Hey stockrock, you seem to suggest the failure to achieve better growth is entirely the fault of management, and that we should hold them accountable to all targets, regardless of external unanticipated events like... the covid, then the delta and omicron variants, which seems just a little unfair.
If there was no pandemic, and the results are what they are now - I would have been banging on the door to turf the board out. But the reality is, external things happen, and you can only judge them on how they respond to it.
For me, I am glad we had a more conservative MD in Paul Brennan at the time, because I am sure if we had a more aggressive MD leading into the pandemic, they would have ramped up much earlier and harder and we would have had, and then posted huge losses, had to raise capital at very cheap prices - all for probably not much better result because all those extra staff would have been benched most of the time given the cancellation of surgeries and restricted access to hospitals.
What would you have preferred them to do instead? They had targets to double their revenue for a couple of years - but that was made before anyone even heard of the word 'covid'. They then had hopes of improving their sales as the initial strain receded, but then delta and omicron hit. When these external factors happen, what do you think was going to happen to their plans? How do you think they were going to meet sales targets when surgeries at many hospitals were cancelled?
Comments like "I very much got the sense that these analysts were fed up with the company’s promise of high sales growth and not delivering" - I don't think are useful, they don't reflect the external impacts of covid and subsequent variants that could not be predicted, and I don't even think they reflect the views of the views of the analysts.
You and I both know analysts cover a lot of stocks, and I am sure they would have seen many companies they report on in this industry (and others) fail to meet targets because of covid, then fail to meet targets again due to delta and omicron.
I've lost count of the number of businesses I've read about that stood down workers, then prepared for reopenings, only to shut down again due to the delta strain, then again with omicron. I wouldn't say the owners of those business are crap, just unlucky. Who knows if we're going to have to go through the Pi, Theta, Sigma or whatever variants next?
Right now, David Williams, Max Johnston and the rest of their team are pretty optimistic about where the company is headed - and if there was no further events like another covid variant, and they fail to deliver - I'd be right with you in criticising them.
But if we end up with another deadly, highly virulent variant that shuts down hospitals, are you going to be critical of them for failing to predict that and not meeting targets as well?
If that is the case, you are going to be very very disappointed with many many companies in the future.
I value your opinions a lot, most of the time it is very balanced and you highlight risks that investors should consider and investigate. Sometimes though, as you have here, you seem to be trying to hold management to account for factors that impacted their plans they had no control over, and there was little they could do about anyway.
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