News: QHL Quickstep Says Agreed Terms With Lockheed Martin Corporation For 5-Year Follow-On..., page-13

There are a couple of issues at play. First off, finding a buyer for QHL as a whole is tricky.

Margins are very low and it bounces around break-even. This means a new player would need to either have a swag of good work it could put in or a lot of experience in a technology field which has a small gene pool.

Second problem is that there are no real private equity buyers that would fit the bill due to the LM/NG contract which by default needs to be done in Australia due to off-set requirements and being a strong partner to the US. With the cost of employing people in Australia, this is always going to be a challenge.

To get work using the Quickstep process really needs a solid and steady spend on R and D and in particular D relevant to a specific project. It's not a matter of dropping a file into a CNC machine in Delhi and making crankshafts for Detroit.

With a market cap of $25m the real issue is buyers on ASX are just not interested. Now if you could change the US$ vs AU$ and get a win on the exchange rate that would help a little, but even then a lot of materials are bought in US$.

Sorry if I sound negative, I'm not trying to be as I would love this to be flying.