While the market is holding its breath for the coming flurry of results later this quarter, there have been a number of interesting cautionary announcements released.

Firstly, PSG's Curro (COH - see IDE, CSP, KEL & COH) released a cautionary over itself yesterday. It stated that it was "...certain corporate action..." and caution should be exercised when dealing in its shares.

The private school's group is absolutely right! Caution should be exercised when dealing in COH shares as the share is up almost 50% in the last three months alone, yet the business is far from reaching its ambitious goals.

Hence, the cautionary is more than likely Curro buying another pre-existing school.

Highly acquisitive strategies are risky and quite often involve the acquiror walking away with "buyer's remorse". So, as Curro said, exercise caution when dealing in Curro's shares.

Next up, electrical wholesaler, ARB Holdings (ARH - see SAN & ESR, ARH & WTL) also put out a cautionary over its shares yesterday.

Much like Curro, ARB has been using acquisitions to bulk itself up and enter some parallel construction-related markets. Unlike Curro, ARB is currently generating profits and cash and actually sitting on a fair PE of 12.4x and a nice DY of 3.2%.

ARB's drive for acquisitions seems largely driven by the anemic local construction sector where spending has stalled for the last year and a bit. Similarly affected, heavy construction contractor, Esorfranki (ESR), renewed a preexisting cautionary over itself yesterday.

Esorfranki has had a tough couple of years and reported some terrible recent results that saw the Group losing R15m in H1:11. What could the cautionary be?

Well, Esorfranki has been through a rights issue and various historical acquisitions. My guess is that with the local construction market saturated by the virtue of excess capacity, the larger players would use this as an opportunity for consolidation. Thus, Esorfranki is likely to hunting down an asset (preferably one with a long pipeline of work!) and the only real question is what the asset is?

Finally, troubled mass producer of wood-based panel, William Tell (WTL - see SAN & ESR, ARH & WTL), renewed its cautionary yesterday and reiterated how the expression of interest that it had previous received for a takeover of the Group was still in negotiation phase.

Call me a skeptic, but what is more than likely is that the Board and management of William Tell are currently negotiating the finer points of their golden parachutes, payouts, and/or retention and post-acquisition management positions in the Group.

Takeovers often extract synergies by leveraging overheads and returns to scale of the enlarged acquiror. I.e. takeovers tend to involve firing the expensive (and now redundant) Board and most of the upper management of the business being taken over.

Thus, it is probably management's own skin that is the sticking point in the expression of interest, rather than any particular argument over a fair takeover price for WTL shares.

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