Australian logistics software company WiseTech listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in April 2016. In October 2019, the company was attacked by short-seller J-Capital alleging that its acquisition strategy was failing and that revenues and profits had been fabricated. In February 2020, the short-seller repeated the allegations but this time alleged that expenses were being improperly capitalised in order to inflate profit. In June 2020, J-Capital published a third report which highlighted that acquisitions were failing to meet earn-out targets. As a result, deferred consideration to be paid to the prior owners was being written-down resulting in accounting gains, but the company was not writing-down goodwill associated with these under-performing acquisitions - this was clearly a contradiction. J-Capital forecast a A$200-300m goodwill write-down when FY20 results were to be reported in August. However, this did not happen. While WiseTech's acquisition accounting is aggressive, there is no evidence of impropriety. Additionally, the fraud allegations were not proven.

Last updated May 2022.

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