Hopefully, either way it's a step in the right direction. He...

Hopefully, either way it's a step in the right direction.

He will want to go out being able to point to having steered the company to a recovery (even if it is in spite of him rather than because of).

It's hard to know which aspects of the business he has genuinely influenced, but the (lack of) allocation of capital reserves is almost certainly one of them. Now with the buyback happening it suggests he has been overridden.

It's a pretty big U-turn as only last year the prospect of a buyback was raised then reversed by management. I wonder if it is the first of more to come. They could just return NPAT to shareholders each year, in the form of a buyback while they feel the SP is undervalued and a dividend once it is fluctuating less. And still have a larger than necessary buffer in cash reserves for other growth opportunities.