Tag: Patisserie Valerie

AssetCo, Patisserie, Stockpiling, Warehouses, Sheds, Brexit and Venezuala

A week ago, an award of damages of £21 million plus interest and costs was made against Grant Thornton for their breach of duty when acting as auditors of AssetCo Plc (ASTO) in 2009/10. See https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2019/150.html for the full judgement. I understand Grant Thornton may appeal. These are the key sentences in the judgement: “It is common ground that in those years the senior management team at AssetCo behaved in a way that was fundamentally dishonest. During the audit process management made dishonest statements to GT, provided GT with fabricated and massaged evidence and dishonestly misstated reported profits, and provided GT with flawed and dishonest forecasts and cash flow projections. Outside of the audit process, management were engaged in dishonestly ‘overfunding’ assets (i.e. misleading banks as to the costs of new purchases etc so as to borrow more than was permitted), misappropriating monies, dishonestly under-reporting tax liabilities to HMRC, concluding fraudulent related party transactions and forging and backdating documents. GT accepts that it was negligent in a number of respects as the company’s auditor in failing to detect these matters…”

In 2012, AssetCo (ASTO) was forced to make prior period adjustments for 2010 that wiped more than £235m off its balance sheet. AssetCo was, and still is, an AIM listed company now operating in the fire and emergency services sector.

This is undoubtedly a similar case to Patisserie (CAKE). According to a report by Investors Champion, former Chairman Luke Johnson suggests it “has possible relevance for a claim against Grant Thornton” and he will be pushing the administrators to instigate similar action. Let us hope it does not take as long at ten years and millions of pounds in legal costs which administrators may be reluctant to stand.

According to a report in the FT, manufacturers are stockpiling goods at a record rate in anticipation of supply chain disruption from Brexit. Importers are also stockpiling goods – for example Unilever is storing ice-creams and deodorant such as its Magnum ice-cream bars which are made in Germany and Italy. There is also the increasing demand for warehousing by internet retailers, even for smaller “sheds” to enable them to provide next day or even same day delivery.

Big warehouses are one of the few commercial property sectors that has shown a good return of late and I am already stacked up with two of the leaders in that sector – Segro (SCRO) and Tritax Big Box (BBOX). On the 31st January the Daily Telegraph tipped smaller company Urban Logistics REIT (SHED) for similar reasons and the share price promptly jumped by 7% the next day wiping out the discount to NAV.

There has been much misinformation spread about Nissan’s decision to cancel manufacture of a new car model in the UK. They denied it was anything to do with Brexit. This was to be a diesel-powered model and as they pointed out, sales of diesel vehicles are rapidly declining in the UK. The same problem has also hit JLR (Jaguar-LandRover). One aspect not taken into account in many media stories was that Japan has just concluded a free trade deal with the EU. Japanese car manufacturers no long need to build cars in Europe to avoid punitive tariffs. Where will the new vehicle now be made? Japan of course!

There has been lots of media coverage of the politics of Venezuela and its rampant inflation. A good example of how damaging extreme socialism can be to an economy. Over twenty-five years ago it had a sound economy and I had a business trip scheduled to visit our local distributor there. But at the last minute the trip was cancelled after a number of people were killed in riots over bus fares. I never did make it and I doubt I will ever get there now.

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

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Staffline Issues, Audit Purpose and News on Patisserie

Yesterday Staffline Group (STAF) issued a statement first thing in the morning saying that the publication of results scheduled for that day would be delayed. The shares promptly dropped by about a third. Later in the day it stated that “the company can confirm that this morning concerns were brought to the attention of the board relating to invoicing and payroll practices within the Recruitment Division”. A full investigation was promised and the shares were then suspended. Is this yet another accounting scandal in an AIM company one wonders? Generally after such announcements, only bad news comes out.

Staffline is a recruitment/staffing and training business. It’s one of the largest AIM companies with revenue of nearly a billion pounds and reported profits of £71 million last year. It has been growing rapidly in recent years.

I have never held the stock although I did see a presentation by the company a couple of years ago. In general I don’t like employment businesses as they tend to follow economic cycles and the sector has few barriers to entry. I also considered the company to be at risk from regulatory and tax problems. The company also has considerable debt which is odd for this kind of business which generally have a “capital light” structure. Investors might have been concerned by the announcement on the 8th January that net debt had risen to £63 million at the 2018 year-end.

Investors will have to keep their fingers crossed for further news.

