I spent half the day swearing at the ASX because it couldn’t manage to release a material announcement - system down, trading halt, the works. Obviously it was going to be another data centre win, right? Yay me.

Announcement finally drops after market close… oh dang.

As @GazD’s already flagged, this is a nasty P&L and cash hit, but the important bit for me is what it actually is: a legacy WestConnex contract from about 8 years ago coming back to bite via a brutal time-bar ruling.

The damage:

- ~$19m contract asset written off (non-cash),

-$15m previously received under Security of Payment to be repaid, and

- Board estimating roughly another $10m in interest and costs.

That’s how you get FY26 EBITDA guidance slashed from $65–68m down to $21–24m. Ugly, no question. But it’s all tied to one old project, not the current run-rate work. Balance sheet can fund the ~mid-$20m cash hit out of reserves.

For me this is a governance/contract-admin failure from the distant past, not evidence the underlying business is broken. The key questions now are:

- How many other contracts from that era have similar time-bar landmines? I'm not aware of any other current arbitrations.

- Have the “improved processes” they talk about genuinely de-risked the book? Conservative management, my gut says yes, need actual data to confirm.

If you take management at face value that this is a one-off clean-up of an 8-year-old mess, then (like @GazD) I’m leaning towards this being a buying opportunity, not a thesis killer – just a very expensive lesson in contract administration.