This article only represents the author's own views.

The latest regulatory filing from mobile payment services provider Yeahka Ltd. (9923.HK) is an odd one, appearing to brace investors for some ugliness in its upcoming first-half results due out in August. If anything, it shows that a company can disguise bad news only so much.

Last Monday, the company said a “non-recurring adjustment on revenue” will no longer be a factor from the second half of this year. That refers to a significant payment it made last year to its payment network partners over matters that still remain largely unexplained. The company basically said it will continue to book a related charge in the first half of this year, hitting its revenue. That looks like a roundabout sort of revenue and profit warning, although it obviously tried to spin it more positively by highlighting that it’ll be fine for the rest of the year.