Persimmon Departure, Abcam AGM and Over-boarding

Persimmon (PSN) issued an announcement this morning saying that CEO Jeff Fairburn was stepping down at the request of the company because “the Board believes that the distraction around his remuneration from the 2012 LTIP scheme continues to have a negative impact on the reputation of the business and consequently on Jeff’s ability to continue in his role”. They are undoubtedly right there.

To remind readers, their misconceived and uncapped LTIP potentially would have meant bonus shares being awarded to Mr Fairburn worth well over £100 million, and similar large sums to other managers. Part of the potential award was later given up but even so it was the most disgraceful example of how pay has been ramped up by LTIPs in recent years. Another example at Abcam (ABC) is covered below.

Persimmon also issued a third quarter trading statement today which was generally positive. They clearly have a good forward committed sales pipeline and the extension of the help-to-buy scheme was positive news in the budget. But I am still somewhat nervous that the housebuilding market may suffer as interest rates rise. New houses are becoming unaffordable for many people despite the demand for accommodation and growing population.

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Abcam. This is a company that sells antibodies and other life science products/services. It is operating in a high growth sector. I first invested in the shares of the company in 2006 and it has delivered a compound total return of over 32% per annum to me since based on Sharescope figures. I am therefore happy with the financial performance of the business as I said to the board at the AGM. That’s even allowing for recent declines in the share price as analyst forecasts were reduced and general market malaise affected high-flying technology stocks. But I am very unhappy about two aspects: 1) failure to answer simple questions at the AGM, which is the second time in a week where this problem has arisen (the previous being Patisserie); and 2) the remuneration scheme and revised LTIP.

What follows is a report on the meeting, summarised and paraphrased for brevity. The meeting was held at the company’s Cambridge offices at 2.00 pm, but not even a cup of tea was offered.

The recently appointed new Chairman, Peter Allen, introduced the board and there was then a very brief presentation from CEO Alan Hirzel. He said there were between £5 billion and £8 billion of opportunities for the company to grow which they were focused on. They had doubled revenue in the last 5 years, at 11.5% CAGR. There were lots of opportunities to continue to grow the business. They are now focused on 4 areas: 1) RUO Antibodies which are still growing; 2) Immunoassays where growth was 25% last year; 3) China for RUO tools (China could be as big a market as the USA in a few years and they now have 300 people there and are putting more investment in); and 4) CP&L (Abcam Inside). He said the company needs to invest in technology and IT to achieve their growth goals.

Questions were then invited. I commented on the absolutely massive expenditure on new IT systems. They have spent at least £33 million on the Oracle implementation with another £16 million to go and the project is clearly way behind schedule. This level of costs has even caused analysts to downgrade future profit forecasts. As the former IT manager of a large public company, this seemed disproportionate to me in relation to the size of the business. However much one recognises that IT is the key to the business, this looks like a typical project that is way out of control. Who is responsible for this, are they still with the company, who are the outside contractors and what is the current state of this project?

The Chairman first responded that any answers to shareholder questions could only relate to information already in the public domain. This is simply legally wrong and I will be writing to him on this subject and the other issues below.

However Alan Hirzel did respond and accepted the IT project was over budget and covered the history of the project. It was essential to replace some of the legacy systems which were unmaintainable. Many had been built in-house (even an email system apparently) and they had multiple different HR systems in different countries. HR was the first project completed (partner Hitachi as systems integrator) followed by a communication system (part CRM perhaps – it was not clear) but finance and supply chain (manufacturing) projects were yet to be done. He said the CIO had been replaced and a new system integration partner appointed. He assured me that the project was under control now.

I asked who the new IT contractor was, at which point the Chairman refused to answer as that was not in the public domain. I complained that this was a breach of company law as questions must be answered unless there are good reasons to do otherwise. For example, answers can be refused if it is confidential information, not in the company’s interests to do so or may affect the good order of the meeting. The relevant Regulation is here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/1632/pdfs/uksi_20091632_en.pdf (see Section 12).

I can see no reason why my question could not be answered as I said to the Chairman and to their lawyer, neither of whom seemed to be aware of the Regulations or the common law principle about answering questions at general meetings. The Chairman also suggested that they could not disclose some information because they would have to issue an RNS announcement to cover it. This of course only applies to “price sensitive” information and I don’t see how knowing who their IT contractor is would be price sensitive. Very annoying and feeble excuses were being given in essence from someone who is supposed to be a very experienced company Chairman. This is the second time in a week (the other was at Patisserie) where the law on answering questions was ignored which is exceedingly annoying.

After that debate, which I will be following up including with a complaint to the FCA as it is not acceptable for companies to ignore the law, we moved on to the Remuneration Resolutions.

I said the following: “Remuneration also seems to be out of control. Although the CEO seems to be generally doing a good job, his pay last year was £1.8 million. This is also out of proportion to the revenue and profitability of the business. Not only that but his basic pay has been increased by 22%, and the maximum award under the LTIP increased from 150% to 400% of base salary. This is obscene and totally unnecessary. Such highly geared schemes promote risky behaviour as we saw with bankers in the financial crash of 2008. I always vote against remuneration policies where the maximum award under LTIPs is more than 100% of base salary and I will be doing the same here. I encourage my fellow shareholders to do likewise”.

There was a response from Louise Patten, chair of the Remuneration Committee to the effect that they could be “traduced” for underpaying rather than overpaying (“criticised” I think she meant). A review had shown that the CEO was underpaid in comparison with market rates in the sector. The LTIP was only a temporary measure as a new policy would be adopted in 3 years’ time.

I also asked whether they had received representations on the subject of remuneration from proxy advisory services and fund managers. She indicated there had been but mainly focused on other issues than the LTIP (in fact they got only 67.1% FOR the Remuneration Report, and 86.7% for the Remuneration Policy which are very low numbers). I said I had no objection to an increase in base pay if justified, but the LTIP was an example of how pay is ratcheting up and it sets a very bad precedent that other companies will follow to have a 400% bonus maximum. I have of course argued with Ms Patten before on the remuneration schemes at this company to no effect, so I chose to vote against her and her two colleagues on the Remuneration Committee but she still collected most of the proxy votes. No other shareholders in the meeting, other than my son Alex who holds the shares also, voted against the remuneration resolutions or the directors which rather demonstrates that when shareholders are happy with a company’s financial performance, they will vote for anything.

There were few other questions from shareholders at the meeting, but after the formal part had finished I asked the Chairman why he only managed to achieve 79.6% of votes in support of his appointment. He said this was because of complaints of “over-boarding”, i.e. that he had too many roles. In fact he has 4 other Chairman roles and one other non-executive directorship which I certainly think is too many and is contrary to ShareSoc’s guidelines. He argued that it was no problem and he did not agree with the current attitude of some proxy advisory services. I disagreed. The duties of directors are more onerous than ever, particularly if the job is to be done properly. Even small difficulties at a company can create a lot of extra work. One of course only has to look at Patisserie Holdings and their recent difficulties where Luke Johnson had lots of other commitments and failed to pick up what appears to be a massive fraud executed by the finance director. Peter Allen seems to think that all he has to do is turn up for a few board meetings each year, let the executive directors get on with business and do not much else. But Abcam is becoming a large company where the Chairman’s role is much more significant than that.

I voted against the Chairman anyway because I think Chairmen should be familiar with company law and how to handle questions at meetings. Good ones do of course know how to answer questions without giving out sensitive information or avoiding direct answers but it is certainly not good for the Chairmen to start an argument with a shareholder in a meeting on any subject. Some Chairmen need to take a lesson in how to handle awkward folks like me who are not easily ignored.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )