Smokey buying volume today?, page-12

Their last machine installation in November last year cost $20m - so while the company is worth less than $8m in its entirety, that would have to make Ovato a reasonable risk.

The safe play would be to sell the Book business (Griffin Press - its going ok, but requires some significant investment in the coming years) and the NZ business - which now that Bauer publishing has closed its publishing business over there, would make a merger of sorts with Bluestar Print Group a common sense move (subject to government approval).

While that won't eliminate the debt, it would provide the working capital to continue rightsizing the business as they make more redundancies to eliminate head office costs. Catalogues will bounce back (Woolworths restarted catalogues last week, and Aldi is going back to its pre Covid volumes) and while magazines are flat, they are regular, but the business has been gearing up for high volume catalogues for years, and remember it's effectively a duopoly with IVE Group (ASX;IGL) - yet only Ovato has the national footprint (QLD, NSW, Vic and WA) to effectively service the national retailers - which matters when you are Woolworths or ALDI in order to reduce production schedules and freight costs.

I've never held Ovato shares but I will be buying in the coming days.