Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Active management in long term decline as punters unwilling to pay the fees. So only solution is market consolidation to enable reduction in fees by consolidating staff (i.e. sackings)and rationalising property, regulatory, IT costs and many others
Disagree about takeover. £150m market cap plus premium plus debt, say £300m for a predator. Petty cash for the big boys to take out a competitor with a well recognized brand name, albeit somewhat tarnished. Pension fund might be a deterrent though.
BoD have rolled over too easily.
If buybacks increase the NAV per share, one wonders why equity capital is needed at all. The answer is that it is only a short term sugar rush as the borrowings to finance this largesse will over time cost more than they would have done had the buyback not occurred in the first place. But of course the management would have moved on by then, leaving their successors to pick up the pieces.