1. This came at a bad time but I wonder if it's due to Rick...

1. This came at a bad time but I wonder if it's due to Rick having been there since Vocus' early days and simply deciding that it's time to take a break.

In general I'm reassured by the fact that Tony Grist and Vaughan Bowen are still major holders, and Geoff Horth is still CEO. Spenceley's sale was unfortunate timing but he's also now running MHOR (which I've invested in) and still holds a million shares. One could argue that that's not much relative to his original holding but it was still $7m worth at the time of his Change in Director's Holdings announcement.

2. & 3. IMO this doesn't affect Vocus as much as TPG (I hold both so no bias here). Geoff Horth also confirmed the same recently. M2 always had terrible retail margins relative to TPG due to M2's lack of underlying infrastructure and reliance on Telstra.

It's worth noting that neither retail broadband prices, nor the NBN's business model are set in stone. Despite the Govt's determination that the NBN will be a profitable entity in its own right, it doesn't mean that nbnco can sit there and set prices as it chooses. Well it can, but it faces the risk that if end users don't get their expected performance because the margins aren't there for RSPs to buy sufficient CVC end users will opt for lower speed plans. This will blow up nbnco's revenue model as well as egg the the entire political football that is the NBN.


4. My gut feel is that this is part of it, and they are playing around the sides of a bigger general game of price manipulation off the back of bad news, allowing larger players to accumulate at lower prices off the pain of smaller, skittish shareholders.

Regarding CLSA (AFR yesterday), I wonder if they are retrofitting a story to the facts.

Or maybe that's what I've just done. Time will tell.