I covered in some previous blog posts the issue that audit quality is generally poor and that false accounts and outright fraud are regularly missed by audits – and it’s not just one or two firms – the whole audit industry seems to be incompetent in that regard. The Commons BEIS Committee held a meeting yesterday and one of the witnesses was David Dunckley, head of Grant Thornton, who audited the accounts of Patisserie (CAKE). He admitted that auditors did not look for fraud when auditing accounts and that there was an “expectation gap”. Committee members were not impressed.

Meanwhile Investor’s Champion revealed that Luke Johnson and Paul May, directors of Patisserie, owned a property that was leased back to a subsidiary of the company. As a related party transaction this should have been disclosed in the Patisserie accounts but was not.

The FT also disclosed that at least 30 shareholders had signed up to support a legal case with law firm Teacher Stern. But other investors are talking to other solicitors. In such cases it can be many months before the basis of a claim is clear and solicitors tend to jostle for the business of pursuing a claim in the meantime – one might call some of them “ambulance chasers”. Investors are advised not to spend money on such actions until the basis of a claim, and the ability to both finance an action and identify asset rich defendants is clear.

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

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Cloudcall Placing, Patisserie News, Brexit and Momentum Investing

I reported a week ago on a “Capital Markets Day” at Cloudcall (CALL) – see https://roliscon.blog/2019/01/18/cloudcall-investor-meeting-sophos-rpi-and-brexit/ . There was much discussion on whether the company should raise more finance, via debt or equity. I suggested they needed more equity. This morning they announced a placing of 2.4 million shares at 100p to raise (the share price last night was 109p. It represents about 10% dilution for other shareholders. The placing was completed in minutes so they had clearly lined up existing investors in advance. The cash will be invested (i.e. spent) on sales and marketing.

But they are also refinancing and extending their debt facility. Let us hope they don’t have to use it.

More bad news from Patisserie (CAKE). A report in the Guardian, based on sight of the information sent to bidders by the administrator, suggests that the accounts were false as far back as 2014. That’s when the IPO on AIM took place. In addition, sales in established stores had fallen by 4% in the last two years and the remaining 122 stores were on course to make a £2 million loss in the year to September 2019.

The Guardian report mentioned a number of possible bidders for some of the outlets, but generally few of them. So the chance of a major realisation for the benefit of creditors in such a “fire sale” process seems unlikely.

Brexit. After last night’s votes in the Commons, the battle lines between Theresa May and the EU look to be drawn up. She is getting near a clear mandate from Parliament which will help in the battle with EU bureaucrats and politicians who are adamant they won’t renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement. But they will have to if they don’t want the UK to exit without one, which would threaten a lot of EU country exports. Come March 28th, it will be time for a face-saving compromise – no change to the Withdrawal Agreement – just the addition of a codicil providing alternatives to the Backstop.

Momentum Investing. Are investors falling out of love with Momentum Investing? Momentum investing has been one of the most attractive investing strategies in the last few years. If a share price was going up, you just bought more, regardless of fundamentals. There were many academic studies showing that it was a very effective strategy. In ten years of rising shares prices, it was relatively foolproof. But when share prices are going down, as in the last part of 2018, it does of course work in reverse. You have to sell shares as the prices drop.

Just reviewing a few model portfolios run by investment magazines and on-line portals suggests to me that momentum investing is no longer working as the 5 year and longer returns generated are worse than the market as a whole. The moral is that there are no simple solutions to achieving superior investment returns. Once everyone is aware of a successful strategy, its benefits disappear as they are traded away.

It looks like we will have to revert to the hard work of doing financial and business analysis of companies rather than simply following shooting stars.

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

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Patisserie – and How to Avoid Disasters

The events at Patisserie (CAKE) have been well covered in both the national media and financial press so I won’t repeat them here. This article will therefore concentrate on how to avoid such companies in the future. The case of Patisserie is very similar to those of Globo in 2015 and Torex Retail in 2007. All three were large AIM companies that went into administration after fraud was discovered. These were not just cases of over-optimistic or misleading financial accounts, but deliberate false accounting. Executives of Torex Retail received jail terms and Globo is still being investigated. Note that such criminal cases take years to come to a conclusion. Both Globo and Patisserie were audited by the same firm (Grant Thornton). Such cases can happen not just in relatively small AIM companies, but also large ones – for example Polly Peck.

Ordinary shareholders received zero from the administration of Torex Retail and Globo and it is very likely it will be the same from Patisserie. The only glimmer of light is that it does look as though a normal sale process is being followed by the administrators and there is at least one enthusiastic bidder for the remaining stores. There is also the prospect of a tax refund from HMRC because it is clear the fraud has been running for some years so Patisserie has been paying tax on imaginary profits. But the bank overdrafts/loans need paying, loans from Luke Johnson need repaying (which incredibly seem to rank ahead of the banks), trade creditors need paying, staff need paying, HMRC needs paying and the administrators will run up the usual enormous bills no doubt so I doubt there will be much, if anything, left after those distributions. There usually is not.

