1) On the buyback, I think the major shareholder wants to...

1) On the buyback, I think the major shareholder wants to increase control of the company. A few years ago the current major shareholder acquired about 9% of the company which was knocked back by the takeover panel.

2) I believe the value of operations is being somewhat masked by the surplus cash. Run a screen and the stats show a PE of 11x and price to book value of 1x.

If the surplus cash got paid out (which would be a great way to use those franking credits) I think it would do 2 things i) show management's commitment to enhancing shareholder value and ii) improve clarity on the value of the operations. Assuming the market cap falls by the full amount of cash paid out then the stats would show a PE of 3.8x and a price to book of 0.56x and my hunch is that the market would price the operations higher than a PE of 3.8x.