Not pretty. I, too, drank from the JAN Kool-Aid cup until I...

Not pretty.

I, too, drank from the JAN Kool-Aid cup until I realised all is not what it seems:




When they took almost $2.5m worth of items below the line (the stuff shaded in yellow), to argue that FY2023 EBITDA was $4.0m, that was simply a bridge too far for me.


When I first acquired JAN, in 2020, I thought it was a business that would scale up reasonably decently.

In fact, it was doing just that in the two years between FY2019 and FY2021 when EBITDA (and that's proper EBITDA, not confected EBITDA) went from break-even to $4.3m, on the back of a $9.6m increase in Revenue).

But in the subsequent two years, between FY2021 and FY2023 - when Revenue rose by a similar amount  ($9.0m) as the FY2019-FY2021 period - EBITDA fell, from $4.3m to $1.6m.

And yesterday's update makes it look like FY2024 will be another year of profitless prosperity.

They just don't seem to have a sustainable grasp on operating costs.

My sense is that it must be a nice, fun place to work. But when it comes to making a buck or two... well, evidently that doesn't seem to be something that fires the collective bellies of the management and board.

.