Legal action against the former directors who were culpable in these events by regulatory authorities is highly likely. For example, it is a crime (market abuse) to publish false accounts under the Financial Services and Markets Act so that would be one basis. Investors who invested in the company on the basis of those false accounts should submit a complaint to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and encourage them to take such action.

Are there possible legal actions by investors to recover their losses? Perhaps and I know at least two people who are talking to solicitors about that. But such legal actions are very expensive and depend on a) Identifying defendants with sufficient assets to meet both the claim and legal costs; b) Having sufficient standing to do so. Unfortunately shareholders would probably have to do it via a “derivative action” which means applying to the court to force the administrator to pursue such a claim. Bearing in mind administrations are often relatively short term, and it will take years to conclude regulatory investigations and actions, there might be a problem there.

Who could be targeted? The auditors possibly although they will probably say they were misled by the company directors (bank accounts not disclosed, etc). Luke Johnson perhaps although he clearly denies previous knowledge of the fraud and pursuing him for breach of his responsibilities as a director might be difficult – however he does have the assets having taken well over £20 million out of the company in share sales over the years. Former finance director Chris Marsh sold shares worth £8.42 million in 2018 while former CEO Paul May sold shares worth £14.34 million in that year it is worth noting. They both appear to have been near the centre of the fraud but culpability clearly will need to be proved. They have yet to comment in public on the matter.

Were the share sales by those two executive directors a sign that all was not well at the company? Perhaps but Luke Johnson was not selling in 2018 and these sales were the result of share option exercises from LTIPs which executives often sell, partly to meet tax demands.

So how to avoid such fraudulent companies from damaging your wealth in future? From experience I can offer the following advice, and you will see why Patisserie side-stepped all the warning signs:

  1. Try to invest in directors who you feel you can trust. Luke Johnson had a very public reputation in the investment world which he was no doubt keen to protect. Indeed his actions to try and bail-out the business when the fraud was discovered shows exactly that, although institutional investors who took up the rescue rights issue will be none too happy. His fellow executive directors were a long-established team and hence should have been trustworthy. Make sure you take opportunities to meet the management.
  2. Do the financial analysis. Read the book “The Signs Were There” which I have covered in a previous article – it tells you where to look. For example, do the profits turn into cash? But if the cash on the balance sheet is a lie, as at both Patisserie and Globo, it does not help. Does the company not pay dividends when it could, or make decisions to raise more debt when it does not apparently need it or provide good justification? That was the what crystalised my views on Globo.
  3. Look at who else is investing or commenting on the company, e.g. Chris Boxall of Fundamental Asset Management, a very experienced small cap investor, or Paul Scott of Stockopedia who recently said “Quindell, Globo and Carillion were easy to spot a mile off – indeed we warned investors of all 3 long before they blew up. Patisserie Valerie however, appeared to be a wonderful, cash generative business”. Because I follow what others are saying and pay attention, I never invested in Torex Retail and I did not lose money on Globo despite holding some shares until the end. But Patisserie fooled pretty well everyone.
  4. Research the product or service offering. Some people say they were wary because when they visited the shops, they were not busy and did not like the cakes. That was not my experience after a number of visits to different locations.
  5. Read the IPO prospectus for AIM companies. It tells you a lot more than you can read in the Annual Reports and is legally required under AIM rules to be available on their web site.
  6. Invest in steps and not at the IPO so you can build confidence in the company. Private investors have the advantage of being able to do that. After all it’s unusual for frauds to run for years without being discovered by someone – rarely by auditors though. I first invested in Patisserie in 2017 and built up a small holding in stages following the share price momentum. But this was only limited protection and it appears the fraud had been going on for many years at Patisserie.
  7. Have a diversified portfolio so one company can go bust and it does not undermine your overall returns. If you invest in large cap companies which may be less risky, perhaps 10 to 20 shares are sufficient diversification. Throwing in a few investment trusts or other funds will help as they are intrinsically diversified. But if you are investing in AIM shares you need a lot more. By having a large portfolio of shares in terms of numbers of holdings the damage to my portfolio from the administration has been a loss of 0.9% of my portfolio value. That’s less than the portfolio varies from day to day on some days. I have spoken to a number of investors who bet their houses or life savings on one share, e.g. Northern Rock or the Royal Bank of Scotland rights issue. One at least went bankrupt. Don’t be so daft.
  8. Monitor news flow on a company and unusual share price movements. But at Patisserie there was really nothing unusual until the date the shares were suspended.

