Smurfit shares have had a bit of a run in the past couple of weeks, boosted by a growing belief that the $50-a-ton (€44) increase in the linerboard price announced by Smurfit and its competitors will hold.
That remains to be seen, but a succession of Wall Street analysts have been singing Smurfit's praises and urging their clients to go out and buy the shares.
Smurfit has improved from a recent low of €1.45 and all-time low of €1.14 in the third quarter of last year, but at this week's €1.70 the shares are still showing the market's reluctance to see Smurfit as anything other than a cyclical stock, rising and falling in line with the major economies into which it sells its cardboard boxes.
But now Bear Stearns analysts Scott Merves and Linda Lieberman - who gushed over Smurfit's attractions in a recent report - have come up with their own theory for Smurfit's "endgame", as they put it. This "endgame" envisages a merger between Smurfit and its 33 per cent American associate Smurfit Stone.
"There are tax advantages and multiple expansion opportunities to being a US company," they say.
The Bear Stearns people believe that the mechanism for a merger would be a bid by Smurfit Stone for Smurfit, with Smurfit departing the Irish market altogether. And the timescale? At least two to three years. We wait with bated breath.
