What a big surprise. Ten in VA. And who would have thought that a company that is finally turning around after 5 years is now doing so well that it needs to be put in VA as the billionaire directors who own half and want to own the other half, no longer want to have personal guarantees. Yes, the guarantees that they supplied a few years ago (for a fee might I add) when Ten was in serious trouble. The guarantee support that was provided to keep this dog around the $500 million market cap level as they did cap raise after cap raise on the loyal shareholders. hmmm. I wonder how many hundreds of millions they managed to raise over that time to keep paying themselves and the board, restructure the business just the way they wanted etc for the poor performance promising a turnaround.
It is common knowledge these vultures had been wanting to merge with Foxtel for some time. I guess the time is now. Licence fees about to be reduced further, ownership restrictions easing. Obviously the time is right. So move some numbers a little to make look like losing money last half, use cap proceeds from late 2015 to repay most of the debt, pull your guarantees, use the media to make it look even worse, pretend you are the saviour when you buy it for cents in the dollar, merge it with Dads company and make billions going forward. You get the drift.
This smells to high heaven and I do not believe a company on the turnaround, finally increasing market share over competitors, fairly stable revenue in a tough environment, with significantly reduced debt, with pending reduction in licence fees and finally going to make some money going forward would suddenly have banks nervous and its large shareholder guarantee providers not being comfortable supplying guarantees after doing so for 5 years when the business was much, much worse?
I think ASIC should do some sniffing here as it smells real bad.
TEN Price at posting:
16.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
