Hollis Pike

Worth filing away for later: a large special dividend sometimes uses a different rule where the ex-date falls after the record date rather than before it. It is rare, it is announced in the notice if you read it, and it catches absolutely everybody the first time.

Depreciation is a rough floor for maintenance capex. Anything meaningfully above it is broadly growth. Crude, but it gets you in the right postcode.

You are reading it correctly and the earnings payout ratio is the wrong measure for capital heavy businesses. Depreciation is a large non-cash charge, so earnings can look fine while cash goes out of the door into capex. For regulated utilities the sector convention is to measure the dividend against funds from operations, and to accept that growth capex is funded externally — that is the model, not automatically a warning. What I would actually check: how much of the capex is maintenance versus growth, whether the rate base is growing at a return above the cost of the new capital, and how much of the funding is equity that dilutes you. Issuing shares to pay a dividend is a treadmill. Issuing shares to build assets that earn a regulated return is the job.

Worth the caution. In a lot of fixed-price work the deliverable transfers on payment rather than on delivery, which is exactly why that clause matters.

The annual report usually has a distribution characterisation table that answers it in one page. Not fun reading, but it is right there.

Both, depending on why they are doing it. Mechanically it is simple: return of capital is not treated as income when you receive it, so it is not taxed now, and instead it reduces your cost basis so you pay a larger capital gain when you sell. It is a deferral, not free money. Whether it is a red flag depends entirely on the fund. Certain structures — property, pipelines, funds with heavy depreciation — generate genuinely non-taxable distributions as a normal part of their accounting. A fund paying out more than it earns and labelling the shortfall as return of capital is eating itself. Look at whether distributions exceed cash flow year after year. This is also exactly the sort of thing where an hour with an accountant is worth it, because the treatment varies a lot by country.

Too broad. Plenty of healthy structures return capital because depreciation exceeds accounting income. The test is coverage over several years, not the label.

The bigger issue is that the delays were not your fault and you paid for them anyway. Put in a clause saying that if client materials arrive more than N days late the timeline moves and further work is billed hourly. It is not aggressive, it is how every trade on earth works.

Two 30 minute sessions beat one 60 minute session for retention, so do not dismiss A entirely. But at this budget I would do the conversation hour plus one structured lesson a month where you bring the specific things that broke.

Exchanges are great for confidence and poor for correction — the other person is usually being polite, and half your hour ends up in English. Worth doing alongside, not instead.

Foreign holdings take longer and are messier. Withholding tax is deducted at source so the amount is smaller than the headline, and it can arrive a week or two after the stated payment date depending on the custodian chain.