An Australian natural gas company is planning to list its shares in the United States this week in a rare non-biopharma IPO. And one hedge fund giant is poised to be a major beneficiary of the offering.
Tamboran Resources will sell 6.5 million shares for between $24 and $27 per share, according to a regulatory filing. At the high end of the range, it would be able to raise $175.5 million.
The largest shareholders are Sheffield Holdings, a Dubai-based real estate company, and the College Retirement Equities Fund. In addition, hedge fund giant The Baupost Group, headed by Seth Klarman, owns 5.7 percent of the shares and figures to own 3.4 percent after the offering. Baupost declined to comment.
The IPO is unusual because Tamboran is a foreign company and is in the energy business. It is an independent natural gas exploration and production company focused on developing natural gas resources in the Beetaloo Basin in Australia’s Northern Territory. The company and its partners, with exploration permits for about 4.7 million contiguous gross acres, are currently the largest acreage holder in the Beetaloo, the filing says.
“We believe natural gas will play a significant role in the transition to cleaner energy and are committed to supporting the global energy transition by developing commercial production of natural gas in the Beetaloo with net-zero equity Scope 1 and 2 emissions,” the company stresses in its filing.
Tamboran said it plans to use all of the proceeds from the offering to fund its development plan and for working capital and other general corporate purposes, per the filing.
Tamboran is already publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. It currently has a market capitalization of about 390 million Australian dollars. The IPO in the United States would enable the company to diversify its capital-raising sources.
Baupost, which is known for keeping a low profile, is an eclectic value investor that considers a wide range of financial instruments, asset classes, and geographic regions, according to a separate regulatory filing. At year-end, the firm had $24.8 billion in regulatory assets under management, including leverage.
Tamboran is an unusual energy and natural resources investment for Baupost. For example, Baupost’s roughly $3.6 billion U.S. common stock portfolio as of the end of the first quarter — the only part of its broad portfolio that is publicly available — is invested in 21 different stocks, but none are energy companies.
Baupost also rarely invests in private companies. It has not made any new venture capital investments this year and completed just one in 2023 and two in 2022.