I don't agree with this post at all. I for one would like many more shareholders in any company i invest in that are like
@Itstime2021. They've attended the AGM, identified themselves to the company and made their thoughts known and they're clearly attempting to try and keep the company accountable. They aren't posting (to my knowledge) personal attacks on anybody in the company, but rather the performance. Trying to keep the company accountable is not going to make any material difference to the share price, but it has at least some small chance in making the company perform the best it possibly can.
I also have little confidence the board will deliver optimal performance due to lack of independence on the board. That doesn't mean they aren't currently delivering optimal performance, they very well may be, but as i've mentioned before unless the board is actually composed of people that meet corporate governance guidelines on "independent", there is no way for shareholders to have any idea whether the company is doing an appropriately good job. Even if they are doing the best possible job, there will forever be questions as there is simply no way to be sure until the board is independent. At some stage, whether it is this year, or last year, or next year or a decade from now, the company won't be performing optimally and that is exactly why the board needs to have independent NEDs with interests that align with shareholders and not company management. This doesn't mean the current board has to go, it just means that people need to be appointed to the board that actually fit the definition of independent. Unfortunately voting the way some of us did, was because that seems to be the only means to have the company listen.
I also don't agree with your argument that people who don't have faith in the board should sell up and move on. It is quite possible to believe the company will be successful without confidence in the board. If a company has the right assets or is in the right place at the right time, even with the most incompetent board they will likely fumble their way through (i'm not claiming current board is the most incompetent, as i said i have no idea in regards to their competence). Many of us believe the company has the right assets and is in the right place at the right time and so will continue to hold.
I should also point out i am not some form of perennial downramper. I've held the company for a very long time, it's very clear from my username that i am not attempting to hide who i am, i sit somewhere around the top 20 (and within a network of friends/colleagues who have a good ~5x the number of shares i own) and i've been very open with the company for multiple years in regards to our concerns. I hadn't posted on this website in over a decade until this years AGM resolutions came out and the only reason i have started posting is that the resolutions showed that the company simply did not listen to its shareholders at the last AGM. They didn't improve their communication at all despite the repeated feedback for many years. They continued to try and give performance based renumeration to NEDs, despite it being against good corporate governance guidance, not in keeping with what their benchmarked comparator companies do and being against what shareholders told them last year. They continued to push through with the failed Innology plan despite being told by shareholders there was no interest. And lastly, they yet again issued large performance rights with targets that were easier than previous years and with targets that are a long way out of alignment with the companies they claim to benchmark their renumeration against. All they had to do was add in TSR and CAGR clauses to the performance rights, in keeping with their benchmarked comparator companies, and suddenly the performance rights would appear to align with shareholder value.
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