Two key takeaways for mine: 1. Confirmed respect for the share...

Two key takeaways for mine:

1.  Confirmed respect for the share capital account:
A few years ago, these guys were spraying new shares around like it was confetti (despite there being no need for it, given the company was adequately capitalised and starting to generate free cash flow).  There was a mini-revolt about this at the time on the part of some of the major shareholders, and the practice desisted.
Consequently, Shares on Issue (including Performance Rights) have risen by just 1.5%pa over the past 4 years, which is palatable (although it would be good if that 1.5%pa figure was zero).

(Legacy share-based payments are still flowing through the P&L, but at a rate of around $0.5mpa less going forward, so the reported EBITDA, EBIT, Pre-Tax numbers will enjoy an accounting tailwind. But, as always, assessment of the underlying performance of the business should ignore this positive variance.)

2.  The recent acquisition (i-Link) stands on its own merit
Very often, company managers make acquisitions to mask poor underlying performance of their businesses. With today's update showing that the business is doing just fine, this is obviously not the case here.  The CEO's comments regarding the acquisition referred to "synergies", which is often mere nebulous management-speak, but in this case he made specific mention of the differing products/services of i-Link and the lack of overlap of customers, meaning that the cross-sell opportunities are non-trivial.  Also, i-Link's 2024 Revenue was provided ($2.7m) which is a tad more than double the purchase consideration of $1.25m, bang in line with PPL's EV-to-Revenue, so any synergies are "free" and PPL certainly hasn't paid over the odds for the acquisition.

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