bring on 10 bucks, page-16

BARAKA,
Thanks for your insightful trip down Memory Lane! When WES went public (w/just-retired Chairman Trevor Eastwood as CEO), members of the Westralian Farmers Coop got shares free vs. an IPO price of $1.00. Later WES split 2:1, so their entry price was $0.50 BEFORE the capital return of $3.00 earlier this decade!

That makes the Capital Gains overhang their biggest problem regarding WES (or their descendents, should they be rash enough to take the shares out of their bottom drawer and sell them!)

Most of these original WES shareholders simply took up the Dividend Reinvestment Plan when it offered, and by 2004 WES's value was up 35x, vs 5x for the ASX as a whole over the same period. There was a classic story in WA's WEST AUSTRALIAN newspaper last year: an old WA bachelor farmer, because he had no family, left his WES shares to a neighbour who was good to him. He'd never bought one, just accumulated them off his original co-op parcel. The value of this bequest? Turned out to be $11 million!