had a quick look David. One worth keeping an eye on, though I would need prefer further progress first.

The cash position is very interesting, would be very easy to miss that on a cursory view. The performance over time is very inconsistent, not sure why the EBITDA plunged to losses of -17.7m and _15.6m in 2001 and 2002. Revenues are declining, due to the reduction in calling revenues (reflecting competitive pressures, though profits in this business are still improving).

Also, note that capex has pretty much been at depreciation levels and is forecast at $8-$10m this year, so they are still burning cash even if they achieve the EBITDA forecasts.

Hard to value a loss-making company. I approached it from what would EBITDA have to improve to, before MAQ achieved a PE of 10 (excluding for cash).

I assumed cash of $26m was free (note that at June 03 current liabilities were greater than current assets, excluding cash, so some of the case should prudently be held for working capital purposes). SO MAQ would need NPAT of $2.6m, and assuming a tax rate of 30% (conservative, since they have some tax losses) and deprecn of $9.1m, would need EBITDA of $12.8m, to get a PE of 10. If they achieved EBITDA of $8m this year (middle of their forecast range), they would need to grow it by 60% next year, to get a PE of 10 next year. That being the case, I'd rather wait to see them achieve (or confidently forecast) those sorts of nunmbers, before buying.

On the other hand, they could use the cash for a good acqisition. A few telcos have been buying iiNet and Optus for starters), not quite sure why MAQ are sitting on their hands. Couple of other things the Singapore story seems a bit weak (not sure why they are trying it; revs declined in the last half) and their are around 6m options in the money.