"Even taking this argument into account the offer is way too low...

"Even taking this argument into account the offer is way too low and will not succeed. Book Value, agreed can be subjective but not 50% off the mark. Any value investor could tell you that. "

On the contrary, any value investor worth his fee will tell you that, per fundamental valuation theory, the a price for a business 50% below book value is perfectly reasonable and legitimate if the Return on Capital (ROC) generated by that business is 50% below its Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC).... which it essentially is for TRS currently.

It is a valuation axiom that Price-to-Book (P-to-B) value is a function of the spread of ROC over WACC, and this axiom is supported by the empirical evidence in equity markets. (In fact, P-to-B rises exponentially with linearly increasing ROC over WACC spread, but that's a story for another time.)

Don't get me wrong, $2.70 is indeed opportunistic and too low, but using book value in this particular case is a meaningless exercise (not just for the above reason, but also because of the nature of this business and especially where it finds itself, financially, today).

Without any substance behind this next prediction, other than having seen similar cases like this in the past, I think the odds of this company changing ownership at a price above $3.50 is low (of the order of 5% or 10%, maybe).

This is not a business whose assets, market position and IP are particularly unique or desirable so as to induce any sort of crazy bidding war by competing buyers.

In fact, there are some very significant contingent liabilities which could make it a binary value outcome for owners of the business if the execution is mishandled, or if macroeconomic conditions deteriorate sufficiently. Indeed some of that binary outcome nature is very much evident in the share price collapse this year.