Considering Spheria started buying PRT last year when the stock...

Considering Spheria started buying PRT last year when the stock was well in excess of $0.40, and significantly increased their position early this year when the stock was in the low $0.30s, i'd say they're probably not a great indicator? This is what Spheria wrote about PRT in February this year: https://www.spheria.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Spheria-microcap-fund-update-Feb-2018.pdf

PRT’s affiliation agreement expires in 30 June 2019, for those fearing the renewal terms, we note that the two other regional licence holders (SXL and WIN) are locked in until 30 June 2021. This provides little alternative for SWM meaning the two parties are effectively tied at the hip particularly given PRT’s affiliation agreement (amount they pay to SWM) is around one-third of SWM’s EBIT. We believe a sensible outcome would be PRT paying more for content - but not drastically more - and the worst-case scenario being the contract rolls on the same terms if an acceptable agreement cannot be reached. We actually believe the most logical outcome is a merger of the two particularly given the economics for SWM are highly attractive given the importance of PRT to their economics and its low trading multiple. When including $10m of cost synergies (i.e. PRT head office) the payback period would be a few years, which equates to a rate of return >30%. In anyone’s economics text book that is ludicrously attractive.

Two things jump out at me from that commentary (which obviously looks a little misguided with the benefit of hindsight):

1) They completely misunderstood the extent to which PRT's old affiliation agreement was below market, and how big the impact to profitability the new affiliation was going to be
2) They are presenting it as a faix accompli that Channel 7 will waltz in and take PRT over. Two obvious problems with that are: a) Channel 7 sold its stake (which it had held for decades) to Bruce Gordon, so it doesn't look to me like Channel 7 are in a hurry to get anything done, and b) if Channel 7 is the only logical for PRT (which i think it is due to the fact C7 controls PRT's economics via the affiliation agreement), then there's no guarantee that a takeover would be a good result for PRT - if you auctioned your house and there was only one logical buyer, do you think you'd get a great result?

Given PRT specifically stated in their FY18 results that affiliation payments are going up again in FY20, none of us have any idea what profitability will be in FY20 - it will almost certainly be less than FY19's $13.5m (midpoint of range), but will it be $12m? $10m? $8m? $6m? Neither you nor i have any idea, and my personal view is that if you have almost no idea what a business will be earning 12 months from now, then investing in its stock it's a pure gamble.