"If management are not held accountable for how they choose to run the company then I don’t know who is." I have not said we should not hold them accountable. Let's focus on discussing what they've done:
1. "Somebody made decisions to allow costs to increase 50% half on half. That was largely in their control. So what could they have done ?Maybe built in some expectation that Covid was not going away just yet and some impacts to revenues would reasonably be expected, rather than spend /expand as if it was going to be a normal year, rather hold off on new office and team in a new region this year and wait until you have the capital to support it. ""
It is clearly a more risky play to increase their cost base - and there is probably no right or wrong answer (not without hindsight), but it is an interesting debate. A key driver in costs was obviously the headcount from the expanded sales team. Are you suggesting they should not have hired so many more sales staff and just focused on delivering a small profit with almost certainly less growth? If so, what do you think the headcount should have been?
And how do you think this would have been received by analysts and the market?
2. "this may not be much of an issue if they had a stronger balance sheet, so why didn’t they plan ahead and raise capital to support an aggressive strategy this year? Instead they went with a spend first mentality, and threw caution to the wind."
This point I agree on and I have suggested in the past they could have just raised $15-20m in a rights issue that would have been well supported when it was trading at well over $2. However, while many in the market believe they need the capital right now (or even 6-12 months ago), if they can execute and turn it around without the need for new capital - I think they will be proven right.
If however, anticipated sales growth does not materialise, and they need to raise capital at even cheaper prices - they'll rightfully deserve the pitchforks being brought to the AGM.
3. "sometimes initiatives need to be on hold depending on your financial position, new regions put on hold as they will be loss making for the first year or two at least. And I actually don’t think it’s too much of an ask to factor in disruptions due to Covid. It’ll almost be irresponsible if they didn’t during a pandemic."
What initiatives do you think they should hold off on? The syntrel, synpath or the breast device? And when you say "new regions put on hold" - what do you mean? The only notable presence with boots on the ground outside of US, Aus/NZ is in the UK and staff members there were stagnant - for a long time, I think it was like two people until only recently where they added another two I think. Are you suggesting they should have shut down the UK office there? IMO, I don't think the savings from the staff headcount there is going to make any meaningful difference to the bottom line.
Final question:
You said, "Like I said before, there were things they could have done or considered before going so hard this year."
Aside from the capital raise, what do you think they should have done instead? e.g. Pause all R&D, freeze on staff headcount until there has been a full 3 months of hospitals being fully open and there is no impact of covid on surgeries, and delivering 2-4 quarters of small but increasing profits, but at much lower growth rates?
What I see them doing is slightly increasing spend on R&D, increasing the sales team by a lot - and the timing of it started maybe 6-9 months ago, in anticipation of hospitals opening up, which they are. So, by the time hospitals are almost back to normal, you have a lot of your newbies inducted, trained and ready to go.
It is a bit more risky, who knows when hospitals will be fully open for surgeries, but then again, who knows when another variant is gonna hit?
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