"Honestly, pretty good buy back at these levels if I'm being...

"Honestly, pretty good buy back at these levels if I'm being honest. New 52W Lows"

The low is more like 12 years x 52 weeks = 624 week lows (!):




Of course, after the major acquisition in 2023, the company is carrying more debt today than 3 years ago, so the Enterprise Value isn't at an all-time low.

The current EV is close to an all-time low, though, as can be seen from the grey columns in the chart below, at a time when the EBIT is approaching an all-time high (the blue columns):



Which means that the EV/EBIT multiple is at an all-time low:




Clearly, this is part of a multi-year trend during which the multiple has undergone a secular de-rating, from in the mid-teens a decade ago, to less than 11.0x today.

So it cannot be ruled out that the de-rating process continues.
However, it can't go on indefinitely and at some stage it must reach a limit.

What is the leading indicator for the reaching of that de-rating limit?

I think it is once the market sees the financial leverage level falling sufficiently- to, say, ~2.0x Net Debt-to-EBITDA (currently ~3.0x, down from 3.7x in FY2023).

At the current rate of returning capital to shareholders, this would only be a late-2026 story, though. So it's still some time away.

Of course, if the repair of the balance sheet is indeed some kind of a re-rating catalyst, then the market, being the future-looking animal that it is, will start to anticipate it probably 12-18 months before it actually happens.

.