Yes our earnings and book value justify a much higher share...

Yes our earnings and book value justify a much higher share price. But it is managements responsibility to help the market reflect this. If management do not pay any dividends and do not conduct any buyback the share price will lag it's real value and will eventually erode if management pile into underperforming assets and never return money to shareholders as they deserve. On the flipside, management could easily boost the share price by conducting a buy back which would also be extraordinarily earnings accretive.

As good heart mentioned above the forecast FY24 EPS is 37 cents. Management could tender to buy back 20% of shares at a premium price of 58c, around $140m cost, equating to just four months of cashflow, or just a third of their projected year end cash balance.

Best case, management would actually buy back 20% of shares which would be incredibly good value for those remaining shareholders. The EPS per share for those shareholders that held on, would increase from 37 cents per share to 46 cents per share. Incredibly, the cash backing at end of year would still sit around 300m (down from 440m projected), but with 20% less shares on issue the cash backing per share would still sit around 30c!

Worst case, and more likely, only a few percent of shareholders will actually tender and management will have floored the stock price 30% higher than where it is today.

This is a textbook example of when a buyback should be conducted.

Personally, if management conducted a tender I would not sell back any shares as I still think they are extraordinarily cheap and the buyback itself would only make them better value again by reducing the number of shares on issue.