Hard to say without seeing the final accounts but you would...

Hard to say without seeing the final accounts but you would suppose they are 'tilling the fields' for an underwhelming 2018 reported NPAT in the annual report. A coupe of observations;

The release is dated 2nd of July but then they go onto say that "with the first 11 months of the financial year now complete"... O.K. listed companies are not running their accounts on a cash basis but with modern accounting software you should have a pretty good idea of where your EFY EBITDA is sitting by the start of July, particularly if you were going to go to the effort to issue a market sensitive guidance update. They then go on to say that they will meet or slightly exceed their "underlying" EBITDA guidance for the full year so why the need to issue an update at all?

That the company will be reporting some one off charges charges and non cash writeoffs after some major acquisitions is not particularly surprising, I believe that this will be an instance of long term gain over short term pain and presents a buying opportunity for the faithful.

Cheers, marcusA