AB Dynamics - lovely business and trading well but something leaves a bad taste
The designer and manufacturer of advanced testing systems to the global automotive industry is one of our AIM favourites but a revelation in their final accounts has got us fuming. Read on…
The headline numbers for the year ending 31 August 2017 look excellent with revenue up 20.0% to £24.6m and ‘adjusted’ operating profit up 26.2% to £5.9m – yes, it’s that now familiar ‘adjusted’ number that hides something! Adjusted fully diluted Earnings per Share were up also apparently 22.5% to 28.28p. A quick glance at the footnote reveals that the adjustment in question relates to share option costs of a whopping £1.5m (2016: £0.3m) – in plain English this equates to a staggering 25% of operating profit. Furthermore, in real terms pre-tax profit of £4.472m was actually only 0.47% up on…