Ann: Booth-1 result, page-119

Buying back shares and cancelling them is one good way of returning capital to shareholders, though this is generally only done if (1) the company has excess capital that it doesn't need (2) it doesn't have much franking credits to distribute and (3) the share price is deemed to be materially undervalue. So while STX satisfies conditions 2 and 3, it doesn't satisfy condition 1.

I'd suggested in a post a while back that perhaps STX should consider selling a portion or all of its WE stake, especially if ED-1 is a success, for a price that should essentially be more than its market cap. The board should get an independent audit/advisory firm such as Grant Thornton to get a fair value and use that essentially as our minimum reserve price. It is just one option. There will also be the counter argument of selling the goose that lays the golden eggs. Assuming we pay AGIG $2/GJ as a toll and the average realised gas price for the life of WE is $8, it means the field will generate annual cashflow of around 80mn for approx 20 years, or 1.6bn with an NPV of 637mn.

Anyway, let's get through the ED-1 result and domgas policy outcome first as those two things are two big current unknowns that will have decent impact on STX's valuation

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