Tag: Insolvency

Whitewash at Gordon Dadds AGM, and Insolvency Warnings

I attended the Annual General Meeting of law firm Gordon Dadds Group (GOR) this morning. The company was tipped as a buy in Investors Chronicle on the 3rd August so I bought a few shares. It’s always good to go to the AGMs of new investments to get an impression of the management and ask a few questions. This is one of only three listed legal firms (the others being Gateley and Keystone which I do not hold).

This AGM was very unusual in that both on the “show of hands” vote and the proxy vote counts, there were no votes against at all, i.e. exactly zero on all resolutions. That is exceedingly unusual for a public company. As I said to the Chairman, he managed to achieve that by not having a share buy-back resolution on the agenda as I normally vote against such resolutions. Likewise no resolution to change to 14 days notice of general meetings. I congratulated him on that and a well run AGM where questions were taken first before the formal business.

There were about a dozen shareholders present, some of whom might have been staff. I questioned the increase in overheads in the last year – they are working to bring that down but it was increased as they “set up to expand” – and the high debtors. Although they bill work in progress monthly, it seems their corporate clients are slow payers. Another shareholder asked how work in progress was valued, and it’s at cost apparently. Otherwise I did not pick up any concerns although the legal market does seem fragmented and it is not clear to me how they are differentiated from others although they do have some specialisations. One might see it as a market ripe for consolidation with too many small firms and Gordon Dadds seem to have acquisition ambitions.

The company only listed on AIM a year ago so it’s early days as yet.

Interesting that the national media failed to pick up on the changes to the insolvency regime announced by the Government last Sunday. Perhaps not surprising on a Bank Holiday weekend although I covered it here: https://roliscon.blog/2018/08/26/insolvency-regime-changes-a-step-forward/

Perhaps private investors were not concerned because they think they can bail-out before such events unlike institutional shareholders who frequently have such large holdings that they can’t place them on the market at any price. But you cannot always do so. I have been caught twice in over twenty years of investing by unexpected administrations of retailing companies who often appear to have lots of revenues and positive cash flows. But a retail market turn-down can catch them unawares when they have high fixed costs (staff and property rentals). The result is often a cash flow problem when quarterly rent payments are due, or an unexpected tax bill appears, or suppliers’ insurers simply get nervous and withdraw cover.

A simple ratio to look at to pick up businesses at risk of insolvency is the Current Ratio which I like to see above 1.4. Remember business only go bust when they run out of cash. However, retailers often pay their suppliers after they have sold the goods to their customers so the Current Ratio is not a reliable measure for retailers. Likewise it tends to be unreliable when looking at software companies where they might have deferred support revenue in their current liabilities which should really be ignored as it will never be paid.

The Current Ratio is easy to calculate (it’s Current Assets divided by Current Liabilities). A better measure but a more complex one is the Altman Z-Score. This was very well covered in this week’s Investors Chronicle where it was argued that it was also a good measure of the overall performance of companies. It’s not foolproof in terms of predicting insolvency but it’s certainly a good warning indicator – the big problem is that accounting figures on which it is calculated are often out of date.

The Z-Score can be obtained from a number of sources as it’s a bit tedious to calculate it yourself – for example Stockopedia display it on their company reports.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Insolvency Regime Changes – A Step Forward

There’s nothing like issuing a major Government announcement on the Sunday of an August bank holiday weekend to get good media coverage is there? But as it’s raining and I have nothing much else to do, I have read the announcement and here is a summary:

The announcement is entitled “Insolvency and Corporate Governance – Government Response” (see https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/insolvency-and-corporate-governance ). It is the Government’s response to past public consultations on how to tackle some of the perceived problems when companies get into difficulties or go bust. Such examples as House of Fraser (see my past blog posts on that subject where I called for reform of pre-pack administrations), Carillion, BHS, et al.

It aims to tackle issues around company director actions when a company gets into difficulties but one of the main proposals is very significant. That is that the Government intends to introduce a “Moratorium” scheme where a company can hold off its creditors for up to three months while it seeks to develop a restructuring proposal. Although a Moratorium will be a court process and will be supervised by a “Monitor” who is likely to be an insolvency practitioner, the directors of the company will remain in control albeit with some limitations.

