IMO I’d say the material SP decline is almost primarily due to...

IMO I’d say the material SP decline is almost primarily due to the abrupt collapse of Dr Lewinns Chinese exports & subsequent loss of faith in management. Basically all problems with this business have been poor capital allocation decisions at the corporate level - not any deterioration in domestic brand earnings power (which all remain very strong IMO).

The recent performance of their 7 core domestic brands, in isolation, (the source of all that goodwill) has been sound. The brands are all growing nicely & maintaining strong GPMs. There’s slack in the groups opex structure which has been targeted in their 5 year plan (anyone’s guess how this will be executed). There’s also those hideous “one-offs” which occur each & every year, which again is a poor reflection of management & nothing to do with brand performance/earning power (e.g hand sanitizer write off [face palm], golden parachute to former CEO, exorbitant IB defence fees [money well spent, I guess], Chinese inventory write off, and a tone of debt & equity investments written off against their portfolio of loss making start-ups - nothing at all to do with core domestic brand operations).

The aggregate historical cost base of these 7 core AUS businesses is ~ $230m. I have no doubt that if these businesses where each privately sold independently, aggregate proceeds would surpass that original cost base (somewhere > $1.70 on a per share basis by my estimates). And this is before the Opps review, on an “as is” basis right now.

Can’t fathom how there could not be serious interest by Gallin/PE at these levels, and mgmt would not have a leg to stand on at almost any offer price IMO.