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Rolls-Royce – Audits Investigated and AGM

Yesterday (4/5/2017) I attended the Rolls-Royce (RR.) Annual General Meeting in Derby. In former years they used to hold the meetings in London but it’s been Nottingham and Derby the last couple of years. As a result, from talking to a few attendees it seemed to be mainly Rolls-Royce employees and retirees attending rather than the normal private investor crowd. The choice of venue may of course be deliberate so as to achieve a more sympathetic audience.

But the story promoted by the company is much the same – orders up, sales down and profits down, but the company says it has a bright future in summary. In the last year we have also had the settlement of past bribery in the company, and the issue of needing to change their revenue recognition on maintenance contracts (these issues have been well covered in past ShareSoc blog posts). In addition there was a massive reported loss arising from foreign exchange hedges being revalued.

The same day it was announced that the audit of the company’s accounts by KPMG in 2010-2013 are to be investigated by the Financial Reporting Council. Which seems very appropriate bearing in mind what was disclosed at the AGM.

Here is a brief summary of what was said by Chairman Ian Davis and CEO Warren East, and what I said in the Q&A session (not verbatim – summarised for brevity) .

Ian Davis confirmed the outlook for 2017 was unchanged – a trading statement was issued in the morning which said trading was in line with expectations but that profit and cash flow would be weighted towards the second half of the year. Cost savings were given as being “on-track” and the company priorities includes continuing to “rebuild trust and confidence in our long-term growth prospects” which is a clear admission that investors had lost faith in the company. The share price has improved over the last few months but it’s still considerably lower than it was back in 2013-2015.

Mr Davis said he was impressed by Warren East’s building of his management team, and that the long-term prospects for the company remain outstanding. The order book has grown to £80 billion.

After that short presentation, Warren East spoke at more length. He said that 2016 was a year of stabilisation and was a great foundation for moving forward. Underlying revenue was down slightly but underlying profit was down significantly [49% down in fact]. He explained the large “headline” fall in profits has being due to derivative contract revaluation. But he did say that underlying profit (which excludes derivative charges) fell due to significant headwinds in the civil aviation business. However they have grown the wide-body engine market share from 30% to 50%. There was a once in a generation transition to more efficient engines. The launch costs will decline and the installed base will grow.

They are losing mid-range and corporate jet market share, and defence is still a challenging market. In power systems there was a stable performance and the installed base grew. Marine suffered from extreme weakness due to a dearth of orders for new vessels and servicing. There have been major job losses. In nuclear there had been some investment in the development of small modular reactors.

Mr East continued by saying they had invested a lot in 2016 in R&D, in assets and in operational excellence. But they had not forgotten cost control. He said investors were now more confident in the company now – hence the improvement in the share price. They have restored trust in the company.

Mr East then talked about the new management appointments and said they still need to follow through on strategies set in 2016 while also thinking about the future.

He explained the deferred prosecution agreement over the bribery allegations (£671 million in fines, plus an obligation to change their behaviour). There had been extensive action within the business to change policies in this area.

I covered a number of issues when questions were invited:

1) I questioned whether the former management (e.g. the CEO) should be subject to clawback on bonuses because of the bribery and other issues. The answer given by Ruth Cairnie (Chair of the Rem Comm) was that the management who were involved in the bribery scandal had lost all their bonuses and options and that clawbacks had been introduced. But the Chairman said that the former CEO knew nothing about the matter at the time. Incidentally there was an amusing comment from Matthew Vincent in the FT today which was “All of this prompts the question: which euphemism did Rolls-Royce use for the £100,000 or so it spent on a Silver Spirit car to indulge the automotive appetites of an Indonesian intermediary? Miscellaneous travel?” That question was directed at KPMG but it might just as well be directed at the former CEO surely.

2) I suggested a shareholder committee would perhaps help Rolls-Royce deal with the various problems they faced.

3) As regards the accounting change to future maintenance, which had been explained away as a “technical accounting issue”, I said that it was not just a technical matter but a question of prudence. In my view it was not prudent to recognise future sales and profits in the current year. And it was certainly not clear in the past that this dubious accounting treatment was being used.

4) I also commented negatively on the complexity of the Remuneration Policy. Ruth Cairnie said it had been simplified but I pointed out that the maximum salary multiple in the LTIP had actually been increased. I spoke to Ruth at some length after the meeting on remuneration. I pointed out that such LTIPs result in enormous payouts at companies like Persimmon and Berkeley Group (WPP is another example incidentally) and that a recent Commons Committee said they should all be scrapped. She responded that they had to pay a competitive “package”. I agreed with that but said it would be better to have a higher fixed base salary and do away with LTIPs, or pay bonuses in cash or shares annually. There was no incentive provided by LTIPs as anyone familiar with business management would know – rewards for good performance need to be made soon after achievements. I also said to her that if public companies did not reform their attitude to pay and the levels they considered appropriate that the Government might take a hand. I did say to her that it was her responsibility and she could do something about it. She did not seem happy with my comments but reiterated the usual stance about having consulted all their major investors. Indeed they did achieve 95.6% support on the Remuneration Policy vote and 98.7% support on the Remuneration Report vote.

It was only a moderately useful meeting to attend. As in previous years, treated more like a PR exercise for company pensioners than a serious meeting for investors by the Chairman. Bearing in mind that the Chairman has been Chair of this company for several years, it surprises me that he is still there when the company has had so many problems on his watch. I would certainly prefer a new Chairman. Matters such as remuneration tend to be driven by the Chairman and his response to criticism of any kind is not helpful. But he still got 99.5% of votes to re-elect him. Surely an example of how corporate governance by institutions tends to be brain-dead. The votes on remuneration also demonstrate a pathetic response to the pay issue.

In essence the old problems are still there. Orders going up, but sales falling, i.e. orders not able to be delivered and turned into cash. They need to start using a different measure of likely future business. With such a large and complex business, it is difficult to say yet whether Warren East has really got to grips with reforming the company. We will have to wait and see.

Meanwhile there was a good editorial in the FT on how the defects in auditing at companies such as Rolls-Royce “highlight the failure of the accountancy profession and its regulators to resolve in the intervening 15 years [since Enron and the demise of Arthur Andersen], the fundamental question of how far auditors should be expected to go in their efforts to uncover bad behaviour”. One cannot but agree with that and with their view that 4 major audit firms is not enough to ensure competition and that it tends to encourage cosiness between auditors and their clients. But there are surely more substantial reforms necessary to really improve auditing standards which the profession itself seems to not accept as being required in any way.

Roger Lawson

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