Ann: Appendix 4C - quarterly, page-104

An interesting day.  Particularly interesting reviewing the comments about the report.  I guess if you had worked yourself up to expecting something amazing you were going to be disappointed but I'm not.  But then I'd already worked out from Dirk's comments that we probably shouldn't expect much more than last quarter.

You can gripe all you like about not doing what they said the would but it depends on what you are looking at when you say that.  Think of it this way - last year we had a different leadership team and a different structure  we also had a different VP sales.   This year Nick started backing out after February and is now gone, Gavin is no longer an executive, we have a new CEO who seems to me to be a lot more steady and less prone to exaggeration and we have a VP sales who also seems to understand the difference between the top line and the bottom line.  We have also had a clear message that they are not going to repeat the mistakes of last year in their communication but until Dirks feet were under the desk I didn't think that was going to be fully implemented - for some people old habits die hard.  Anyway what I see is that accountability has come into play - as it should.  I have basically been able to put aside what was spoken about last year as a the excited predictions of an over-enthusiastic, over-hyped MD.

In fact - to address the question of keeping promises - this time they were pretty much on target with what had been in the Petra initiation report.   Maybe people would do well to let go of this year and see things starting from July 1.

I will not blame Dirk for the problems of last year - that has to be sheeted home to Nick, and Gavin who was actually the most senior role.   Given the changes I'm happy to see how it plays out for a while.

As I said in an earlier post "if we see those improved margins reflected in the 4c and we see only modest or no growth in revenue I will still be pretty happy.  Why?   Because they will have done what they said they were doing. " That's what we got.  That's a pretty good start for Dirk.

I also note the constant refrain about the top line - the cash in.  Yes sure it would have been great to have generated more sales but what is the value in that if the margins aren't there?   Would you rather that we went for large sales $ and worried less about margins - and carried the bad business with us into the future?  I sure wouldn't like that.  That is dumb business.


I note this:  "Cash receipts for the past six months of A$13.3M exceed calendar year 2016 entire cash receipts of A$11.1M by 19.8%"   That is hardly a bad result.  


We finished down for the day.  I understand Petra to have reported favorably on the result and to have reiterated their buy rating so any institutions/brokers who read the downer comments on hotcopper would have happily taken advantage of that to create jitters.  Aaaaah well.  

Far from thinking this is a dead duck I suspect they see advantage in the current state of affairs - including the structural changes - and believe there are good reasons to get in now - including the ramp up of alexicool, the new product lines, progress on the military (hardly their fault it has been delayed), progress on Alexiflam NF, and performance to this year's predictions so far.  

I sort of feel a bit sad for those who got over excited.  That should have been a last year thing!!!!!

parsifal