(BFM Bourse) – Extremely rare for a company subject to a public offer, the Société Marseillaise du Tunnel du Prado-Carénage has just modified the accounts for the 2021 financial year, one month after having initially published them. Contravening the basic accounting principle of linking expenses to income for the financial year, the company had begun to amortize the work on the Schlœsing ramp, which will not come into service until 2023, which has reduced the profit originally announced.
The SMTPC, concessionaire of the Marseille Prado-Carénage road tunnel (as well as the Louis-Rège and Prado Sud tunnels which extend it), itself provides grist for the mill of the minority shareholders who oppose the offer of Vinci and Eiffage. According to them, the current price does not reflect the intrinsic value of the company, rather located between 37.50 and 40 euros by taking the usual methods of valuation.
Vinci and Eiffage, at the head of two-thirds of the shares of SMTPC, intend to offer 27 euros (raised from an initial price of 23 euros dividend attached, i.e. 21.10 euros since the detachment) per share as part of a project to offer that the AMF must always examine. Pascal Quiry, professor of finance at HEC and co-author of Vernimmen, who acquired on his behalf 2% of the capital, stigmatizes unfair practices on the part of the initiators aiming to buy back the securities at a discount.
In this context, the company announced a modification to its annual accounts in order to no longer recognize a so-called lapse amortization of the Schlœsing ramp (relating to the fact that the goods will be handed over to the grantor, the city of Marseille, once the concession having expired in 2033) only from the commissioning of this ramp scheduled for the summer of 2023. In other words, the SMTPC has previously amortized amounts that it should have amortized only from the moment where the ramp will begin to bring in revenue “in denial of the basic accounting principle of attaching expenses to the products of the financial year”, points out Pascal Quiry.
New letter to the AMF
“By correcting this first error and ceasing this amortization in 2021, SMTPC committed a second one on the 2021 accounts, hence the modification and re-shutdown of its 2021 accounts one month after having stopped them and communicated to the public a first time”, explains the specialist. In the first version of its 2021 accounts, SMTPC had called this change a change estimate an accountant. However, during the finalization of the audit procedures, this change in estimate was reclassified as a change in method an accountant.
And it may well be that a third mistake has been made. “Indeed, how can a reduction in the amount of depreciation allowances, as evidenced by the increase in net tangible fixed assets from 90.8 million euros at February 25 to 91.2 million euros at March 21, i.e. 0.4 million euros, and the correlative increase in shareholders’ equity (0.3 million euros) and corporate tax debts (0.1 million euros), can it be reflected in accounting terms by a decrease (sic) of 0 .3 million euros in net income, and not by an increase How can shareholders’ equity increase by 0.3 million euros when the net income they incorporate decreases by 0.3 million euros? ?” asks Pascal Quiry. “We don’t understand. Except that there are 0.6 million euros of unidentified adjustments on which the press release is silent”.
The minority shareholder, followed in its opposition to the current takeover bid by the management company Amiral Gestion (3.12% of the capital) and the investment holding companies Greenstock and Eximium, indicates that it has sent the AMF a new letter ” asking that all the light be shed during this period of offer on the accounts of SMTPC whose sincerity is affected by this fact”.
Still above the price mentioned for 70 sessions, the course of SMTPC regained 2.84% to 29 euros on Monday.
Guillaume Bayre – ©2022 BFM Bourse
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