What I would like to point out is that the new CEO, Mr Hicks and has been at the BFC helm for nearly 12 months.
On the day he commenced in January this year the shares were 14 cents, yesterday they opened at 8.1c and today 9c representing between a 35 & 42% decline over his tenure. Many negative comments have been directed to both Sexton and Gerlach and rightfully so, however not just these two deserve such bad press. Let's not forget an entire board who have been pretty much the same since BFC's inception and have also been responsible for this mess. Isn't one of directors main responsibility the hiring and firing of a CEO? Even if the CEO is a BPAM employee in the Annual Report Hicks report clearly says, CEO BFC, and he signs his letters off the same- does this really mean CEO BPAM, interesting to see his employment contract and KPI's. The first CEO was probably adequate for the first year to 18 months of set-up with his engineering background, however we all know that 2-3 years down the track how that worked out by the results he produced, or didn't. Now we have Mr Hicks. In the ASX release almost this time last year, we heard that he was commencing bringing with him 20 years experience of global experience in the dairy & pharma industries- including a statement from Sexton; "has expertise to extract value from all areas of our business; meat, seafood, health/nutrition in addition to dairy". Well we all know how the seafood ended, health and water on the same path, so it will be interesting to see the financial results of the first 6 months of this FY to ascertain how dairy & meat have been performing, especially given the work that apparently has been going into the restructure of the business. Hopefully we will be given the first quarterly figures at the AGM, as they will certainly have them!
Mr Hicks has sent us shareholders regular CEO letters spruiking how good he is, even stating that his past positions have always demanded; initiative, solving complex problems, develop and implement projects and process benefits. Well Mr Hicks we need you to commence applying this to BFC and I feel if this was happening we would have seen better results to date and would have reflected in the share price; such a decline since commencement is not a good KPI result.
It would be interesting to do a FOI on BFC's records/resolutions to see the activity of both the CEO and the BFC Board, and to ascertain how much influence to decisions that Sexton and Gerlach have really had. Do we have history repeating itself with this CEO? The same old board and of course the management company however worse now without reserves, a decent debt and share price a new lows?
A question I would like to put to Mr Hicks - how many shares have you purchased from your back pocket, as it is important for the CEO to 'put their money where their mouth is'?
Hopefully you will answer this question and many more at next week's AGM.
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