Representatives of secure creditors (e.g. bank lenders) did not seem to like this idea at all based on their responses to the consultations, but it’s not quite as generous as first appears. Apart from the “monitoring” requirement to protect the interests of creditors, the initial period of a Moratorium will only be 28 days and can only be extended to 3 months if justified, and the company must be able to meet the normal insolvency rule that current obligations must be capable of being met as they become due during the Moratorium. But it is surely a step in the right direction in that it will provide more chance of those businesses that are not pure basket cases of being rescued to the advantage of trade creditors, pensioners and shareholders. That’s as opposed to the present situation where a pre-pack administration can instantly dump everyone except the secured creditors with massive damage to everyone else.

But directors of companies will need to act more in advance to ensure that a Moratorium is of help. To encourage them to do so the Government hopes to improve shareholder stewardship by identifying means to help the actions of institutional shareholders and others to escalate their concerns about the management of a company by its directors.

In addition the Government wishes to improve board directors effectiveness and training including raising awareness of their legal duties when making key decisions, and developing a code of practice for board evaluations. Comment: it is certainly the case that in smaller public companies the directors often seem to be unaware of their legal obligations and this sometimes extends to larger companies. I have argued in the past that all public company directors should have some minimal education in company law and their other responsibilities when acting as a director.

One issue examined was the payment of dividends by companies when companies were apparently in a weak condition such as having substantial pension liabilities or were paying dividends shortly before they went bust. Whether a company can pay dividends is governed by the calculation of whether it has “distributable reserves”, but that is a calculation that only the company and its auditors might be able to do. It’s not obvious from the published accounts. The Government is to work with interested parties on a possible alternative mechanism.

There were also concerns expressed that some companies are now paying dividends only as “interim dividends” which can escape approval by shareholders at Annual General Meetings. The Government has asked the Investment Association to report on the prevalence of the practice and they will take further steps to ensure that shareholders have an annual say on dividends if the practice is widespread and investor pressure proves insufficient.

In summary, I welcome all of these proposals as a step forward in rectifying some of the defects in the existing insolvency regime. The slight concern is that companies will be reluctant to enter a “Moratorium” due to the adverse publicity it might generate and the costs involved so we will have to see whether that turns out to be the case or not. But almost any restructuring solution is better than a formal administration or liquidation.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Conviviality Fire Sale

Conviviality (CVR) has now gone into administration, and the ordinary shares are probably worthless (they were suspended some days ago and are likely to remain so). The administrators have already sold the major parts of the business in “pre-pack” administration deals. That’s where arrangements are made to dispose of assets in advance of the appointment of administrators by the prospective administrators before they have in fact been appointed. Is that legal you may ask? Yes it is because of a past legal case however perverse the result might be.

It’s interesting to look at the deals done by the Conviviality administrators:

  1. Retail chains Bargain Booze and Wine Rack have been sold to Bestway for £7 million.
  2. The wholesale division comprising the former businesses of Mathew Clark and Bibendum has been sold to C&C (owners of Magners Cider) for £1, although it seems the new owners have taken on some of the debts owed.

Matthew Clark was bought by C&C for £200 million three years ago and Bibendum was bought for £60 million in 2016. You can see why I call this a “fire sale” when the administrator seems to have lined up buyers in just a few days and disposed of these businesses at a value that seems to be a great bargain for the buyers.

One of the problems with administrations is that often the administrators have an objective to sell the business absolutely as soon as possible. This is to protect their own financial interests it frequently appears to me as much as it is to protect the jobs of employees and maintain a business as a “going concern”. Administrators can only get paid out of the cash that is present in the business or can be collected. That’s why nobody wanted to take on the administration of Carillion and it went straight into liquidation.

Administrators have an obligation to market a business for sale but can that be done adequately and the best price obtained when the deal has clearly been done in just a few days? That obviously does not allow any time for the normal due diligence on a substantial deal so the buyers won’t have paid anywhere near the normal market price for the assets.

In summary, the buyers of the assets get a great deal, the jobs get preserved (at least to some extent), the bankers to the company often get their loans back and the administrators get well paid while minimising their risks. But the previous owners of the business (the ordinary shareholders) get left with nothing. Is that equitable?

In effect the current legal structure, and particularly the pre-pack arrangements, enable the rapid dismantling of a business when it might have been recoverable if the company had been able to have more time to refinance the business and stave off its creditors for just a few weeks.

This is why I argue that the current UK insolvency regime needs reform. It destroys companies in short order when ordinary shareholders have often invested in the company to grow the business in the past. In the case of Conviviality it only listed on AIM in 2013 and did subsequent placings to finance its expansion.

The reason for the invention of “administration” in the insolvency regime was to enable a more measured wind-up, disposal or restructuring of a business rather than a liquidation. But insolvency practitioners (i.e. administrators) seem to have changed it into a short-cut to wind-up. Reform is surely needed.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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