Thanks for that Manny.I will post my perspective as my attempts...

Thanks for that Manny.

I will post my perspective as my attempts to confirm if this is a short investment because as a long it is very obviously speculative.

These terms I define as Ben Graham did,

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”

Generally I do not speculate and I have a severe aversion to shorting a real business (a valuation short) when I could short a nothing burger (a donut short) instead.

The valuation of CTD is speculative as it dependant not on historical earnings but a presumption that historical growth trends will continue. This is a perilous assumption at the best of times and it is clear that none of the longs have done anything like the required homework to confirm that is the case.

@manny100 your comments lead me to believe that you see this as a speculative long, that is for a 100% return taking a higher risk position is neccesssary.

I would commend Ben Grahams constant exhortation to avoid speculation as very useful tool that many more people should be aware of.

VGI is also to be treated with skepticism as they are talking their book.

However CTD admits that VGI were right that CTD were faking many of their overseas offices and faking their technical advantage with non-existent patents.

https://www.********.au/2018/11/08/corporate-travel-management-ltd-asxctd-responds-to-second-report-by-vgi-partners/

Reading the EY reply to the first point they do not address if the goodwill on acquisition needs to be impaired. This is all that matters.
Shareholders would need to confirm for themselves that the acquisitions are valuable.

To @manny100 's point, yes they may have paid with scrip however that does not mean they acquired valuable businesses. We would really need to look at the businesses in question and note that bad aquisitions do often happen.

I don't know if the acqusitions were good and suggest having a look at them.

Andrew Buckley at Cardno grew a successful business but then hubris pushed him into ever larger bad acquisitions like Caminosca. It took a third party (in Crescent) to come in and take a knife to the goodwill.

I say this as it speaks to human nature, hubris gets all successful investors. Surely these trends exist in other "roll-ups".
SGH and Quindell was another doozy, there needen't be fraud involved.

Shareholders should want an independant third party to assess the goodwill not an equivocation by EY about the correct f*ing discount rate. I don't know if there's an issue but there sure is a relevant question that hasn't been addressed.

In the second point, are EY again responding to a technicality? Or I am just not smart enough.

In the third point EY seem to confirm that the cash is in fact being "window-dressed".

GLTA