With former Amaya CEO officially stepping down from the company this week amid some truly inane Canadian insider trading charges wafting in the background, it is a good time to reassess Amaya shares. Baazov continues to be hounded by the Quebec authorities (read financial mafia) for allegedly sharing information about insider deals with his *gasp* family and friends. As if no CEO actively involved in some negotiation or other ever gave his relatives and friends an oblique stock tip, as in “Hey, look over my shoulder while I put in this huge order in for more stock of X in my brokerage account, which I casually told you over the dinner table that we were in discussions with about things I cannot disclose, wink wink.”

What a crime. Maybe the way it’s worded above is “legal”. Who really knows anyway.

Mainstream sites on Baazov’s latest move all quote good earnings this past quarter, with particularly impressive growth in the Sportsbook & Casino segment. This is true, but they all stop there. First the positive case for Amaya, and it can easily be made. First, the company is in discussions with a number of operators, including Baazov himself, for taking the company private again. This would of course involve a premium over the current market price. If it doesn’t happen it shouldn’t be too much of a downside because as it is now, the company is doing well.

The long term danger for the company is its debt load of $2.38 billion, almost all of which is due 5 years from now or longer. So there is no immediate debt danger on the horizon for them. But if interest rates start to rise, and they cannot get any lower than they already are, then we’ll start to see that rise discounted against Amaya’s market cap even though it shouldn’t affect its balance sheet directly all that much over the next 5 years.