Plus500 stumbles on annual report 'typo'
By Oliver Haill
Date: Friday 15 Feb 2019
(Sharecast News) - Share in Plus500 tumbled on Friday following a report suggesting the company may have misled shareholders over its losses in 2017.
The spreadbetting company this week, apparently, discovered that it had wrongly stated in its latest annual report that it had not suffered losses from client trading in 2017, The Times reported.
The Israel-based company issued a profit warning this week, which led analyst to question the timings of its disclosures.
This week, Plus500 first revealed the profit and loss from clients' trading positions from its role as principal, showing that it there was an $172m increase in 2018 after taking a $103m hit the year before.
But in its annual report for 2017, the FTSE 250 company said "in 2017, as in 2016 and 2015, the company did not generate net revenues or losses from market P&L."
At a meeting with investors this week, chief executive Asaf Elimelech and head of investor relations Kieran McKinney, said the inaccurate statement in the annual report was "a typo", The Times reported, which was met with "incredulity".
Furthermore the company put out a statement on Friday afternoon where it "confirms that there was a drafting error" and that: "The words 'or losses' in this statement were included erroneously."
It noted that since the publication of the 2017 accounts, the company said the negative revenue impact of $103m was "due to strong client trading performance, particularly in the final quarter of that year" and confirmed that it incurred a negative revenue impact of $19.5 million for the financial year ended 31 December 2016 but that it was zero in 2015.
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