Nothing doing then as far as I can see.

Perhaps you are thinking of the 27th around dawn when the Moon and Jupiter are together, along with Uranus (no jokes please). However, the Moon will be close to full and might drown out Jupiter somewhat.

Personally I'll be staying in bed!

I expect several factors weighed in on Hoya’s decision to sanction the investment necessary for the 654D to go into production, but regardless of what they may have been it is a fact that it is now a real product that seems to have been well received by the market. As such it has increased the value of the Pentax business.

However, realistically this has been only a minor increase, and in my opinion from a very small base. Indeed in my view the business is unfortunately close to worthless on a going concern basis, but paradoxically that contributes to my now guarded optimism about the future of Pentax.

As I said I believe the lack of interest from possible strategic acquirors is telling if unsurprising. Furthermore, these people will usually pay over the odds relative to a purely financial investor, since they are typically able to extract synergies/cost savings by combining related businesses.

On the other hand for a financial investor no such cost savings are available, and they would then be left with a loss making/barely profitable business in a precarious market position. It is just not interesting with a very small chance of a profitable exit.

However, if Hoya have failed to find a buyer and were intent on getting rid of the business I consider they would normally have shut it down by now. I speculate the reason they haven’t is that they are fairly thinly capitalised, and may not be able to take the hit a write-off in assets resulting from a closure would entail.

If that is so, their only option is to invest in creating attractive products that can succeed in the market, in order to strengthen the market position with a view to a later sale. And that can only be good news for their customer base.

Furthermore, the recent brand defection of a number of high profile Pentax fans and staunch apologists, in my view smacks of what is known in the stock market as capitulation, where the last diehard supporters throw in the towel. That is a buying opportunity that can nevertheless only be pinpointed with hindsight, but I have a gut feeling we may have recently seen something akin to it.

You have to separate the interests of Hoya and Pentax, while recognising that in order for Pentax to appear attractive as an investment it must have a reasonable market position.

In particular there is an inverse relationship between business risk and financial risk. That means that an investor - Hoya or somebody else - could pump $1bn into Pentax for new product development, marketing etc; this would secure the business for quite some time, but the investor would never make an acceptable financial return on the investment because the market size and available margins would not deliver this.

Instead a balancing act is needed to find the right level of investment, but in the present circumstances Hoya may be investing above what is warranted by market potential to try to off load the company as a window dressing exercise for potential investors.

In any case I believe the 645D was absolutely necessary to lift the reputation/prestige of Pentax in lower value market segments, to support the recent price hikes from a marketing perspective.

This is true, but by all accounts it is a segment of the market that is growing rapidly.

Furthermore, I think any such product introduction from Pentax must be viewed in the context of Hoya’s exit strategy. The list of potential strategic acquirors where there is a good fit with the Pentax business is fairly small, and the failure so far to find a buyer in my view indicates a strong lack of interest from this department.

That leaves a financial investor - private equity firms - as the most likely candidate and these days they are invariably obsessed with growth. This is a function of broken global stock markets that are unable to value companies properly, and has substantially led to the demise of a previously large portion of the private equity market that wanted to buy strong if stable cash-flow businesses at attractive prices. Of course that profile doesn’t match Pentax either but the fixation on growth means that a successful sale of Pentax is almost predicated on being positioned in the EVIL segment.

And as a consumer I say bring it on.

No business is saleable as a going concern without some sort of product pipeline that is reasonably consistent with product lifecycles in the markets in which they operate.

Otherwise it could only be sold as a sort of breakup/asset stripping exercise at a discount to the intrinsic value. And if that were the only option Hoya might as welll do it themselves.

That’s not the way I read it. They refer specifically to “the exit strategy for the Pentax camera operations”, which is in reality a confirmation of past statements from senior Hoya management.

Furthermore, the fact that Citi basically appear to be announcing a new Pentax model implies they have good access to management planning.

So sorry, prop trading is where it's at this year

Interesting comment from the Citi research note:

It seems luck may not have entered into it: