new beginning

Oscar – been on holiday for a week or so – seems like longer and I was very frustrated not to be able to contribute when confusion rained through out the week.
Firstly a lost my cool with the reporting of the ownership disclosures of destra shares by our now famous bank!
Just to go over old ground – the 17m shares that went though as an off market trade had to be the shares taken by anz (Dom & pauls) as the only other holding of that size in destra is primes holding and they would not be selling at 7 cents and buying at 10 cents and since that day we have only seen one announcement under Destra that the shares acquired by anz where still held (knowing full well they weren’t – very frustrating) the next day we saw another announcement (but not put out as a destra announcement) saying they have now less than the 5% holding which implies they had sold the majority of the shares and will not be reporting on destra anymore – we’ll it was never reported correctly in the first place! – I picked that up under a BYI announcement and not under destra, this alone is totally unacceptable for destra shareholders and for the ASX!

Now as for people buying these shares and maybe, having to sell them back to anz has to be nonsense, this was a legal crossing of shares with a change of owner ship met by a payment. I would be very very dubious if a contract was in place and attached to this trade saying we have the right to buy them back at 7 cents any time in the future if we need to! What’s more the buyer could be the seller of a couple of million over the last few days making him self a tidy little short term profit – but a doubt it, my thoughts are that the buyer knows full well the intensions of prime once the rights issue is complete and that is prime may be holding 40%+ of destra shares and its only time before a full
scale take over is launched.

Succession – sorry but I have to take you to task on you’re comments re the directors putting up their share holdings as collateral to borrow monies etc. What has happened could have happened to most of us (I personally have a margin loan with a couple of companies), both of the directors did as many other directors have done and that is use this facility to avoid selling their own shares in destra to raise funds (which would send out the wrong singles which I’m sure we all agree on), these funds could be used to purchase shares in other companies. As these loans were not defaulted on (my belief only) and that in Paul’s case, he looks to be offering to pay back the loan in full for the return for his shares similar to if the bank repossess you’re house then I’m sure if you came up with the funds to pay back the debt, then you’d regain you’re house. Wouldn’t it be fun to see Paul win his case – lets just imagine what this would do to the share price trying to buy 10m shares on market, he obviously would have legal opinion advising him to take them on.
As for saying do we want these directors to be running destra - I for one do, Dom is the heart and sole of destra 24/7 and I’m sure he would love to turn this around. Before and around Xmas time his profile was all over the press and for all the right reasons so I’m sure he’ll take up this challenge and regain his pride and wealth and ours too!

Oscar – sorry don’t have the top 20 – try the asx site other wise the that results presentation had the top 10 holders.
Figures for 07-08 I’d expect to be $10m ebitda – note the second half is always seasonally less than the first half (I was hoping for $11-$12m at the start of ‘07 but with the distractions of late it would have to have effected the running of the company in some capacity and all the cost savings, relocating, redundancies etc are costly to implement and will not pay dividends until next year).
Lets more importantly look to 08-09 as this may determine what price we may be offered for our shares if prime does launches a full takeover. New number of shares on offer after rights = 482m @ 10 cents = market cap of $48m with approx debt of $15m (once paid down, sale of property, rights issue plus the write down of BYI).
What can they earn noting all the restructuring, cost savings, growth factors etc - $12m, $14m, $16m? All editda.
If we use $14m earnings and then a share price of x10 earnings which has to be conservative for a media company (even taking into account $15m debt which could be paid off in a year through earnings) mind you I’ve said this many time before regarding a PE for destra!
Based on a share price of 10x earnings = market cap of $140m and a share price of 30 cents! That’s my guess at this early stage and I would hope we’ll see some further growth through distribution deals, content deals etc. May be even a deal with Lionsgate or any of the other majors who may be coming out of contract with other distributors plus I’m sure we’ll see smaller acquisitions when the times right and the sub prime problem settles down (although don’t hold you’re breath on that issue).
Sorry for the long post but it’s been a week in the making.