I think they will revert back to their original roots which is in market research as you all know. The media and performance experiment has largely backfired and placed PPL in a dangerous predicament particularly regarding cash flow and other vitals.
If they were to retreat back to market research, a declining industry, there would be no reason to be listed on the ASX. They listed to expand particularly in media and performance and diversify their revenue streams away from a dangerous 100% market research only revenue model. They would have been aiming for a revenue mix of 70-80% media/performance and 20-30% research.
I suspect this is where they are going: Delist, go private, all board members with limited/no skin in the game lose their cushy salary for doing absolutely nothing and PPL goes back to servicing it's research clients. Shareholders lose their money. Perhaps Paul Chan comes back, I don't know. Eventually as a private company they try to find a buyer.
The PPL board members should all be fired as they have stood by and watched a company plummet from 60c down to 5c, all the while happy to collect a nice pay check for doing SFA.
In other news: *Nielsen is trying to find a buyer. *WPP is trying to offload Kantar, still trying to find a buyer. *AMR, a 30 year old Australian research business has been dissolved and merged into Colmar Brunton. Both are WPP businesses but WPP is bleeding at the moment and is consolidating. They were happy to dissolve a long standing business such as AMR. Such is the state of the research industry.
Here's some unsolicited advice: don't invest in media and research companies.
PPL Price at posting:
5.4¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
