Ann: 1H24 Trading Update, page-7

Gee, not sure how PE could make it work; there's no surplus capital strip opportunity, and an asset-strip exercise would be hard to execute in the current macroeconomic environment.

So the only self-help value creation options of PE are to rip costs out (that exercise is already underway), or to run down working capital (but even then, we'd be talking no more than $100m).

Or maybe a PE buyer simply buys it as a pure cyclical arbitrage play, with a view to offloading it at higher valuation multiple in 3 to 5 years' time.

But my experience is that patient cyclical plays alone are insufficient attraction for PE; they normally require additional low-hanging fruit that is able to be picked up-front.

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