The founders bought back their shares to regain control only in 2006. Now they want to retire and seem to evaluate options [1]. Guess it is far to early to judge what they will do. They seem to care about the company. Recently AVM settled their wifi patent dispute with Huawei [2], so maybe the sale becomes more likely? But I try to be optimistic that we will not have another Software AG like disaster (on a smaller scale) [3] .

[1] https://www.heise.de/news/AVM-Fritzbox-Hersteller-steht-ange...

[2] https://www.juve-patent.com/cases/huawei-and-avm-settle-wifi...

[3] https://technologymagazine.com/articles/ibm-closes-software-...