Oh no, exactly the report as a shareholder that i didn’t want to see.
no wonder the company saw fit to dump it after market Friday.
so EGL received A$514,000 in FY20 and $1.7 million in FY21 from the govt’s jobkeeper subsidy, which was aimed at holding staff where there was a sharp downturn projected in revenue and profit.
here’s some of the relevant metrics and explanation from the presentation accompanying the annual result issued Aug. 26.
most of the public debate about jobkeeper has been about the massive payout by govt to companies that didn’t appear to meet the stated objectives of the scheme. I can’t recall the actual sum but it runs to tens of billions of dollars.
a view has been advanced that this massive overpayment can also been as being a general economic stimulus, an argument that indeed has some merit.
EGL did very well out of Jobkeeper. If Treasurer Frydenburg had included a clawback mechanism in the Jobkeeper legislation the company may have received a nasty debt notice. In the same way that about half a million people received such a demand under the govt’s illegal Robodebt scam. But the treasurer either forgot about a clawback clause in Jobkeeper or chose not to include it.
Should EGL anyway offer to repay part or all of what is essentially an overpayment.
the problem for the company is that it makes FY21’s result look way better than it actually was.
you’ll note Jobkeeper payments probably come out as extraordinary or significant items.
in short, it’s fair to say shareholders have probably been misled as to the true state of company affairs.
a case can be made that a supplement to the annual accounts need to be issued.
there is an issue of corporate governance and honesty here, it’s quite plain.
shareholders need to be treated as such, not mugs to be duped by some accountant’s pea and thimble trick.
i’m still in EGL for the long term, so the likely pressure on the SP next week isn’t of great concern to me. Pity those holders with a shorter time frame.
(20min delay)