RE: Shocking14 May 2021 17:14
No, 20p isn't coming, IMHO. GoTrader, you're right, one of the prerequisites for a PLC is to deliver a return to investors on capital employed. IQE have a fantastic business but that's not enough and the situation reminds me of another firm who I traded for year, Imagination Technology. There was always something more important to spend money on other than Shareholders!
The executive teams for all PLC's should be accountable to the shareholders and should be managing the business with a view to delivering shareholder value. Sadly, IQE is just like Imagination Technology in many ways, a cutting edge business lacking the financial management and controls necessary to ruthlessly integrate both the necessary R&D spend, cost control and the need to look after investors at the same time.
In the end IMG was doomed to takeover by the cognitive dissonance of Sir Hossein Yassaie, their former CEO, because he did what IQE management is doing now, he lead the business like it was a private company rather than a PLC.
Shareholders tire of the 'jam tomorrow' message and sooner or later 'Larry the liquidator' is going to come sniffing around because IQE are in real danger of being more valuable taken over or smashed up for the 'sum or the parts' than limping on from one year of disappointing profits to the next.
Time is running out, patience is running out for IQE as a PLC. The BOD need to recognise that you haven't got a viable business in the long run if you can't deliver returns for investors. Fail to do so and IQE will go the same way as IMG and ARM, to foreign ownership as yet more UK developed IP is lost to Chinese ownership or the like.
IMHO