price slide, page-49

It might be easy to blame the CEO or management, but the same blame game has happened to all PPX management, probably since time immemorial, for that is how long the share price has been in decline. Since I have been reading about Paperlinx, and "invested" in PXUPA, I've seen Tom Parker, David Meiklejohn, and Toby Marchant, all being criticised, scrutinised, and all, except Marchant, have packed up. Mark Hooper, whizzbang CEO of Sigma Pharmaceuticals, the top performer for the ASX 200 this year, was CFO for Paperlinx not too long ago- go figure. Orbis had welcomed Meiklejohn and Marchant, until the SP continued on its decline, at which point, the fingers were pointed.

Interestingly, Marchant has mooted a change in focus for PPX. From this link for AFR members:

http://tools.afr.com/viewer.aspx?ATL://ab60ebe2-3823-11e1-a026-c2a8feaa789a§ion=tools

The AFR reports that "one strategy is to diversify away from core paper products into growth businesses such as signage and industrial packaging by leveraging off its existing logistics platform and customer base, and moving into higher margin businesses, but this has not inspired some equity holders."

Ok, so "some equity holders" don't like the idea of growth businesses and higher margin business... This is not good! Why don;t the equity holders want this? I dunno what Richard Pratt did, but he made a buck or two in his time. Basically, *anything* that PPX do differently will probably help. Maybe it is not the boss tat is not the problem, but "some equity holders".

Frankly, we don't know what could be going on. There have been offers made for some of the assets of the business, so they are clearly desirable.

iona, I doubt Maple-Brown was privy to anything the market is not privy to, but I guess major shareholderslike MB might be canvassed on company direction, or might try to lobby companies themselves to get outcomes they want. Maybe MB just didn't see the "value" of this investment, so they were sticking to their value mandate by selling down.

Whatever is going on, we can certainly see some "action" happening in trades. If the PE firm comes through, there is >30% in the Ords. Fascinating stuff. As ever, retail holders will be the last to know anything. There is only a few months left for the Review for the hybrids, though, so things might move quickly. I reckon the PE company and Paperlinx have timed it to have alternatives to bring to the table for the Review.