• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, May 5, 2022

After about a five-week delay with two postponements, Martin Sorrell-led S4 Capital has once again set a date for releasing full-year 2021 financial results.

And there’s not a lot of lead time—the firm will release its results tomorrow followed by an early morning earnings call in London.

Initially 2021 results were due to be released March 18. But in early March the company pushed the date back to March 31, citing issues that accountant PwC was having collecting the necessary data given restrictions around travel and COVID.

But on March 30 the company again postponed the release date, again citing issues PwC was having collecting the necessary numbers.

But some analysts speculated that other issues were at play as well.

At the time Bloomberg reported Morgan Stanley analyst Omar Sheikh indicating that, “based on conversations with the company, the reason for the delay is no longer a resource issue, and the lack of a revised date suggests the problem is ‘non-trivial.’”

Bloomberg also quoted Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Conor O’Shea: “We do not yet know the precise details of what the problem is, but believe that PwC is unlikely to have taken the decision lightly. While it would be too much to say that this has echoes of Wirecard, at first sight it may be similar to the accounting issues that besieged Atos in 2021.”

Atos is an IT firm that became embroiled in controversy a year ago when it reported accounting errors at two of its U.S. units.  Wirecard was a fintech firm that collapsed two years ago after an accounting scandal involving fraud and the arrest of three of its top executives.

A little later Sorrell stated publicly that the issues were not “material” to the company.

Company shares were up 12% Thursday on word that the 2021 update was finally being released.