A bit puzzled by what's going on at BOTB

Today's update suggests trading continues to be strong and that the sale process is ongoing with multiple interested parties.

This makes it over five months since talks started

Google Trends is a *very* imperfect proxy for this business... but it is the best we've got. It's not crazy as increased traffic = increased revenue, all else equal.

Over the last 12 months, BOTB has performed extremely well here

Analysing the historical data we can see that the trends have at best loosely mirrored the actual results

But nonetheless, consensus is expecting revenue growth of just 57%, which trends suggests they'll beat comfortably.

Similarweb and Alexa suggest similar things.

I believe BOTB exited their fiscal year 2020 (YE 30/4) growing >40% and all the indicators above have accelerated dramatically since then.

Share price action seems to suggest BOTB is seen as a COVID beneficiary.

That could be true. But lockdown in the UK started in February and BOTB didn't start taking off until May and then really accelerated in August when things had already opened up again.

Clearly the bid process complicates things and I underestimated the extent to which the market would ignore that and focus on the business.

However at 1400p, the shares are valued at bang on 20x consensus earnings - which seem near certain to be handily beaten.

I remain long and haven't sold any shares. Have owned this since 300p and fully believe the business will continue to perform.

What happens with the bid is anyone's guess.