Hi Austy. This is an excellent post thankyou. With excellent...

Hi Austy. This is an excellent post thankyou. With excellent research.
I think there are a couple of additional important points about lyl that this chat has not highlighted.
One is the ownership structure and hence tax. The directors at lyl own a very large percentage of the company and these guys have high salaries and are in the top personal tax bracket. The lyl cash pile is effectively their own cash and it has paid the company tax rate (30percent). If they pay it to themselves as a special dividend they attract an additional tax and so they are choosing to leave the cash in the company. This situation is peculiar to a small company like lyl with such a high percentage owned by the senior management. The directors behaviour makes perfect sense.
The other thing is that the lyl business in Africa is a big part of their revenue and the covid travel bans are likely to impact the africa business for years. Sure they have an office in south africa but their best project people are in Australia and are effectively shut out of African projects except over video calls. This is going to give lyl few lean years with a lot of rebuilding afterwards.
So the cash pile is unlikely to be paid as a special dividend because of tax and the underlying engineering business is going to have a tough time in africa because of covid.
Lyl is strong and a great company so it will come back but that is why its share price is so low at the moment.