RE:Don't drink all the Kool-AdeGood post for random thoughts. I actually agree with the majority of your points. You can see with the NCIB and with the comments that went with it that management and the BoD clearly think this stock is $10 or so. If a bidder would have come out at $12, this would have been over in like 5 days.. so we can safely rule out a huge bid coming in. So most of the private equity players are likely putting something together that is a bit more reasonable - so $7-9 mark.
The BoD has a tough balancing act between selling what they think is on the cheap (which is around that $8 mark) due to market weakness or just holding out until they produce a few good Q's after which the company will be worth much more.
Management might be an issue - but if there's a deal to be made.. you can always get management on board by throwing money at them. For example, CEO has a ton of stock options.. he can get a golden parachute and get bought out for a few million as part of the overall acquisition. It would be fractions of the overall purchase price which will be close to $1.5 billion or so.
I also agree with you that there's a good chance that this falls through.. I actually have the odds at 50/50 as I think the BoD will want to hold out for the double digit $10. Where I think we differ is that I believe the company's cash flow and results are good enough to justify $5-6 easy - so even if this fails to go through.. I still think the company is undervalued. So the proposed purchase would just be the cherry on top. I don't think it would fall down to the $3 level.