Not exactly the easiest Annual Report to read and interpret by any means, I pity poor mum & dad investors and SMSF's trying to get through this to get a reasonable understanding of what has happened and how it is being handled. In addition the pre-cursor announcement released on 25th August was just plain illusory and should not have been released to market as it was a narrow view of one part of the business trying to give the impression of a looming better result than was in truth. Not often I can find a company that can run it as close to near break-even so no yield for shareholders consistently and yet have every excuse in the book plus leave unspoken ills for the next year with a new batch of excuses but a seemingly consistent flow of equity issued to the Directors supposedly acting on shareholders behalf...TAU is probably the only one that comes to mind but that ran likes that for 10 years so maybe the current approach is good for someone.
The latest announcements just elude to so much that needs changing in ever corner of the business from the corporate structure through to basic accounting and reporting from a control perspective; and from the herd profile and herd/farm mix to the products-to-market from an operational perspective and everything in between and associated to it.
@Grant62 has done a good rundown on various elements and there is so much more detail in each observation that it would takes days to put it all on here.
Expect the on-market sentiment to push it below 10 cents sometime soon and off-market there is a distinct possibly of a private placement so to ensure there is cash to support out-of-town costs between now and the end of calendar year. Yes you guessed it, no need to spell it out in here.
The next interesting calendar point will be before end of October 2017 to verify some thing not completely clear but will become clearer in the Quarterly Cash flow Report as that combined with the Annual Report should finish off last year as I suspect there are some accrued costs that have been tipped over.
Somewhere between impairments, valuations, depreciation and amortisation is some nasty surprises and then from a cash perspective somewhere between "corporate costs", "other dairy related expenses", "dairy related expenses" and the increase in feedstock costs are some further nasty surprises. Then there will be the opaque contracts relating processing and products-to-market and there is some yet further surprises hidden in there as well.
Rather sad to see what has been done and what has been set-up as a poison chalice for any incoming Directors at the AGM to what should be a clever, growing and exciting little business.
The subsequent company announcement of the Corporate Governance Statement also speaks volume in absentia of some key matters...risk management is absent, independent nominee committee is absent and combine those two alone allows current Directors a feeding frenzy of cash (if available) or equity as a replacement, self-issued options against nebulus targets and minimal at-risk remuneration. Even through the 8 principles of good governance are only a guideline as issued by the ASX and are non-binding they are there for a reason and more often that not provide a minimum level of governance that should be expected from a listed entity so having exceptions is not good nor is having a supplementary response dated August 2017. Governance is as much a living breathing active responsibility of the Company Directors (not only for AHF but also across all its sub-entities) as operations is to the Executives and their staff.
Over to the shareholders to decide where they want their company to go in the future. This upcoming AGM and the voting on the resolutions that will be put forward will be the peak point of rescue & recover or fade into nothing for the business and it's investors.
