Ann: Update - Notification of buy-back - MLX, page-27

By this logic... I have an even better proposition.
This isn't necessarily a comment on whether the MLX buyback is a good or bad idea (I personally like it), but the above logic applies to every buyback. A trick I always like using to understand the implications of just about anything numerical is to run the numbers to the absolute extremes and think about what that means about the less extreme versions of the same thing, basically checking your work via the limit as x goes to infinity:

* Immediately spending ALL (current) cash on the buyback outright nearly halves the SOI and leaves $0 for dividends... The implication here being a quick & dirty comparison of immediate divi/share obviously ignores some element of the point of a buyback and favours divis too much.
* Meanwhile, a cap raise at 40c distributing 50M shares would get us enough cash that we could immediately do a 22c dividend, getting you a solid 2c (10%) advantage... Again indicating that this method of analysis seems to systematically favour/disfavour a side in the divis/buybacks debate, if you take it as a given that raising & then distributing a dividend is not somehow creating value

Buybacks vs dividends in the abstract have been discussed to death a million times but ultimately boil down to (1) is the stock good value, and (2) tax implications of divis with franking credits vs buyback enabling full use of long-term CGT 50% discount. If we "knew" (1) we'd be rich already but buybacks are basically an extension of a bullish belief that the stock is undervalued, so the main consideration is often (2) in terms of what's physically possible and what shareholders want.

In the current case, without franking credits, dividends aren't really on the table until next year at least. I'd imagine we'll be re-assessing then based on the share price; I can certainly imagine a world where the SP appreciates enough that the buyback either stops or just can't reliably pick up enough shares to actually make a dent in our excess capital, in which case dividends alongside it definitely sound sensible assuming we are paying something near to 30% tax and haven't launched into developing something. But for the moment, able to buy at 40c, I'm very happy with the buyback as our sole means of managing the cash pile, even if it's eventually likely to be inadequate by itself.