I hope the above comments help investors to avoid the dogs and complete frauds of the investment world. Some of these avoidance techniques help you to avoid not just outright frauds but general financial mismanagement by company directors.

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

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Bogle Death, Patisserie and Diploma AGM

The death of John Bogle has been announced at the age of 89. He wrote several very informative books on investment and was the founder of Vanguard which has grown into one of the largest mutual fund managers by promoting index fund management. He also promoted the idea that the investors should own the fund manager. He suffered from heart attacks from a young age, the first at age 31, and actually had a heart transplant in 1990. So in some respects he was a medical success story as well as an investment one. His books are well worth reading even if you are not a fan of index tracking (I am not).

More bad news from Patisserie (CAKE) with two more non-exec directors resigning and an “update” saying there were thousands of false entries in the accounts. KPMG have been called in to review what to do next and the company’s bankers have been asked to extend the “standstill of its bank facilities”. I suggest investors mentally write off the value of their holdings in this company.

I attended the Annual General Meeting of Diploma (DPLM) yesterday (on the 16th Jan). This is a business that owns a ragbag of technology companies from multiple acquisitions but grew into a financial profile I like to see under the former CEO Bruce Thompson. He led it for 20 years. Consistent growth in profits, good return on capital (about 24%), and good cash flow with rising dividends. Unfortunately, the new CEO they appointed did not work out for some reason and left in August after only a few months. The Chairman, John Nicholas, took over temporarily and they have just appointed a new CEO named Johnny Thomson who was present at the AGM. He used to work for Compass Group which is a much bigger business so I asked him why he joined Diploma. Was he disappointed about not getting the CEOs job at Compass perhaps (the CEO there died in a plane crash)? His answer was that he had spent a long time at Compass and it was time for a change. Was he disappointed? Perhaps, is a summary of what he said.

The company issued a trading statement on the day, which said reported revenues up by 9% in the first quarter, and was otherwise positive. Thank god for such boring companies in these turbulent financial times. I asked a question in the meeting on the possible impact of Brexit and US/China trade wars. The answer was in essence not much so long as US tariffs don’t rise much further (they do import much from China to their US operations).

A poorly attended AGM but useful nevertheless from a company that keeps a low profile.

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

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Too Much Cash, Wey Education and Patisserie Accounts

Are you stacked up with cash in your ISAs, SIPPs, and direct portfolios? As a dedicated follower of fashion (if the markets are falling as investors sell, then so do I) it is of some concern that the cash is not earning any interest. There was some relatively good news yesterday from soon to be listed A.J.Bell Youinvest. They are increasing the interest they pay on cash held in portfolios. Previously you got 0.05% on balances more than £50,000. It will now be 0.10% above £10,000, 0.15% above £50,000 and 0.25% above £100,000 on SIPPs and similar increases on ISAs and dealing accounts.

But that is still really quite paltry and still not good enough when you can get over 0.2% on even High Street bank deposit accounts and Goldman Sach’s Marcus account is offering 1.5%. Youinvest and other platforms must try harder I suggest to offer fair interest rates. In the meantime, the only option for investors is to take the cash out and deposit it elsewhere or spend it. But moving cash out of ISAs and SIPPs can make it difficult to put back in. The rules on such accounts should surely be changed to permit that more generally because at present it is “anti-competitive”. One option is to transfer your ISA or SIPP to another provider who does provide a better rate of interest on cash holdings, but that is such a tortuous and expensive process at present that it’s not really very practical to do so – at least the FCA is looking at that issue.

Why are investors selling? Apart from panics in certain stocks and sectors, such as the FAANG technology stocks in the USA, the political uncertainty in the UK is surely simply causing investors to take their money off the table. Folks are getting nervous. Reducing exposure to stocks likely to be hit by a hard Brexit or by the risk of a General Election and Labour taking power is a completely rational move. Private investors can do this quite easily while institutional investors apart from hedge funds can be more limited in their ability to do so. Investors in funds don’t like their funds to be holding large amounts of cash and the manager cannot easily move in and out of holdings in size without finding prices move against them.

Wey Education (WEY) is an AIM listed provider of on-line education. It has big ambitions but this morning the company announced that Executive Chairman David Massie has resigned with immediate effect. The cause is continuing health problems after major heart surgery. They also reported trading as “strong” but this will clearly be a major disruption in the short term as Mr Massie was undoubtedly the driving force behind the business of late. It rather highlights the danger of having an Executive Chairman in a company rather than a more conventional board structure. The share price is down 11% at the time of writing. This was one of my “experimental” small holdings where the picture has simply not developed as I hoped – that’s apart from the latest news. One concern here is that the company did not announce the fact that Mr Massie was only working part-time because of his health problems recently – surely this is “price-sensitive” information that should have been issued?

