John Linton
....Send In The Clowns.
I've had to deal with some less than enjoyable situations and issues over the last few days but I cheered up immensely and actually laughed out loud twice when I read the Eftel CEO's address to the Eftel shareholders which is published here:
http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20071127/pdf/3162mw1nqmtk3f.pdf
I'm not sure what intellectual abilities the Eftel shareholder's who attended the meeting actually possess but whoever wrote the CEO's address obviously didn't think it was very high in making some of the most extraordinary claims I've ever seen relating to a public company's performance.
Then again - if you have a great deal of negative issues in your annual figures I suppose you still have to try and say something positive even if you are going to have to see what you said in print for the rest of your company's existence.
I thought on reflection after I re-read the address that "clutching at straws" was way above what was said to the Eftel shareholders - though perhaps you might read the address differently and maybe I just didn't grasp the subtlety of what was said. I thought the following statements were absolute gems of the most incredible business statements of 2007:
1) "The 31% upsurge in sales has been a standout performance, which compares especially well with other listed companies"
Does the Eftel CEO think so lowly of the shareholders that he believes they are functionally innumerate?
According to the annual report sales revenues have increased over the previous year by around $A8.5 million - from $A25.972 to $A34.4. Mathematically that is, indeed a 31% increase in booked revenue. However it isn't an "upsurge in sales"; it simply reflects that Eftel bought the failed aaNet and added the aaNet revenues from the second week of July 2006 (ie. for effectively the full year).
Now I realise that aaNet's public statements before they went broke were highly suspect about their number of customers and their monthly revenues but Eftel did pony up $A1.6 million to buy a business that was bankrupt and, if there were "around 16,000 ADSL customers" as stated then the annual revenue from that number of customers would be around a little less than $8 million.
So, as I read the figures, Eftel's revenues may have increased by around $500,000 on around $A34 million - "not exactly an upsurge, Bob"
2) "This year, we became the first Internet provider to announce the planned rollout of, nationwide, VDSL2".
Now really this is a major insult to anyone's intelligence!
Nationwide - Telstra has around 6,000 exchanges. Eftel "plans" to roll out (perhaps tip the egg cup would be a more appropriate phrase) a whole 80 DSLAMs - how is 80 out of 6,000 "Nationwide?"
But that pales in to insignificance compared to the claim of being able to deliver VDSL to ANYONE by any nominable date as the VDSL standard will not be defined until February/March next year and the most likely time that any end user could be connected to such a service would be September/October. No-one else is offering VDSL because it's incapable of being delivered - and may never be delivered.
To trumpet that "this is the most exciting event in the history of Eftel" (announcing a service that doesn't exist and that when it does it won't be available from Eftel to very many people anyway) is incomprehensible.
And my final laugh, which made me spill my coffee, was a CEO of an Australian public company attempting to give credibility to his verbal hyperboli at a serious meeting by quoting a post on Whirlpool!
I think that said it all.