Harold Hamm And Family Move To Buy All Remaining Shares Of Continental Resources

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Oct 17, 2022

The family of Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources, will buy all the remaining stock in the shale firm that isn’t already owned by the Hamm family in a merger transaction approved by Continental’s board of directors.

The company announced on Monday the agreement with Omega Acquisition, Inc., an Oklahoma corporation that is owned by Continental’s founder Hamm.  

Following the news release, shares in Continental Resources (NYSE: CLR) jumped by 8% in pre-market trade in New York.

Shale tycoon Harold Hamm and the rest of the Hamm family collectively currently own around 83% of Continental’s common stock. The tender offer would be for approximately 58 million shares of common stock that the Hamms do not already own.

The family, via the entity Omega Acquisition, will launch a tender offer to purchase any and all of the outstanding shares of Continental’s common stock at $74.28 per share. The price is a 15% premium to the closing price of Continental’s common stock of $64.50 as of June 13, 2022, before the June 14 announcement of the Hamm family’s initial offer to Continental.  

Back in June, Hamm offered to take Continental Resources private in a deal that valued the company at $25 billion.

“We have consistently said that as long as we were appreciated in the market, we would remain a public company, but if our opportunities were limited by being public, we should look at alternatives,” Hamm said in a letter to employees in June.

“We have determined that the opportunity today is with private companies who have the freedom to operate and aren’t limited by public markets, similar to the way that we operated approximately 15 years ago, prior to becoming a public entity,” Hamm added.

In a statement today, Continental Resources said that its Board of Directors, acting on the unanimous recommendation of a special committee consisting solely of independent and disinterested directors, had approved the merger agreement and related transactions, and recommended that Continental’s shareholders tender their shares of common stock pursuant to the tender offer.