First of all, my apologies for the length of this post but I have thought of a number of different facets around the SPK bid and the latest TTK/Voda play.
Interesting situation and the TTK board has thrown up a redoubt whilst under attack and fired a howitzer out of it with the sell-down of Farmside to Vodafone. All credit to Andrew and his team for this initiative.
As a key player in the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) funded by the Government, Voda can integrate Farmside into its overall rural offering and provide satellite service to those locations where their RBI wireless/cellular does not reach. SPK is not part of RBI except insofar as it purchases RBI services off Voda/Chorus at a wholesale level. Under RBI, Chorus provides fibre connection to rural hubs (usually adjacent to a rural school) and Voda connects cellular services to the fibre for interconnection with the national network.
I note that there is a call and a put on each side (Voda and TTK respectively) but the conditions of those arrangements have not been stated, unless I missed something in the announcement.
If SPK succeed in their bid (presumably with an increase in their offer), then they could quit Farmside altogether with the put on Voda, or Voda could take 100% control with their call. Presumably Voda will make the call in the event of a SPK buyout with $3M going to SPK, or 11c/share. That still leaves SPK with the fibre and urban ISP services within TTK along with the radio fleet services that TTK are moving to make increasingly digitalised and hence capable of being integrated with SPK's digital services. Whether Farmside was a critical element of the deal to SPK I doubt, but we will have to wait and see.
I wonder if some of the attraction to SPK from TTK is in its radio services that address trucking/taxi fleets, civil authorities, and other organisations that want widespread communications using frequencies that provide service outside the more restricted cellular frequencies. Back in the 1990s (I think) Telecom decided that VHF services were not worth their effort in maintaining and so sold them off to what is now TTK. TTK proceeded to make it a profitable niche and now that SPK has been separated from the local loop (ie Chorus) it wants to compete against Chorus using wireless services. This brings VHF services back into play. Recognise that technology has provided many more ways of providing digital services through VHF than were apparent when SPK sold this arm of their business off back in the 90s.
It is hard to see that SPK will fail to increase its offer (unless it abandons it all together) but since Voda have not moved in as a white knight for TTK as a whole, then we could still see SPK succeed with its bid even while (reluctantly) conceding Farmside to Voda.
As to the Grant Samuel valuation, in the absence of an alternative bidder for TTK as a whole it is hard to see even the minimum value of $1.51/share being realised, although a lift from SPK is most likely, even in the face of the Voda deal. Also, I do not have a lot of confidence in TTK peforming at a level whereby the market prices TTK at the Grant Samuel valuation within the next two years. One of the key drivers for TTK share price in the past has been its high div yield which has been abolished with a delayed return for it to recommence. Interesting to see in the latest announcement from TTK that more emphasis is being placed on restoring the dividend. If I get a decent price from SPK then I am happy to reinvest the proceeds in SPK with today's yield of 7.37%.
As for Andrew and his management team, it is likely that SPK will carry them on to manage the operation while introducing its own control at the board level. In other words, expect a number of the existing TTK board to be replaced by SPK appointees but it is up to Andrew & co if they want to work under the new regime. I suspect that this is likely since Andrew comes from a large corporate background at Alcatel and must have had many dealings with Telecom (now SPK) in the past.