Fantastic first post Southbank Steve and agree with...

Fantastic first post Southbank Steve and agree with thepennypinch, ZMan and really stupid. Don't let the negativity from some dissuade you from posting in future. These forums need more of this sort of insight, regardless of your postcount total.

Since the suspension there has been the odd poster asking when this will be relisted. Southbank Steve's post is a good list of just some of the accounting issues which will need to be resolved before someone will sign off on the accounts.

If these are incorrect in the December half year, the 2017 accounts will need to be restated, and as a result 2016 and 2015 as well, this can be a long drawn out process. I'm ex-Big 4 audit and have been involved in a few restatements, and no audit partner will put pen to paper until the arguments and numbers on everything are absolutely watertight. Even a cursory glance at the last accounts provide a list of at least 21 curly issues to resolve and find the data to restate prior periods. Operations in six countries around the world but no previously disclosed FX exposure other than the Mozambican currency? Good luck quickly restating three years of results for GBP, USD, CAD, NZD, SGD, HKD transactions.

This is before the mess of the FCC arrangements are considered. How the accounts can be prepared and the auditors sign off on the appropriate income statement, balance sheet and cash flow treatment soon is beyond me when in their 22 February ASX response, BIG admitted:

"The Company has 7,955 Non-Paid Membership Customers. The Company is unable to confirm the breakdown between customers who were financed by First Class but did not accept their video (i.e. Declined Customers) and other customers who did not accept their video, and as such is unable to present the number of Declined Customers as a percentage of Paid Membership Customers and Purchasing Decision Customers."

If you want to look at how long these issues can take to resolve - and ASX will not allow it to be relisted until all the accounting issues are resolved and restated accounts for all required periods released - just look at HML. That's been suspended for almost 12 months now, and they're only dealing with one accounting issue (accounting valuations of non-public investments acquired from related parties), not the whole raft which BIG have.

That's apart from the business model issues - I was at an investor conference last week and an Australian fund manager who presented was asked about BIG. His response was that they had looked at it last year but couldn't move beyond the fact that the average revenue per user claimed by the company was 5 times larger than the highest cost to the customer which their customer facing materials showed.

Whether you are a holder or not, as an investor in the share market, detailed accounting analysis of the sort Southbank Steve provided is something I look forward to, alone to see if there are other 'short' opportunities lurking around the ASX where the detail in the accounts does not match the "we're going to the moon!!" sentiment reflected in the stock price.