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) have announced an investigation into the audit of the last 3 years accounts of Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) by Grant Thornton. They are also looking into the preparation of the financial statements by the former CFO. With the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the FCA also involved, the management of the company are going to be spending a lot of time talking to investigators. Let us hope that does not detract too much from putting the company back on a sound basis.

Patisserie has also been accused of failing to declare LTIP share awards to executives including the former CFO. Will there be action on that matter? I wrote a previous blog article on how they do things differently in the USA after the conviction of a former Autonomy executive for fraud – see https://roliscon.blog/2018/05/02/they-do-things-differently-in-the-usa/ . They also do things differently in Japan where Carlos Ghosn, Chairman of Nissan, has been arrested for misreporting his pay. Allegedly he actually received over $88 million over the last five years but only half was reported in their accounts. It is surely true that the UK is really quite “soft” on corporate misdemeanors of all kinds when it should be a lot tougher.

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

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ShareSoc Seminar, new Patisserie CEO and Brexit

I attended the ShareSoc AGM and Company Presentations Seminar last night. The AGM was routine but a couple of points are worth noting: 1) Total membership increased to almost 4,000 in 2017 and I gather it has increased further since – partly from the Beaufort campaign; 2) Lord Lee, a well-known writer for the FT on small cap stocks, has become “Patron”. Anyone reading this who has not yet become a full, subscribing Member of ShareSoc should do so because they do an enormous amount of good work for investors.

As regards the company presentations, here is some brief coverage of the first three:

Ilika (IKA): This company produces solid-state batteries which have advantages over other battery types for certain applications. I first saw this company present to investors a couple of years ago. Revenue is creeping up but losses still exceed revenue. As last time, there seem to be some business opportunities but major revenue growth and profits do not appear to be likely in the short term. They might have interesting technology but can they sell it at a profit and in volume? Until they can prove this, I don’t think it’s a company in which I will consider investing.

Pelatro (PTRO): This company provides marketing software to telecoms companies. The company was only incorporated in January 2017 and listed on AIM in December of that year. They did a placing to raise more funds in August 2017. It’s clearly early days yet but revenue is forecast to grow rapidly. The CEO was a glib and fast talker which somewhat put me off, but he did explain the business reasonably well. This is definitely one I will do more research on. The AIM prospectus is of course available on their web site which is always worth reading for newish listings. However, attempting to print their last Annual Report caused Internet Explorer to hang twice, which is somewhat annoying.

Forbidden Technologies (FBT): This company provides technology to edit and manage videos using a proprietary codec. At least that is so far as I could understand it. The company has been listed on AIM for years but has been consistently loss making and revenue last year was still less than £1 million. There were a couple of existing disgruntled shareholders in the audience. The company came across as having some interesting technology but no very clear focus on who they were going to sell it to, what the USP was, what the competitors are, etc. Was it to be sold to major platform operators, or consumers? Looks like a typical company founded by technologists who don’t have strengths in sales and marketing – a very typical UK story. I could not see that the outlook will change because the presenters could not even sell the company to investors.

Perhaps I am being harsh on Ilika and Forbidden Technologies. But technology companies and their managers do need to learn that there is more to business than having a good idea and some bright technical staff.

The interesting news today was that Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) CEO Paul May has departed and a new CEO with a CV as long as your arm on “turnarounds” has been appointed with immediate effect. It’s hardly surprising that Paul May has left. The previous CFO went promptly after the alleged fraud was discovered but internal systems seem to have been very lax with the CEO not knowing about winding-up petitions and bank overdrafts. I hope he will be returning the bonus shares he obtained based on the false accounts.

Incidentally there will be a discussion on Patisserie at the Mello London event run by David Stredder on the 26th November – see http://melloevents.com/mello-london/ . The Mello events are always interesting for investors in small cap companies.

Brexit

One reader of my blog suggested that politics was off topic for this blog and I should stick to investment matters. But the blog does cover wider issues occasionally including economics, politics, corporate governance, management, transport, art, London events and other issues. Yes I do have a very broad range of interests! But Brexit is so key to the future financial health of the UK economy, and hence to investors in it, that it would be remiss not to cover it to some degree. No doubt that it is the reason why the Financial Times goes on about it endlessly.

