re: yesterday's announcement - extralite
Well now, Extralite, why is it you always see the glass half empty? I’m reminded of poor old Marvin, the paranoid android, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide: "Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust or just fall apart where I'm standing?”
Why not instead celebrate the fact that Swiftel’s broadband customer base has continued its rapid expansion, adding a further 2,000 customers since the beginning of May (ASX Announcement 3rd May, “Swiftel Connects 20 000th Broadband Customer” vs 22,000 customers now).
Or that “its normalised results for the period April to June 2004 will be EBITDA positive and margins continue to improve as more customers are connected to the network and the bandwidth/customer efficiency targets are met”.
OK, so you have doubts as to the benefits of the merger. Fair enough!
However, you should remember that the Board of Swiftel is comprised of a majority of Directors who are independent of People Telecom, and who are serious shareholders in their own right. After careful consideration, and a good deal of argy-bargy, those Directors came down in favour of the merger proposal.
An Independent Experts’ Report has also come down in favour of the deal going ahead.
(And for what it’s worth, I too am in favour of the integrated Swift/People Tel – for the combined suite of products it will be able to offer, the economies of scale and the technical & business efficiencies that will flow from the merger. And not least because of the sheer ‘grunt’ this very well-connected coterie of east-coast players can bring to the story!)
I know it has been frustrating waiting for all the legalities to play out. Inaction has led to wild speculation and a whole lot of useless talk. But all of that will be soon over.
You have been holding Swiftel over a long period, Extralite, and I think – I hope – like me you will be soon rewarded. So hang in there - and try not to see the negative side of everything!
