Sack Geoff Horth Today, page-6

The intent of management with regard to statementing and the stock price needs to be examined, but at least from an operational perspective its still too early to hang them for mine. We're seeing top line growth in a difficult market and the main impact to the earnings forecast relates to changes to non-cash accounting charges (depreciation & amortisation) which from an asset perspective are minor, and I believe that Horth and his team are working hard to make the best of the transformation of Vocus.

It may well be that the minor non-cash accounting adjustments to earnings forecasts were not at all necessary but for their ability to hit the underlying result and provide extra bang for the share-price from a sell-off perspective.

If indeed they're working with the short side then someone is making a good deal of money. I remained a holder through the last six months because I was backing Horth's outwardly confident statement that they'd been conservative in constructing the forecasts that they handed out at the full year investor briefing back in August 2017. Either not conservative enough, getting ahead of themselves in terms of their understanding of the business, or flip-flopping/bluffing and working with the short side.