Fair call, but there's a reason I wear dress pants an ironed...

Fair call, but there's a reason I wear dress pants an ironed shirt and occasionally a tie to work - impressions matter and we are wired to look for shortcuts to make judgements of people and credibility based on them.

The smooth margins are non-standard, I agree, but how about we look at how they have gone in the U.S. versus Australia? Those margins and returns looks lumpy and messy and the very long shareholder presentations show the reasons why and how management attempts to adress these.

In addition, margins may well be higher due to the longer time the management team has run the business with the same set of principles and therefore having access to stable lenders and sources of finance meaning that margins are higher because of a track record with the same people at the helm resulting in a lower cost of capital than those lumpier businesses.

I don't necessarily agree that "smooth margins" in of themselves are a red flag - I'd need another metric to be the "double tap" that caused me concern - e.g. in ABC learning where debt blew out at the same time as returon on equity was cratering and occupancy was falling.

Anyway, I'm almost at portfolio max (won't buy more) for this and have a stop loss in place in case the market sees this with more problems than I do.