Ann: Profit Guidance, page-6

More than anything I was surprised at the most loquacious REH investor presentation I can recall seeing.

The $250-260m EBITDA was probably a shade skinny on my expectations, but within the margin for forecasting error and close enough to allow me to breathe a slight sigh of relief, acquisition disasters usually become evident fairly swiftly.

The first half EBITDA last year was about $179m, so the $255m midpoint implies a 42.5% uplift, which given the 12.6% uplift in shares on issue means the transaction looks to be acting as intended at this early stage. After allowing for about $75m in interest and D&A, the PBT will have risen about 20%, which remains accretive relative to the 12.6% in new equity being serviced, but that isn't meaningfully better than the growth the standalone business could have been expected to show based on the guidance.

Realistically, we probably need to see the next 6 months to really start passing judgement as it should be the first reasonably clean set of post-acquisition accounts and in truth, the December 2019 result is probably the one where we'll know for certain whether the acquisition was a good application of the first capital raising in 70 years.

Hopefully the debt will be retired as soon as possible and we can go back to looking at it every 6 months... - Eternalgrowth