Ann: AGM Presentation, page-8

At the top of your head Do you know how much of that reduction in the PP&E is due to write offs vs asset sales? I could work through the annual reports if not.

I have done the exercise. Since DH2010, when PP&E peaked at $360m (i.e., $180m higher than today's level), they raised some $85m from the sale of assets. Cumulative capex amounted to $139m and cumulative depreciation amounted to $159m, so excess depreciation of $20m

So from that one can deduce that the write-downs came to around $75m.

Either way, I suspect the asset base has been on a bit of a Spartan capital diet over the past few years, so capex catch-up is on the cards, of that I am sure.


Why would the company say they want to buy back shares if they aren’t going to do it? Maybe a buyback and then a cap raise when the sp is higher?"

Who know?
Maybe they've read the "How-to-Talk-Shareholder-Value-Execu-Speak" handbook.

In my experience, it is best to judge corporate executives based, not on what they say, but what they, in fact, do.

And when it comes to matters of capital allocation decisions, these guys have not done very well. Why, they spent like drunken sailors at the top of the cycle, to the extent that almost ended up in the undoing of the company.

Until demonstrated otherwise, I think it is prudent to assume that, you know... Leopards Spots. No change. [*]

So, I am convinced that when faced with the opposing options of "there's more work to be won if only we had more cranes" and "return capital to shareholders", the former will win out every single time. For that is the institutional imperative.

No, @Just_a_guy, this is a company with significant calls on capital looming.

Its managers might talk about returning capital to shareholders, and they might even announce an on-market buyback, but where the company finds itself today means that shareholders will see precious little in the way of capital coming back to them.

Capital appreciation is the reason one would invested in BOL at this point, not capital returns.


[*] Although, to be fair, they did excel in one aspect of capital management about which I was highly sceptical, and that is in preserving the issued capital base of the company. Operating with the acute capital constraints would have made being a BOL manager a pretty miserable thing to be over the past 3 or so years. I was expecting that the pressure would have made them blink and raise additional equity capital. Certainly, many other boards of directors would have done so. To their credit, BOL's directors stuck it out and ground their way through while the company was in a fiscal straitjacket. So kudos to them for averting what could have been significant dilution of existing shareholders.