Update on a french cannibal following annual results
Something will probably happen if history repeats itself!
This is the time of year where we are getting flooded with annual results. In other words it is a great time!
Going to the annual results presentations of a company is a must. It is the only moment where you can have a global picture of the past year and where your questions can be more thorough as you are not just focusing on the latest quarter. You also get to discuss about hte perspectives of the next year. In other words the Q&A session is dense and useful.
As time goes by and as you know the company better you tend to focus on a couple of key metrics and questions which will be the major value creation drivers. I also like to see to which question they do not want to answer to. Sometimes this willing ness to not answer is completely justified (confidential information, an indirect way to get the numbers of the next quarter…) sometimes it is not justified (one company which I do not own will just not accept to say/admit that their results are strongly correlated to the price of plastic and thus to the evolution of the price of petrol: nothing confidential there as it is clear and that there main raw material is plastic… and yes their margins are impacted and will depend on how petrol prices evolve).
ESG slides and discussions take too much importance in all the presentation (as well as in all the annual reports). I understand that it is mandatory but I think that it does not help us to understand the company in a better way. It is also a nice window dressing exercise sometimes.
Let us get back to business!