Now I think the best comment on the current position was given in this tweet by my M.P., Bob Neill: “With all respect to some of my colleagues, pontificating about the draft deal Theresa May has secured before they have even read the text does not do justice to the seriousness of the issues at stake. The country deserves better than that and any proposals deserve a fair hearing.

I am therefore going to defer comments myself in detail until I have read the whole 585 pages of the draft withdrawal agreement and a couple of associated documents. You can find them here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/progress-on-the-uks-exit-from-and-future-relationship-with-the-european-union . I will also listen to what Mrs May has to say and other intelligent commentators before coming to any conclusions.

Although I am keen on many aspects of Brexit and hope it can be achieved without too much in the way of compromises, and with a practical solution, we certainly should not rush into any decision on the matter. This is not the time for emotion, or grandstanding.

Anyone who has read the whole 585 pages of the draft withdrawal agreement is welcome to post some comments on this blog of course. There’s a challenge for you!

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

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Arron Banks on Leave.EU, Smithson and Patisserie

The Andrew Marr interview of Arron Banks was all good knock-about stuff but there was no knock-out blow inflicted. Andrew Marr was interviewing Arron Banks about his £8 million funding of the Leave.EU campaign. The Electoral Commission have recently asked the National Crime Agency (NCA) to investigate the matter as they apparently do not believe his story about the source of the funding. The suggestion has been made that the funding came from Russian sources or from a company registered in the Isle of Man (Rock Holdings) which would not have been permitted under electoral law.

You can watch the full interview here: https://order-order.com/2018/11/04/arron-banks-marr-interview-full/

Mr Banks made it clear that the money came from Rock Services Ltd and strenuously denied it came from other sources. Andrew Marr suggested Rock Services was a “shell” company and that neither that company nor Mr Banks had sufficient financial resources to cover the £8 million in funding.

It is of course a simple matter to look at the accounts of Rock Services Ltd at Companies House (it’s free to do so – go here: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=rock+services+ltd ).

Rock Services Ltd hardly looks like a “shell” company which is normally used to describe a company with no revenue and no assets apart from possibly some cash. Rock Services had Turnover of £50 million for the year ending December 2017 but little in the way of profits or net assets. But it did have fixed assets of over £1 million. This is hardly a “shell” company in the normal usage of the word. The “Strategic Report” says the company’s “principal business activity is that of performing a recharge function for services for the Group and other related parties”. The profit of the company is generated from service charges added to costs and salary recharges.

Aaron Banks has been running motor insurance companies for many years and is involved in a group of companies which includes Rock Services, Rock Holdings and UK registered Eldon Insurance. I vaguely recall he was involved in a company called Brightside I held shares in from 2012/2014 which was publicly listed before being taken over. The accounts of Eldon Insurance can also be read at Companies House and indicate revenue of £77 million and profits of £1.8 million in 2017. Another substantial company in the Group is Southern Rock Insurance which is based in Gibraltar. You can see a complete list of group companies and their transactions through Rock Services Ltd on page 15 of their accounts.

In summary the allegation that Mr Banks or his UK companies did not have the financial resources to make the donation to Leave.EU is not reasonable, and Andrew Marr and his researchers should have looked into the background more before making the allegations he made.

As Mr Banks said in the interview, other donations were made to the remain campaign from subsidiaries of foreign companies. Why were they not being investigated? It certainly looks like a witch-hunt to me. It would seem to be more about politics than election regulation.

Note that Companies House is an invaluable source of information on companies and their directors. All investors should be familiar with it. It can be useful in other ways – for example I recently obtained a bid from a company to provide web site development work. That was done from the email address of a company that was different to that from which they suggested would do the billing. When I looked the former company up at Companies House it had actually changed name a couple of years ago and under its latest name had got appallingly bad references on the internet. Needless to say I decided not to do business with them.

Smithson Investment Trust (SSON) is now trading at a remarkable premium to net asset value of 7.4% according to the AIC after its recent IPO. Bearing in the mind the state of the market and the fact that it can hardly have yet invested the money raised (one might call it a “shell” company), it would seem investors are putting a high premium on the name of Terry Smith and his involvement in this trust. There must be investors out there who are purchasing shares at that premium to maintain this “discount” but that seems very unwise to me when most investment trusts have historically traded at a discount. The reason for this is quite simple – investment trusts incur costs in management and administration which reduces the yield and returns on the underlying shares they hold. Investors can always buy the underlying shares directly to avoid those costs. In the recent bull market and recognition of late of the merits of investment trusts, some have been trading at small premiums but a premium of 7.4% when the company has no track record and will be mainly holding cash seems somewhat unreasonable.

