Ann: SIV AGM CEO Presentation 29 November 2018, page-5

Yes - they did say acquisitions would be slowed down, I realise now. They let 39 staff go from Go Getta, and tranferred 12 across (to SC I assume) at the HY. It would obviously seem that they must still be running at a higher level of overheads than they would have if you took a ratio of the GG assets to SC assets. They need to grow to utilise their excess overhead, not be capital constrained obviously.

FP - well I hope you are right about the bad debts being good news and not being a confected statement. Unfortunately they have been making lots of confident sounding statements, before cutting everybody off at the knees multiple times. Bad debt isn't very precisely defined, as in the accounts they would be called impairments, so they have left a lot of wriggle room there possibly. Maybe bad debts are impairments? . . . maybe over 12 weeks? I bet they will not provide aged debtors in their half year report, and so you will have to wait for the full year to verify that statement, and by then things could have changed. Or do they know that most impairments come quickly, and thus lower new business = lower impairments? And thus are they cherrypicking facts, that are symptoms of bad news?

A good aspect could be that the balance sheet for FY18 is reasonably accurate if bad debts are in fact impairments. I'm not very trusting any more after their very material updates have been opaque and missing necessary information, leaving you having to trust them at their word.

I don't think this is a stock to hold unless you take the most cynical possible view of management statements, and it still seems OK and incontrovertible.

All IMO