To buy themselves back from owner Softbank, who can return money to investor Saudi Arabia? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/softbank-faces-decision-on-w...

According to some comments in this thread, the alternative is the slow destruction of the neutral Arm ecosystem. While some new baseline could be established in a few years, many Arm customers could face a material disruption in their supply chain.

With the US Fed supporting public markets, including corporate bond purchases of companies that include automakers with a supply chain dependent on Arm, there is no shortage of entities who have a vested interest in Arm's success.

If existing Arm management can't write a compelling S1 in the era of IoT, satellites, robots, edge compute, power-efficient clouds, self-driving cars and Arm-powered Apple computers, watches, and glasses, there will be no shortage of applicants.