With it being all quiet on the financial front, with a lot of people on holiday, I had the time to read a couple of Annual Reports over the weekend. First came Victoria (VCP), a producer of flooring products (carpets and tiles) in which I have a relatively small holding. Chairman Geoff Wilding always has some interesting things to say and their Annual Report is an exemplary model of shareholder enlightenment.
He commences with this statement: “There is an old Yiddish adage which, loosely translated, says “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”. It is safe to say that when Victoria developed its business plan for 2020/21 at the start of this year, we did not factor in the complete economic shutdown in most of the various countries in which we operate”. He does briefly cover the latest business position but the Annual Report covers the year to the end of March so it is mainly historic data.
It was interesting to read this section:
“A core element of our UK growth strategy, made possible due to the scale of our business, is our logistics operation, Alliance Flooring Distribution. 18 months ago, we made the decision to invest heavily in logistics, accepting the consequential temporary loss of some margin, in the belief that our customers – flooring retailers – would highly value reliable on-time delivery of carpet, cut precisely to size for a specific consumer order. This has meant that they can hold less inventory, freeing up cash from their working capital, and devote more space in their stores to point of sale rather than using it to warehouse product, and reduce waste, improving their margins. (Carpet is produced in rolls 25m long. However, houses rarely need exactly a full roll and retailers would invariably be left with a typical leftover 2-3m “short end”, which would be thrown away. In contrast, given our high volume of orders and sophisticated cutting planning software, our wastage is much lower). And this is exactly how it has turned out”.
Going back into history, in 1980 I developed a similar system for Harris Carpets to establish a computer system to optimise their central carpet cutting operations and minimise “remnants” or “short-ends”. This proved to be one of their key competitive advantages. Similar systems have been used by other big carpet retailers and distributors since, but the carpet market is still dominated by smallish local operations so you can see the advantages that Victoria might gain.
The second annual report I read was that of Downing One VCT (DDV1). Apart from a very poor financial performance for the second year running, the report fails to cover several important items.
Firstly there is no information on the length of service of the directors, nor their ages. It is now convention not to report the ages of directors which I consider unfortunate but they should at least state when they joined the board so we can see their length of service. Ages can of course be easily looked up at Companies House – they are 60, 71 and 75 years for the three directors. Are ages and length of service important? I think they are simply from my experience of boards and their performance.
But the really big omission is that the substantial loss reported of £23.8 million partly included a “Provision for doubtful income” under Other Expenses of £2.1 million in Note 5 to the Accounts. What is that? I cannot spot any explanation in the report. I have sent a request for more information to the company.
Rio Tinto (RIO) published an abject apology this morning for their destruction of a cultural heritage site in Juukan Gorge in Australia. They say “The board review concluded that while Rio Tinto had obtained legal authority to impact the Juukan rockshelters, it fell short of the Standards and internal guidance that Rio Tinto sets for itself, over and above its legal obligations. The review found no single root cause or error that directly resulted in the destruction of the rockshelters. It was the result of a series of decisions, actions and omissions over an extended period of time, underpinned by flaws in systems, data sharing, engagement within the company and with the PKKP, and poor decision-making”. They propose a number of improvements to avoid the problems in future. In the meantime they are knocking off £2.7 million from the possible bonuses under the STIP and LTIP schemes available to CEO J-S Jacques and large amounts from two other senior executives. That should hurt enough I think.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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