As I said when reviewing the IPO, it may be best to wait and see what transpires for this trust.

Patisserie (CAKE) and the recent General Meeting have been covered in several previous blog posts. I have previously mentioned that I was not happy that Luke Johnson did not answer my questions – he ruled them out along with a lot of others. When can a Chairman refuse to answer questions in a General Meeting? It was always judged to be matter of common law that questions should be answered but that has now actually been put into a Regulation.

I have written to Mr Johnson and my letter includes these paragraphs:

  1. As regards the conduct of the General Meeting, I suggest you not only handled it badly as Chairman but that refusing to answer my questions was a breach of The Companies (Shareholders’ Rights) Regulations 2009. There are valid grounds on which you can refuse to answer questions at General Meetings but the reason you gave for not answering mine (refusal to answer any questions that might prejudice the investigations) was not a valid one.
  2. Holding a meeting a 9.00 am is also not good practice. This note published by ShareSoc (and partly written by me) gives guidance on how to run general meetings, and includes references to the law on the subject: https://www.sharesoc.org/How_To_Run_General_Meetings.pdf

If you study the aforementioned regulations, you will see that the directors can refuse to answer questions that would require disclosure of confidential information or “if it is undesirable in the interests of the company or the good order of the meeting that the question be answered”. That may be quite broad but it hardly covers the questions I posed and the answers to my questions would certainly not have prejudiced any investigations.

I have therefore asked him to answer the questions in my letter. He may have other things on his mind, but all company directors should be aware of the law, or take legal advice when required.

Shareholders should not allow directors to ignore their responsibility to answer reasonable questions.

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

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Earthport Accounts, City of London IT and Patisserie

Earthport (EPO) is the latest AIM company to report that its past accounts are not all they should have been. Following a review by the new CEO and CFO, it seems there have been errors in reporting of forward foreign exchange transactions. This will result in fair value adjustments and a reduction of £6.3 million to £16.6 million in the net assets of the group at June 2017. Likewise adjustments are required to previous years. Reported earnings are also reduced although there is no cash impact.

This is a payments business which has been consistently loss making despite growing revenue. The former Chairman and CEO (who was still on the board as a non-exec director) have departed “with immediate effect”. This is surely yet another case of audit failure. Who were the auditors? Answer: RSM. But it’s worth reading their audit report in the 2017 Annual Report where they highlight some problems in the same area.

I do not currently hold shares in Earthport and this latest news is hardly likely to inspire confidence in the company from investors. After many years, the company has not proved it has a business model that can generate any profits.

Pressure of business meant I missed attending the City of London Investment Trust (CTY) Annual General Meeting on the same day as the Patisserie General Meeting. This is one of my most boring holdings as it’s mainly invested in large cap UK companies. But no problem in not attending the AGM in person because there is a recording of it available here: https://www.janushenderson.com/ukpi/content/trustslive?o_cc=c3926 . That even includes the question/answer session which was omitted in a previous year. If you watched it while it was taking place you could also submit questions. This approach is to be highly commended.

The interesting comment I noted from fund manager Job Curtis was that they had recently put more money into the market and were gearing up. He clearly perceives there are value opportunities in the market after recent declines. Others seem to agree with him because the market is now picking up.

Just one postscript on the Patisserie (CAKE) General Meeting. Lombard in the FT (Matthew Vincent) questioned this morning whether placings were the only option. He suggests the company could have delayed and done a rights issue. This is basically the same issue that was raised at the Meeting by some shareholders. But it’s very unrealistic to suggest that was a viable option. In reality I think the appetite for a rights issue would have been very low because of the lack of financial information on the current position of the company. I certainly would not even have participated in the placing! Undertaking a rights issue when there was great uncertainty about the level of support would hardly have been recommended by any advisors. In addition it would have taken a lot longer to do that than it took to do the first placing. Time is of the essence in the circumstances the company faced and looking for bankers to fill the delay hardly looks realistic to me either.

I suggest Luke Johnson took the only reasonable steps available and he should be thanked for saving the business. Shareholders should be very glad that the company did not get stuffed through a pre-pack administration which is what I rather expected would happen, in which case they would have lost everything.

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

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Patisserie General Meeting – No Excitement But Few Questions Answered Either

I attended the General Meeting of Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) this morning at the ungodly time of 9.00 am – presumably chosen to deter attendance. An announcement earlier from the company will also have deterred attendance as it said no questions on past events would be answered so as not to prejudice investigations by “multiple regulators and authorities”. But there were about 20 shareholders present, including some institutional representatives.

