Given Boral is out there soaking up shares at the current trading price of around $6.80 (it’s paid up to $6.96) it’s a no-brainer that no one is going to accept Seven’s $6.50 takeover.

Thanks to a generally positive response from shareholders to the buyback, Stokes holding has already gone up to 24 per cent over the past few weeks and based on substantial shareholder notices to the ASX, he hasn’t had to buy a share.

The big song and dance about Seven’s bid being stingy relative to the lofty valuation range contained in Boral’s target statement seems like a bit of a sideshow. Any bid that contains no premium for control for a company that has potential upside to its performance doesn’t rely on valuation to garner acceptance.

Seven was only ever looking to pick up a bit of stray stock in Boral in the lull between bouts of buying under the 3 per cent creep provisions sanctioned under the Corporations Act.

Any student of corporate history knows Stokes’ stealth strategy for getting control of listed companies on the cheap is using the creeping provisions. He is a self-made billionaire with an aversion to overpaying.

Boral has been ripe for a corporate fixer-upper for some time now.

Seven bought its first 20 per cent of Boral at bargain basement prices - so it’s already sitting on a tidy paper profit.

The target statement, released on Thursday, outlined Boral’s strategy to increase its returns, sell off more assets and undertake a ‘transformation’.

Transformation, a popular expression in the corporate lexicon, refers to fixing up an underperforming company by selling off the less profitable bits, streamlining operations, cutting costs and increasing market share of the core businesses.

And Boral has been ripe for a corporate fixer-upper for some time now, given its underperformance under the previous management has been further exacerbated by the negative effects of COVID.

There is plenty of room for improvement and even if shareholders take the view that the new management’s targeted improvements are a little ambitious, there is little doubt that the company is looking at a performance upside.

Of course Stokes knows this better than anyone. Seven is represented on the Boral board by Kerry Stokes’ son Ryan who is also Seven’s chief executive.

Earlier attempts by Seven to seek two representatives on the Boral board were thwarted by two other shareholders, Perpetual and John Wylie’s Tanarra Capital.

But every time Seven manages to edge up its stake, the influence of the other large shareholders is diminished.

With time and the help of Boral’s buyback it is hard to see how Stokes won’t make it to the 30 per cent mark by this time next year. And If Boral undertakes an even larger buyback with the proceeds of asset sales currently being contemplated Seven’s stake could keep growing.

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