A trading update from Utilitywise (UTW) caused the share price to fall another 18%. It’s already down from over 350p in May 2014 to 48p the last time I checked. A pretty disastrous investment for many. This was one of those go-go small cap stocks that lots of share tipsters were promoting back in 2013/14. Revenues and profits were apparently on a strong upward trajectory from their sales of utility services to commercial users.
I even bought a few shares myself. But I sold when I came to realise that their revenue recognition practices were in my view somewhat aggressive. So far as I understood it, they were recognising profits on contracts when the customer signed up for an annual or longer contract. From today’s announcement that even included recognising profits on signature rather than contract commencement. But the real problem to my mind is that instead of most businesses where profits are taken on amounts invoiced, which is shortly before cash is paid on them, in this case the cash was received very much later. So I got cold feet and bailed out. I simply don’t like imprudent accounting and aggressive revenue recognition (Quindell was a similar example).
That is basically what is so damaging in today’s trading statement where they cover a change in accounting policy to IFRS 15 which has tougher rules on revenue recognition from contracts. Who were the auditors of Utilitywise? BDO LLP.
Respected investor Leon Boros has already tweeted that with the adjustments to their accounts required, all the historic profits of the company will disappear. As he says “always follow the cash”.
I did write a report on a Mello event for ShareSoc where Utilitywise was one of the companies presenting back in 2013, but it was not a particularly complimentary one – it mentioned possibly regulatory problems, aggressive sales practices and director share sales for example. The revenue recognition issues only became apparent at a later date.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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