Hi Blurt, no problem reading your replies this morning. I appreciate you and many others are frustrated with years of holding and the future is uncertain. my wife agrees with some of your comments, she thinks I'm deaf too. FYI - the spreadsheet has been sent to many people who are against the deal and they have replied confirming this. Plenty of transparency and no bias from me in that regard, I've shared with everyone I've met and received plenty of emails back with why people don't agree with me, some great robust conversations going on and I've enjoyed hearing peoples logic and argument. What I would like you to do is provide further comment on why the parameters I've noted are irrelevant in your view. The deal is likely to get approved, so if that's the case, what do you think is relevant and where should we be focusing our energy?
My focus is this: "Do I think we have quality people in charge and do I agree with the strategy?" ….. that is where it starts and ends for me. And secondly, let's use debt to leverage a bigger slice of the pie.
To provide further context as to why I don't sweat NS valuation and JP fee, I thought I'd share some personal experience and the parallels I can see with Wellfully:
Some 10 years ago I had an opportunity to take a small stake in the company I worked for, about 3%. (To draw a Parallel i would say i was like Danny's 2-I-C) A few years later a couple of guys proposed a vision for a global company to us (a bit like Steve and Tony). My small little Aussie company had been bought for a fee by a small tech from Europe (call it Wellfully) The industry locally here in Australia didn't get it. People said they're mad, look at the multiple they're paying, look at the fee PWC are getting for the transaction... (think NS valuation and JP Fee). It's crazy they said, where's the connection between what they do in Europe and what we do in Australia... Over the next 3 years we raised $millions in capital through private equity. We made 10 acquisitions globally, my 3% was diluted 90%, I now had less than 0.5% of the global company. Every business we purchased, and the original business in Europe (ie: the OBJ shareholders) had all been diluted to 10%. Then about 5 years after the vision started we sold the business for $1.5B to a global major... I received 17 times the money I first invested. Yes, diluted to 10%, a smaller part of much bigger pie and still a 17-bagger. And what did I do with the money... I loaded up on OBJ. Today I hold a good % of OBJ, it's happening all over again. This is Wellfully's first step, there are many more. Do you think i care now what the valuation or the multiple was on those 10 acquisitions, or the cheques we wrote to PWC and others for brokering the deals. This is why I say it's completely irrelevant. What mattered was the strategy, we didn't think small, we paid a premium for the right business that fitted the strategy, we didn't care about the valuation in isolation or what anyone thought, we ignored the noise and pushed aggressively with our plan. This is how wealth is created.
We had a strategy and we implemented it perfectly. I believe the Wellfully team will do the same.
OBJ Price at posting:
1.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held