EOS Deal, page-3

Sorry I don't agree - What mishaps?

Firstly Milton's was a pegged transaction with the base of the SOL share held to $31.00 The Milton's shareholders got NAV but if you did the calculation it panned out at about a cost per SOL share of around $28.00. Their NTA was $5.53 (pre Tax) and they paid an 8c dividend plus $37c and received 0.1863 of a SOL share.

SOL share price had been trading pretty high in the period leading up to the merger. The $38 per share in September 2021 was a stupid price. There was no sum of the parts that could get you there. I thought it was worth around $32 and in hindsight that wasn't that logical either.

The current share price and the $28.00 is roughly in line. The goodwill write off is as a result of a very high SOL share price at settlement.

It is clear that SOL has been trying to get into the liquidity end of the market for some time and I am led to believe that the BKW sale of some of its SOL a few years ago was to make the free float large enough to enter the index.

So SOL wanted to have more liquidity so that it could do more acquisitions:

So how could it get there. No-one was going to take up a rights issue for almost 40% more than its sum of the parts NTA. Plus the Milton's deal added over $3 billion to the pot. That is an asset transforming deal.

The TPG share has in fact over the years been a very good investment and until recently has been locked up. It started growing when they purchased Bevan Slattery's undersea operation to Guam. At that time TPG shares were around the $1.90 price. In fact the spectrum sharing deal (Telstra and TPG) should favour TPG. It probably doesn't suit Optus because it entrenches Telstra's superiority. Lastly on that exact point Todd Barlow was only in Pitt Capital from 2010 and so the investment in internet predates his appointment to Pitt Capital partners and WHSP. in 2010 and 2015 respectively.

EOS are extremely luckily that WHSP didn't just write off their investment and let the entire mess fall into a heap. It is expensive but has anyone else offered a better deal? No -if the had EOS would have accepted that offer I am sure. The fees and price is very high but they don't have to collect in cash now and in fact they wont be able to for a long time. Don't blame Todd Barlow for a deal that is totally in EOIS making. All EOS had to do was manage their company responsibly and none of this would ever have happened.

So as yet not one of your examples suggests that WHSP is run like a merchant banker and in fact it seems to be run very well. There is no jury out here -it is a known fact on every metric WHSP has outperformed the market over any period longer than 1 year.