This is one company I wouldn't touch with a bargepole .... I...

This is one company I wouldn't touch with a bargepole .... I have spoken to people from two companies in that sector who you would think would be interested in taking ABQ over but they are not interested ... there's a lot of court action in the background from their franchisees it's all going to end up rather nasty when the skeletons start coming out of the closets.

I owned one of their BR franchises for a few years, when I sold they changed the whole focus of the store and the end result was a store that netted 120/150k per year now loses over 100k per year. It was always in the top three stores while I ran it.
They had 65 stores back in 1995 .... despite opening dozens since then I think they are well under that number now.
Only about ten stores have ever been viable, the rest just churn over franchisees.
I notice a store they recently opened is just off the highway in Northern NSW at a place called Gulgan 4k from Mullumbimby, if they sell $50 worth of icecream a day I'll eat my hat lol.
The problem is they are selling these stores to Korean immigrants who don't know the country, it's all a con based around business immigration visas, I won't go into that here because I think an inquiry is underway.

I'm only posting this because I don't want to see shareholders lose out, enough franchisees have already lost out bigtime through ABQ.