Ann: Annual Report, page-29

@Jimjamzzz

They use both for a reason (US$ & A$) the reporting currency for the accounts is the A$, however certain contracts are based on a fixed US$ amount. You can't use an A$ amount in the comment's against them because the figure will be inaccurate as soon as the A$/US$ rate moves at all.

You could have picked up on the date error in that section (but didn't) I presume they meant August 2017 not 2018 otherwise it doesn't make any sense.

I don't have a problem with Rahul's business being paid that much US$975,100 (they are providing Syntonic with an important service after all) . Rahul shouldn't lose money on that business because of Syntonic but on the other hand he shouldn't be charging us over the going rate either. Personally I doubt that business will be making that much money out of Syntonic.

As to the bonus, my biggest criticism of it, is with the non-executive directors on 2 fronts.

Given the fact that revenue is currently hard to quantify on a consistent basis & future visibility isn't really there, they should have asked Gary/Rahul to defer the payments for at least 1 year (possibly 18 month's or 2 years ) to preserve cash in the bank & reduce the possibility of a cap raise. The amount is 15% of what was our cash balance (at the end of June & prior to the Zenvia acquisition payment A$1.08M).

Yes we still have a fair amount of cash in the bank, but we also need to start reducing the quarterly cash-burn rate. Our cost base is now fairly static, but our revenue is not yet growing at the rate that was expected. That 15% might have made all the difference.

The second criticism relates to the KPI.

There has to be some link between them & shareholders as well, not having any reference / connection to the share price is totally bizarre.

If your not going to use that what could you have used ?

expansion of the shareholder base ?
gaining institutional shareholders on the register?
Holding Q&A's every 3 months as intended.
Keeping the Syntonic website fully up to date.

I'd say they failed on all of the above metric's over the past year, however if that was part of the KPI it would have got a lot more attention from them I'm sure.

I'd also add that the need to change the outside IR person 3 times during the year, brings questions as well.

You could give them high marks from the technical/business side of the company during the year, but there short-comings on the investor/shareholder side have clearly been exposed & yet have no bearing on the outcome. The alignments are clearly wrong & that's the responsibility of the remuneration committee.

LOTM