1.16 Currency risk note repeats the 2024 sentence on options for 2025 and gives no position for 2026

UK Company C · an AIM-quoted scientific instruments group · Regulator-style question

QuestionLowInterpretationFinancial statements: IFRS, FRS 101 and the Companies Act accounts
Area of the report
Group notes: risk management, foreign currency risk (note [n])
Year
Latest annual report
Status
Interpretation: Established from the documents; the conclusion rests on a reading of the standard or regulation.
Who acts
Chief Financial Officer
When
Annual Report 2026

In brief

Note 28 says the group protected future trading 'at [date] [wording masked] [amounts] for the rest of 2025'. The sentence is word for word the one printed in the 2024 report, and the 2025 report gives no equivalent position at [date] for 2026, although the strategic report says [wording masked] dollar and euro exposure.

The evidence, as filed

Screenshot withheld to protect the company’s identity: Annual Report 2025, page 94; Annual Report 2024, page 92; Annual Report 2025, page 16. Their wording or layout could lead back to the company even with names and figures masked; the evidence list below records what each page shows.

What the report shows, and what the rule requires

What the annual report showsWhat the rule requires
What the annual report shows

Only the [date] position ([amounts] for 2025); the year-end table gives four months of cover (sterling equivalents [n] for US dollars and [n] for euros), derived from monthly options.

What the rule requires

The currency options in place at [date] for 2026, by currency and period, with the 2024 position as the comparative.

The rule

IFRS 7 Financial Instruments: Disclosures, paragraph 34(a)

Version relied on: UK-adopted international accounting standards (UK Endorsement Board), as in force for financial years beginning in or after January 2025

Summary; IFRS text is copyrighted

For each type of financial risk, the accounts must give summary numbers on the exposure at the year end, based on what is reported internally to key management.

Why it applies here: the table implies options were in place at [date], but the note does not say what cover had been bought for 2026; the sentence that would give it has not been updated.

Why it matters

Readers cannot see how much of 2026 trading is protected at fixed rates, which bears on the hedging adjustments made to reach adjusted profit.

Exposure

A question on the completeness of a risk disclosure; no statutory consequence asserted.

Our workings

Fact

note [n] gives a year-end table of currency hedged (sterling equivalents [n] for US dollars and [n] for euros) which it says is calculated from the group's monthly options over a four-month settlement period, and then a sentence on options entered into at [date] for the rest of 2025. The same sentence appears in the 2024 report. The strategic report says [wording masked] US dollar and euro exposure.

Our inference

Whether options for 2026 existed at the year end is a fact only management can confirm.

Management’s best defence, and our reply

The finance team would say the year-end hedge table, which was updated, already gives the quantitative data the standard requires, and that options for 2026 may have been bought after the year end, so there was no [date] position to report; the sentence simply records last year's practice. That reading is tenable. However, the table is said to be derived from monthly options in place at the year end, and a sentence describing the position twelve months earlier, with no current figure, leaves readers unable to tell which is the case, so the point is put as a question.

The fix

  1. Replace the sentence with: 'At [date] the Group had entered into currency options to sell €[x]m and $[y]m for [period] 2026 ([date]: [amounts] for 2025).'

Question for the company

What currency options (amounts by currency and the period covered) were in place at [date] for 2026 trading, and will the note give that position, with the 2024 figures as comparatives, in place of the sentence carried forward from the 2024 report?

Evidence relied on

#What it showsTypeWhere
1The 2025 note gives only the position at [date]DocumentAnnual Report 2025, page 94
2The year-end table is derived from monthly options in placeDocumentAnnual Report 2025, page 94
3Four months of cover at [date]DocumentAnnual Report 2025, page 94
4The strategic report describes full hedging of expected exposureDocumentAnnual Report 2025, page 16
5The 2024 report printed the same sentence as its current-year positionDocumentAnnual Report 2024, page 92

Absence check

Document
Annual Report 2025
Where it would appear
[wording masked]
What is missing
the currency options in place at [date] for 2026
Pages looked at
p.14-16 (strategic report review and outlook), p.56-57 (financial risk management section), p.94 (note [n]), p.106 (parent note on derivatives)
Result
'currency options to sell' and 'options to sell' hit only this page, in the [date] sentence; 'for 2026' hits p.16 (the heading Outlook for 2026) and p.53-54 (directors' pay for 2026), none about currency cover; the other terms do not hit.

Prepared by Pramanex from the company’s published annual reports, without the company’s involvement, to show how an annual report review reads. The company is not named, and nothing on this page is a statement about any identifiable company. Observations are not an audit, review or other assurance engagement, and not legal advice. A regulator-style question is a question, not a conclusion.

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