Ann: Letter to Shareholders from the Chair, page-66

no I’m not suggesting that. But I do look for possible links in what look like unrelated matters. It was also a slightly idle comment but I’ve never liked the ICL link for a million reasons. I’ve also expressed my views on the deal already. But I have a different view from most so I’ll let it lie.

however I can say that the announcement was deeply unimpressive to me. I could go through line by line and pull out each of the times we have had a variant on it over many years. I just don’t have the energy to spend time on it however. but let’s take an example - their customer service model. I’m pretty sure I could go back to the baseline document from December 2015 and find this sort of reference in that or subsequent presentations. Telling us that what made Alexium unique was the way it partnered with customers. That as we know was what led to disastrous poor margin business.

or the now deferred ebitda neutral. They have also invented a new accounting term unless my version of adobe has done strange things. EDIDTA. So that’s the downright carelessness we used to see

read the announcement a few times. It repetitively asks for shareholder support. You don’t need to do that if you are presenting something that is self evidently a good proposition.
they have effectively admitted that the capital restructure has been challenging and that suggests they were in a weak position to negotiate.

it reads to me as a narrative issued following a lot of discussion on how something should be positioned. And it reads as thought they were struggling with that. I can’t give you exactly which words or phrases as it is a combination of factors that lead me to say that. Choice of words. Avoidance of some matters. A constructed narrative to excuse failure to deliver what was actually promised. Repetition.

of course it’s my opinion. I’ve been wrong before though for entirely different reasons though I sometimes regret not having finished the worksheets where I tried to make sense of their claims around customers. I could never make it work and it was too hard.

in the end you know inching forward with sales that cover more than costs is not enough. It’s also not enough if you want to keep claiming that your chemistry is special or that you have a value add approach to customers. In fact if it is value add then that should be worth a premium

p