Member Info for Frogjumper

Ports: Those are useful thoughts although I wonder if the figures for FY21/22 give a fair indication of the business development. What effect did the panademic have on the FY20/21 figures? If the revenues were then inflated due to the panademic you might expect lower growth in FY21/22.

Deep: Yes, I hope the new NEDs will deal with the things that the rest of the BOD seems incapable of doing!

Sister: "I think we can assume there is more than enough logistics experience to make success of whatever strategy they adopt moving forward." Quite right. My impression is that Lloyd Dunn has all the logistics experience needed to make a success of DX so what the NEDs bring is probably superfluous.

Ports, I agree that the appointments indicate that there isn't much intention to take the business private. As I said in my earlier post, before the RNS, I suspect that buyout debt has become prohibitively expensive for the DX management and the option has therefore been binned.

At Ted Baker Kempster is Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee; member of the Remuneration Committee; member of the Nominations Committee.

Let's hope these new NEDs can make a useful contribution to governance at DX. I wonder if a merger with Clipper is feasible?

I suspect that DX has been trying to organise an MBO but has failed as buy-out debt has become significantly more expensive.

Now that Johnson's resigned perhaps it's time for Ron Series to think about doing the right thing.

In respect to the £1m exceptional costs it seems to me that GT was right to insist on receiving further information about the governance issue. The £1m could include an element of their abortive audit fee but that was less than
£250k last time around. I do hope there aren't any more exceptional items in the pipeline.

I've always suspected that DX's management are the sort of people who would prefer not to be running a listed company, with all the reporting and comms obligations it entails. They're probably enjoying not having to provide any information to the market.

Pianista: I side with Ports' opinion on this and see more reasons for pessimism than optimism. Even if the accounts are signed off and the investigation concluded by 30th September it still leaves the concern about what the investigation concludes. My interpretation of the sparse information we have about the CG issue is that an extremely serious allegation has been made about something and that is is proving difficult to resolve it. It must be serious because it has involved a board level committee, the resignation of two NEDs and the resignation of the previous auditor. It must be difficult to resolve because it's been dragging on for so long. I'm really concerned that the outcome of the investigation could have a severe negative effect on DX's business and suspect that the BOD has been doing everything it can to avert this but, unfortunately for them, they haven't been able to find a solution. So until the BOD comes out and provides convincing reasons why the CG issue isn't a problem or finds a way of circumventing the issue by taking DX private or merging it or something similar I'm going to continue thinking that things can only get worse.

Email: You didn't say you "weren't aware" of the company or company official being charged about accounting or governance issue (a typical politician statement), you said "to date the company has not broken any law" and I was merely wondering how you could know such a fact.

"to date the company has not broken any law" - Hasn't it? How can you be so sure? What inside information do you have? I'm not suggesting the company has broken any law but the certainty of your statement seems strange and unnecessary to me.

Email: Your forecast that the new auditors would complete the audit quickly was unfounded, wasn't it?

"But why should the company release info which would not be definite" Isn't the point that DX has had ample opportunity to resolve this governance issue but hasn't? It's an internal investigation, unrelated to the auditor. They just look incompetent.

Unhooked, Yes, they're treating their owners contemptuously.

It seems to me that the corporate governance enquiry has been unable to demonstrate that the original concerns were unjustified and that the BOD is still scratching around for a solution to a serious problem.

"As clear as mud" - Exactly the phrase that popped into my mind when I read the RNS!

Holding my breath .........

"I vividly recall a link being posted on here a year or so ago with a pundit unequivocally preaching that he expected DX to be trading at £1.00!" Wasn't it some guy called Stephen English of Stellar Asset Management? I bet he feels a right chump now.

Pianista, I didn't say they were doing it for fun, I just suggested that they might have too many express depots. What you've found in the annual report might make sense, particularly for freight depots, but there is a limit to how many depots it's economic to have. One factor is that if you have more depots you have more sites from which to collect and to which to deliver with your trunking operation, increasing congestion at your hubs etc.