Muddy waters report /research/bur7 Aug 2019 10:02
We are short BUR. For years, it was the ultimate “trust me” stock. Thanks to a light disclosure regime, the esoteric nature of its business, and unethical behavior by its largest shareholder, Invesco, it turned Enron-esque mark-to-model accounting into the biggest stock promotion on the AIM. This has all recently changed though. Just this year, BUR began publishing more detailed investment data. This data proves that BUR has been egregiously misrepresenting its ROIC and IRRs, as well as the state of its overall business. We have identified seven methods by which BUR manipulates Concluded Investment ROIC and IRR.
BUR’s top management, through their shareholdings (and sales), is in effect primarily compensated for aggressively marking cases in order to generate non-cash fair value gains. Until now, BUR has gotten away with aggressive and unwarranted marks by touting ROIC and IRR metrics. We show that BUR heavily manipulates these metrics. BUR then actively misleads investors about how its accounting for realized gains works. As a result of this deception, we believe investors give credence to BUR’s fair value gains. In actuality, BUR’s net realized returns have relied on a very small number of cases. Just four cases have produced approximately two-thirds of BUR’s net realized gains since 2012. (One of the four outsized contributors was actually a loss a trial, and was bailed out by BUR’s largest shareholder, Invesco, at the direction of Neil Woodford protégé Mark Barnett. Absent the bailout, the case almost certainly would have been a total loss.)
BUR is a perfect storm for an accounting fiasco. BUR’s governance strictures are laughter-inducing. The CFO is the wife of the founder / CEO. Under the best of circumstances, this should alarm investors; however, with a company that consistently books non-cash accounting profits, it is unforgivable. BUR has cycled through four prior CFOs or senior finance managers (none of whom stayed for long). These facts beg the question “Is (current CFO) Elizabeth O’Connell the only CFO who can be relied upon to approve the accounts?”
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