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Emerald Oil Industries, a listed company which had been shut for five years to mid-2021 due to financial anomalies by its previous board, has caught a fresh criticism as the edible oil producer is said to have increased its share prices by providing false financial information.
The producer of the almost forgotten Spondon branded rice bran oil on June 8 this year published its financial reports for the first three quarters of the fiscal year 2022-23, where the company was said to have returned to profit at the end of the fiscal’s first nine months.
But it was quite abnormal for the scam-hit loss-incurring firm to return to the profit, its auditor said in a qualified opinion after auditing the company’s financial reports, said a disclosure filed with the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) on Monday.
The company’s share price surged 343 per cent over three months to June 19, as per the DSE data.
Emerald Oil shares jumped from Tk 30 per share on March 20 to Tk 139 on Monday.
In the qualified opinion about the company’s financial report, the auditors said, the company’s properties, plants, and equipment were at a written-down value (WDV) of Tk 47.87 crore till June 30, 2021.
The authenticity and existence of property, plant, and equipment, however, could not be verified due to the non-availability of the firm’s fixed asset register, as per the auditor’s report.
A qualified opinion is a post-audit statement by a professional auditor which is usually provided if an auditor finds falsehoods in a company’s given financials or material statements.
Moreover, the listed company in its financial report for FY21 has shown additional property, plant, and equipment worth Tk 15 lakh, against which the company management could not provide any sufficient or appropriate evidence.
As a result, the correctness of the additional property, plant, and equipment could not be verified, the auditor’s opinion read.
Moreover, the company has shown trade and other receivables of Tk 155 crore from Syed Hasibul Gani Galib, its former managing director, but it has failed to provide any details in favour of these receivables.
Apart from that, the company in its financial statement for FY21 did not show any interest expenses against long-term loans it had taken from banks and NBFIs, the auditor stated in the qualified opinion.
The company had released its financial reports for the fiscal years 2016-17, 2017-18, and 2018-19 in February this year.
The company’s earnings per share for the January–March period of FY23 are said to have increased by 182 per cent compared to that of the last fiscal.
Its earnings per share for the first quarter of FY23 stood at Tk 0.17 which was Tk 0.14 negative for the same quarter last fiscal.
