Ann: Half Year Accounts, page-7

I don't think that you are looking at the full picture here. The appendix contains a solid breakdown of the full impacts to PBT. The $7.4m reversal doesn't fall straight to the bottom line.

In any case, the acquired business met the TNE business case targets but failed to meet the sellers self-imposed targets in order to earn the earn-out. This should actually be seen as a great outcome for TNE as there would never be a set of circumstances where "nothing happens" scenario comes to fruition - either the earn-out is paid because targets are met (and we get drained of ~$7.4m in cash) or the earn out is not met and the accounting entries get reversed with nil cash impact - as has happened. I know which one I would prefer.