I said I'd do another post on H & T (LON:HAT) after my pre-results piece and a little snippet after the results which saw their share price dip another 20%. There are a few more questions I'd rather have liked to know the answers to before writing another post, and so I tried to get hold of management for their take on the subject. I'm coming round to speaking to management as a positive - I used to think its value was dubious, since all management teams are either, by intention or by osmosis, always relentlessly bullish on the company under their ward. Very few people are downbeat on the prospects of something they control. Having spoken to the management of a few listed companies now, I'm rather coming round to it. Perhaps - and this is a very significant probability - I'm overstating my ability to derive value from these interactions, but I reckon both how management talk about the company and what they say gives investors a clue into how the company is run - even if they can't give away the answers to the really penetrating questions.
Fortunately for us, there's a number listed for the FD/CEO in the RNS released by the group. Unfortunately, try as I might, I wasn't actually able to get hold of management. 17 days ago I called a couple of times, the first time being told to call back later and the second time giving my message to a colleague to be passed on. Awkwardly, I was out for the next week-and-a-bit; so unable to chase up; but I gave it another go last Thursday, this time getting through to the PA to the board of directors. I was told, since the board were out that week on investor meetings, to send an e-mail and copy in the PA. Sadly - no response since then.
I must say, a response of some kind - even a short 'unable to answer your questions' - might have been courteous, but I leave that entirely up to the reader to decide. If I actually held shares in the company, I would certainly be a little more aggrieved.
More importantly, here are the two questions I penned in the email; the more key ones I wanted to ask, along with my thoughts:
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