I've been looking at this company for a while now; these are my...

I've been looking at this company for a while now; these are my thoughts.

I've worked with them a bit in the past and they're really good operators. Print is a tough game, and it's hard to make a $$, but there's no better team in the business than GS and MA.

When they floated the business off about 5 years ago, I thought at the time the price was pretty full, and they didn't leave much on the table. Since then obviously the SP has tracked within a pretty tight band, so that was about right I think, and I'm pleased I didn't invest.

There hasn't been much in the way of communication to investors post-Covid, so it's hard to know where they are, or how they're travelling. Presumably they've picked up the Jobsaver subsidy, but as to what happens when that runs out (for IVE and their clients), who knows? Not me for sure. But print at the moment is pretty dead right across the country, aside from packaging, which isn't where they are.

Nearly all the big blue chips, which are IVE's client base, are doing it tough, and looking to cut costs. Unfortunately, instead of being sensible and increasing the marketing spend in difficult times, Finance always looks to 'discretionary' areas like marketing spend as the first area to make cuts - so imo that doesn't augur well for the business.

Printing is a volume game. Presses are hungry beasts and you have to keep them fed. Losing your biggest print client is a real blow, and there's no real way to spin it otherwise. Even though the margins would have been very skinny, in printing it's volume that keeps the lights on, and the smaller accounts (e.g. within financial services and similar), where they can do the up-sells, and where price sensitivity isn't always so high, and where the work is sticky, which make the profits. But you need volume.

So, imo, whatever IVE may have been worth five years ago in the float, or last year pre-Covid, is completely irrelevant.

One thing that wouldn't entirely surprise me would be if the management team decided to re-privatise the business, and make an offer for the minority of the shares that they didn't already own, looking to pick up some bargains when the big shake out happens without having to worry about outside shareholders, or ASX rules, etc.. But in that case I'd be surprised if any offer came at a great premium. Might be worth a punt though, and I'm giving it some thought.

No investment advice intended here - just my own thoughts and opinions, which may be completely wrong, and frequently are.