Okay, what's with the "SDE"?!  Changing "Slack Gold Enterprizes" to "Slack's Delusional Enterprizes"?!  I guess I could see it - since I KNOW that I'm a lot more optimistic than most here!

Here I'll add that when I'm at my watering hole, and need my drink refreshed, I sometimes ask the bartender to make my bucket "TM".  In response to their typical puzzled look, I say "you know, the opposite of 'MT'".  A weak attempt at humor.  But it beats my other proclamation - "glass hole!, glass hole!" - suggesting my bucket was drained dry due to a flaw.  That one usually causes a bit of excitement. LOL  Here I should advise that most of my quips are far wittier than these - at least I think so!

Now, in response to your post, a couple of things.  First and foremost, I'm mostly continuing to express my ire that JT wasn't witty enough to see the obvious six months ago.  That's when the time was most ripe to do buybacks, with every penny available, and even leveraged money, IMO.  It was a no-brainer, IMO.  Either you believe in the patents, or you don't.  If you don't, all is lost anyway - so even then it probably justified going for it.  And S&L probably would have been removed from the scene.

That said, while I agree with your opinions for the most part, in my optimism, I doubt they'd they'll be able to get the return on investment that was possible previously - nowhere close.  But perhaps they'll see a bright future of continuing mass inflows of cash, making the investment worthy.

But here's the hole in your theory IMO.  The pursuit of an acquisition.

I said "To do an acquisition, you need cash (primarily, especially in PTSC's circumstance)", as you noted.  You came back with "Most, if not all M&A activity is usually accomplished with cash and stock".  True for most companies, as most companies are actually engaged in an enterprise, making stuff, selling stuff, with lots of tangible assets, and a listing on a major exchange.  This is where "....especially in PTSC's circumstance" comes into play.  PTSC has cash and stock as its major assets.  If they spend a bunch of the cash, what's the value of the stock? (since its value is based largely on the pile of cash, probably most of which would be gone for the acquisition).  So what I was saying is that, to the entity looking to be acquired, how solid is that PTSC stock as an asset?  The only way the stock would be considered valuable is if they were sold, absolutely, on the value of the MMP AND the competence of PTSC (and TPL) management.  That just seems a bit of a stretch, especially compared to the idea of getting hard cash - a "known".

Now, this isn't to say that if PTSC saw things coming and/or had the optimism for short term (after 4/10) PPS appreciation, buying back wouldn't be prudent toward increasing the cash supply.  But then, if they bought back for that short term gain (more cash), and then sold a ton to enable a cash acquisition, what happens to the PPS?  And what happens to the confidence of shareholders, seeing (continuing) wicked ups and downs?

Just some stuff to think about....  Though I'm "with ya" to a large degree.

JMHOs, and I KNOW nuttin'!

SDE  (I've decided to change my handle until 4/10!  Then I'll have to acknowledge whether or not it fits - delusions....LOL  So now I'll have to figure out my "delusional threshold" - $20 PPS, 10, 5, 2, 1?)