This GM was to approve the second tranche of share placings and I expected it to be voted through which it was on a poll by more than 90% of shareholders. To remind you this company was on the brink of going into administration after the board discovered the accounts were false and the claimed cash on the balance sheet non-existent. In fact it was stated in the meeting that net debt was more like £9.8 million rather than as previously stated. Executive Chairman Luke Johnson kept the company alive by giving it an interest-free loan and arranging an emergency placing. As I said in the meeting, I considered the company had no better alternative to the actions taken having been involved in other similar problem situations before. I think shareholders (including me) are very lucky that Mr Johnson chose to take the steps he did. Mr Johnson reiterated there was no viable alternative several times in the meeting because there was no time to arrange anything else. He indicated later that he had not participated in the placings because he did not want shareholders to think he was acquiring shares cheaply and hence his interest in the company will now be diluted (he’s now down to 28%).

However there were several shareholders who expressed their unhappiness at the turn of events as one might have expected. There was one particularly vociferous shareholder who suggested that shareholders will lose 88% of their value as a result of the placings and that there should have been a rights issue instead. The shareholder said it was immoral, and unfair.

Mr Johnson opened the meeting by thanking shareholders for the messages of support he had received in the recent dark days. The board was doing everything it can to safeguard the company. There was potential fraud and a miss-statement of the accounts. Those errors are likely to have affected previous annual accounts.

He said that regulatory authorities including the SFO were investigating so he could not comment further. He believed it was a business worth saving and he had committed to reduce his other activities (in response to a question later he said he no other roles now).

Chris Boxall from Fundamental Asset Management asked if those supporting the placings had access to more information that others, i.e. other than that publicly disclosed? The answer was no. Comment: they must have faith in Luke Johnson because with so little information available it is very unclear what the future profitability of the business might be and there are big potential liabilities.

In response to other questions he said current trading had not been affected, although two sites had been closed. They are recruiting new staff when asked about management changes.

I tried to ask two questions:

  1. Is it possible the company could become liable to compensate shareholders for the “market abuse” related to the issue of false accounts [on which basis some investors will have purchased shares]? This is surely a similar situation to the case of Tesco where the FCA instructed the company to pay compensation. Shareholders taking up the placing shares might be interested in the answer. Mr Johnson refused to answer the question.
  2. Have you appointed lawyers to pursue claims against the former finance director (Chris Marsh) in respect of the fraud or to recover the value of share bonuses paid to him and the CEO (Paul May) on the basis of the false accounts? Mr Johnson refused to answer that question also.

Note that as this was a General Meeting there was no good reason not to answer those questions as they could not possibly prejudice the investigations by the legal authorities. This is an abuse of company law and I will be making a complaint about it.

What can shareholders do at this point? Not a lot but just await the results of the investigations and possible subsequent actions by the legal authorities. This might take many weeks, months if not years from past experience. The shares will remain suspended for the present. But I suggest shareholders should do the following:

  1. Write to Luke Johnson requesting that the company takes all possible legal steps to recover loses to the company that have resulted from the fraud from those who perpetrated the likely fraud, and in addition take steps to recover the value of shares issued to former and current directors under share option schemes that were based on the false profits that had been declared. In addition the company should examine the role of the auditors as it appears that they may have failed to pick up the accounting errors and failed to check all relevant bank balances and hence there may be a claim against them. Note: it is a lot easier for the company to sue former directors or auditors than it is for shareholders, however much they may wish to forget about it and move on.
  2. Write to the Financial Conduct Authority stating you were induced to invest in the shares of the company based on false accounts and encourage them to pursue legal actions against those at fault accordingly. In addition as this was a case of market abuse (similar to that at Tesco), request that the company be forced to compensate the affected investors accordingly. You should also encourage them and the SFO to move as fast as possible in their investigations as they are not known for speed in such matters.

So that’s a summary of the meeting held on a gloomy wet day in London – which probably matched the mood of the shareholders present. There were members of the press there getting their views no doubt for publication in the media later.

To look on the bright side, as I have an enormously diversified portfolio I found on exiting the meeting that my overall portfolio had risen more that morning than my potential losses on Patisserie simply as the overall market picked up. I may therefore be more sanguine than others. There is a lesson there of sorts for investors, but I also consider myself relatively lucky.

As someone said to me in the meeting, this was a company where there were no warning signs that investors could easily pick up in respect of the accounts. Investors cannot blame themselves for investing in what appeared to be a sound, profitable company from the accounts. Fraudulent accounts can fool even the most experienced investors.

Picture below is of Patisserie café in King’s Cross station take on my way to the General Meeting.

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

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Patisserie Cafe 2018-11-01