I have two assumptions on this:

1. ASB will find a buyer
2. A winning bid will need to be above book value.

The only other listed comp is Huntington Inglis that trades on 2.4x BV. HI seems like a better run business and it has managed to grow pretty strongly over the last 7 or so years.

The thing about ASB is over the last 3-4 years they have made a pretty chunky investment into PP&E – that's a lot of latent capacity. At this point investment is not being reflected in the p&l. I think that the takeover interest in ASB is largely because the capex investment has been made, the contracts have been won, but the earnings have not yet arrived. That certainly explains the PE interest last year, although a trade buyer like Hanwha is probably in it because they see a multi-decade spending boom in defence assets (It's not like you can just build a shipyard and get US defence contracts.) rather than trying to time the capital cycle.

I don't know where a deal gets done, if it actually does get done, but I think somewhere between 1.2-1.3x book feels about right – that's $3.10-$3.35.

I guess we'll find out pretty soon one way or another.