Ann: Profit Guidance, page-4

It is not a good look to have the market expecting price rises to be absorbed, and then we get deferred sales.
They also didn't mention the second super fund they were chasing.

They have also been buying back stock at a higher price than was warranted by the looks. This might be part of the reason the SP has held up at such a high PE. But the balance sheet doesn't look so pretty to me with 180m net debt, to choose not to repay debt with rates rising. That might be costing 8% interest soon? Iress is earning less than 5% on that money pre tax. Is that worth it to reduce the odds of a takeover, and probably artificially increase the ATSR versus the counterfactual, when that costs SH more in exec bonuses?

The cost increases seem reasonable under current circumstances, but with guidance only 6 weeks ago, there was no mention of cost issues - seems like they thought they would absorb them. They did however mention a constant currency basis for their guidance.

Obviously there is a sandwich effect if they are impacted by costs, but can't pass on price increases.

They really need to invest in their viewpoint software. It really is bug ridden, almost as if it is designed to be crap. You can't even save your layout in the event something goes wrong with the settings. And then you have to set it all up again. It also hides the value of your trade in dollars, so seems they are trying to increase the risk of errors for some strange reason, when there is plenty of room on the panel for a dollar value. You can put in a dollar value but it often has a bug and doesn't work. So you will forgive me for thinking that they are not exactly into excellence.