Ann: Profit Guidance , page-26

It's a cyclical business because past performance indicates that this is so and there is nothing in the current financial performance that suggests that there will be otherwise.

Operating margins in the last 10 years have varied from 18% to as high as 35%. I am sure if you dig back past 2003, that it gets even more volatile (happy for you to tell me that this is not so).

EPS went from 7c per share in 2003 to 10cps in 2005 to 1.3cps in 2008 to 22cps in 2012 (with more ups and downs in between). When is the next big drop?

There is nothing in the earnings profile of this company that suggests that it otherwise but a cyclical business. Indeed, it's earnings stability is reliant on a stable political enviornment in the countries that it operates in.

The onus of proof is not on anyone to prove that it is not a cyclical business; the onus of proof as an investor is to be certain that it is not.