PNX, C, and INFRA suspended for reporting failures

The PSE issued suspensions to three companies [link] prior to the open of trade on Friday morning for failure to submit FY23 Annual Reports. The three companies suspended are Phoenix Petroleum [PNX suspended], Chelsea Logistics [C suspended], and Philippine Infradev [INFRA suspended]. AgriNurture [ANI 0.62 ?8.8%; 305% avgVol] narrowly avoided suspension by submitting its Annual Report 38 minutes before the PSE’s suspension deadline. The ANI FY23 Annual Report disclosure erroneously reports a net income improvement of 1560% to P146 million, instead of a P146 million net loss, perhaps this oversight comes from a behind-the-scenes race to submit before the deadline.

MB BOTTOM-LINE: I’m married to an accountant who did the auditing grind for years, so I know that it’s not easy to put these reports together; they’re complex and knock-ons from problems in any of the subsidiaries can cause problems that ripple up the chain and back down. That being said, producing these annual reports is something of a bare minimum condition of public corporate life. Every management group rides its accounting department and its auditing team into the dirt to get its quarterly and annual reports out on time. I don’t have any inside knowledge of why PNX, C, and INFRA are in this position, but I listen to the silence from these management groups. Good teams communicate with their minority shareholders in times of uncertainty, and a trading suspension is a time of great uncertainty for retail investors.
 

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