to the CEO at position fresh from his role as President of South Fork Exploration, also in Billings) and the Reger family are so well known.
Voyager consists of some 98k net acres over four primary operating segments, chief of which is the Bakken formation (a unit, covering parts of North Dakota and Montana comprising some 200k sq. miles of the subsurface of the Williston Basin), where the Company currently holds 6,200 net acres (ND), and has 8,000 net acres under contract (ND/MT), with the stated intent of putting roughly $20M into acquisitions/development of wells (approx. 10) in the core area in Williams and Mountrail Counties, ND this year.
Voyager also has 640 net acres in Montana (aimed at the Red River formation), where the third segment is also located, and 50,000 net acres in a joint venture in Blaine, Hill and Chouteau Counties of Montana on the Tiger Ridge gas field, which has seen 50 years of major oil and gas discoveries and is still producing while offering potential for more exploration due to advances in drilling, seismological, and resource detection technologies.
Finally among Voyager’s current portfolio is a 33,500 net acre joint venture focused on the Heath Shale formation in Fergus, Garfield, Musselshell and Petroleum Counties of Montana, which has proven to have high oil content and porosity with significant fracturing.
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