Fishfreighter,

I think you are trying to make something out of nothing. As quoted in your OP, he said that if we weren't making a good return on investment then he would have to consider a merger possibility. However, the ROIC is increasing, using cash to pay down debt is a way to increase your ROIC by decreasing your debt payments. Capital spending is decreasing, productivity is increasing and share values are increasing. Things are going very well. There is no reason to even consider a merger.

Your bolding of selective parts of a sentence is called taking things out of context. I listened to the conference where those quotes were taken from, and you are making it much more ominous than it really was.