Anticipating a strong shareholder backlash, the addresses by both Brian and Stewart were defensive and the defensive mood continued right through the meeting.
ie. EWC is in a very strong position with net assets growing strongly from year to year due to the never ending efforts of Stewart and the Board, without Slipform, finance from the banks would not have been forthcoming and construction costs would have blown out, Slipform is a very capable company, having set records for construction in HK and elsewhere, etc. etc. Criticism of the Board or of Slipform is unreasonable in light of the circumstances, etc. etc. Work in Indonesia is held up by the BPMigas shakeup and the position will clear up only after the dust settles. Share price is being manipulated by the likes of Michael West and there is no point in responding to the criticism but on the other hand, Richard Chandler is OK with all that is happening.
The presentation concentrated on the visit of the PNG PM to Sengkang - lots of handshaking but also lots of shots of equipment and construction.
Funding, apparently, is not a problem with finance being offered to the company from all directions - but no thank you, we are fine.
Gas is in great demand and the upside to EWC is enormous.
The meeting was well attended and there was not much dissent - the point was made that the criticism is about time schedules not being met and not about the business plan as such.
The issue of the poor shareprice performance was raised and it was suggested again that it is a result of bad publicity and the non existent PR.
It seems that SE refuses to acknowledge this - his attitude is that there is no point in confronting Michael West or any other critic as, in his opinion, confrontation will only lead to new criticism.
PR, in his opinion, is a complete waste of time. For example, he pointed out that bowing to shareholder pressure, EWC now has a web page which, again in his opinion, is a complete waste of space and counter productive. Apparently, a "Japanese company" adapted the operation mode of EWC as published on the web page and this is now being litigated.
He is right, of course - the web page is a pure waste of space because it is a static piece of c..p which does little bit more than replicate the annual report with links straight back to the ASX.
If there was sensitive technical information on the web page for the Japanese company to copy, which I doubt, than that was a great mistake for which heads should roll - however that is not a justification for not having an active and informative presence on the internet.
The point was also made that for a half billion dollar company, the expense of having a PR department is miniscule and the benefits, when compared to the costs, could be enormous.
SE was clearly not impressed however, when pushed, he said that he will appoint a PR person on the condition that, once appointed, he (SE) will not respond to any more inquiries re the company.
Pathetic - but that is how he views public relations and with that attitude, the PR exercise is doomed to fail.
Another request was made, that in view of the blue skies presented at the AGM, a statement by the company in the way of a press release should be made to inform the market of all EWC's achievements. We are still waiting.
A comment was made that the Board should be reformed to demonstrate some independence which is greatly lacking at the moment. From his response it is very clear that SE is not ready to let go although he professes that he would rather be sailing his boat than doing all this thankless work.
Dividends- zilch although the very good news is that in that context, Mrs. E. was not mentioned - SE maintains that he does not read the comments on HotCopper. Yeah!
EWC Price at posting:
29.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
