It's n It's not a nice feeling, but like you say you have to...

It's n

It's not a nice feeling, but like you say you have to back management on this one. In effect, the AUS/NZ business is feeling the pinch because of management pricing discipline, in other words likely safe guarding returns in the long term.

Naturally though, the market want results right away and the irony is that if management announced big purchases in AUS/NZ the share price would probably be in the mid 20s! Yet we know what happens there, remember the mess Collections House got themselves into overpaying for PDLs? (It was a while back but I'm fairly sure that was the primary reason for it's troubles.)

Like you say it would really suck if this de-rate is followed by a poor Q3, however it has been falling precipitously since the results. Therefore I don't think we should assume the latest rout is the result of any insider knowledge etc.  

CCP's forward P/E is now 13.33 based on the

$1.344 FY18 EPS​

median estimate I see on Commsec.
So yeah, I completely agree it's fair even at a trailing P/E of 15.6, CCP is far from expensive in this market. This heavily discounts the longer term growth opportunities in the US and sub-prime lending for the business as well.

There are always grumblings about only buying this stock in a recession, and just wait for the recession to hit and blow this stock up. However, if you went through life investing like this you would rarely actually be invested. How many other stocks will decline heavily in a recession as well?

Additionally, CCP has a track record of pricing debt accurately, writing off loans conservatively upfront and, although it's leverage is increasing, is likely to ride out a recession. As always who knows when that will be, or what opportunities it will bring as CCP has some contrarian characteristics as well.