Platinum doesn't determine the price though. They can push the company to make a deal, but if the buyers only want to pay 80 cents a share then Platinum may end up taking it - they may want out at the best price they can get even if it means taking less than they had hoped for. If you figure they have sold about 50 million shares over the years at an average price of perhaps 80 cents a share, then they already have taken in $40 million on their loans, so the price doesn't really have to be very high on a buyout for them to do ok.
Of course the flip-side is that they may well believe the value is much higher. We just don't really know what they are thinking, but it is a good sign that they did stop selling their shares last September. But that may not mean they expect a higher price - after all they were selling heavily prior to that at not much higher than these levels. They stopped selling at the lower levels (ie 50 cents or so).
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