what the chairman and ceo dont say, page-35

what alot of you guys bagging out the company should take into account is:elders had debts of close to $1b...

ive been through the accounts & this company has solid foundations,someone had leveraged it up to 130% & now they gotta take the pain.

consider i think its BBI the blabcock infrastructure staple its got a MC of about $300m but get this...ITS GOT DEBTS OF $9B...THATS $9B...GROSS INCOMPETENCE..

MJ has reduced debt from i think $980m to about $178-$200m,i think the tie up with QBE may be alot more beneficial to elders than you think.

MJ says ebit will return to $84m from the low of $17m,going on its sales id say hes about right,i see he has removed a layer of the corporate structure ( greedy fat cats) which id say where all the problems came from.

now onto the subject of private equity players,PE want their pound of flesh & they always get it,they are not charities.

watch closely the refloat of myer to see what PE does to a company...the first thing they do is strip out the assets for example with myer WHO OWNED ALL THEIR STORES PRE tpg/blum taking over.

what happened? tpg/blum sold all the stores & leased them back & now they want investors to pay $3b for myer.

dj's is worth $2.8b,got about 20(owned) stores less than myer & make 50% more than myer re:about $150m v $100m NPAT,so dj's is the buy not the myer refloat.

so forget about the PE crowd they only strip out the best for themselves.

go through the accounts & you will see this is a solid business that has over extended itself & got away from what it does best,its not like the b&b's & co hyper leveraged outfits as elders EBITDA to debt is now around x 1.2 whereas say AIO you have ebitda/debt of 4.46/1.

this is a good business & you give this guy his 3 year turnaround period & he will build it back up.