Thanks for your comments. I was probably a bit harsh on him, and credit where credit is due - he has driven strong sales growth, reinvigorated the business, and seems to be a very passionate and experienced person. I think he has been great for QTG.
What i was most disappointed with was how the nature of his many public comments to the Security trade journal (along the lines of strong performance, increasing profits etc) were very different in tone, and set quite high expectations (for me), versus the actual market update provided by Stokes/the Board on Thursday.
Now, admittedly, the final results were distorted by one off provisions, that he had no control over. And, on a normalised basis the business may well have performed quite well.
However, the market update did not even provide a normalised position, and made no attempt to highlight in detail any of the operational achievements that Rosa has worked hard on over the past year. Instead, we get plenty of detail on all the negative surprises that the Board had kept quiet on until now: a technical covenant breach, a bad debt and a supplier dispute; which is important, but some detailed commentary on the positives, and Rob's successes, would have been good as well.
So while my disappointment is more at the Board, for their poor disclosure, it was Rob's bullish public comments that led me having higher expectations for the FY14 performance than turned out to be the case.
