"Why is PTG effectively paying for Harcourts software (by way of PTG shares) that they will never use because they will migrate them to VaultRE CRM anyway?"@SteveSage,
This is the same customer access strategy that started the company off to begin with, namely to buy the MyDEsktop platform from Domain, which it then replaced with ValutRE.
In both of these cases, presumably the customer lifetime value exceeds the customer acquisition cost by a margin that makes sense from a shareholder value point of view.
"Presumably" being the operating term here because, given the paucity of relevant detail, about all we can do is to "presume"..
In fact, it is quite a strange announcement, given the decidedly preliminary nature of the pending deal.
The only reason I can think of for them putting it out there at this early stage is because they felt the share price response - despite the total lack of detail in the announcement - would be favourable anyway, meaning that the company's scrip becomes more valuable as currency in any deal, thereby limiting the dilution to existing shareholders.
If they are indeed that capital market savvy, then kudos to them.
But as I think I said earlier, this was always going to be a bit of a "
Trust-Us-We-Created-Shedloads-Of-Shareholder-Value-In-The-Past-and-We-Are-Going-To-Do-So-Again", type of investment proposition.
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