Y3K Group auditor Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein has resigned on the eve of the listed software firm`s year-end, but CEO Ryan Price is confident this will not affect the results scheduled for the end of May.
Levenstein & Partners will now be Y3K`s auditor for the year ended 28 February. This firm is also auditor for Y3K`s major shareholder Atlas-Utas, which owns about 47% of the company`s shares and is in turn part of investment holdings company Eureka Industrial.
"The basic truth is that they [Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein] were too expensive. Last year they quoted me R40 000 for the audit and the bill was eventually R70 000, and so we decided to go our separate ways and they sent me a letter of resignation as per the JSE`s listing requirements," Price says.
He says the audit should begin next week and should be ready by end-May in accordance with JSE requirements.
A spokesperson at Grant Thornton Kessel Feinstein confirmed the price of the audit was the issue. "I suppose we were just too expensive," she says.
Price says he hopes that headline earnings per share and earnings per share will show a small positive this year after losses of 3.8c and 4.3c respectively in the previous financial year. He feels turnover should remain constant at about R12 million.
"I am quite excited about where Y3K is at the moment and where we are heading," he says. "We have hired two more staff and so we are slowly beginning to expand again."
Price acknowledged that the restructuring the group went through took longer than anticipated, but now feels that it is back on track.
"Security of information has bounced back in importance for corporates with the passing of the ECT Act and the recommendations of the second King report on corporate governance."
Y3K has the sole distribution rights in Sub-Saharan Africa for the F-Secure suite of software security tools.
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