Performance reviews
Some of Australia's biggest companies put on TV-worthy performances as they fronted investors at this week's Macquarie Australia Conference.
There’s an episode in the final season of the hit HBO drama Succession where main character Kendall Roy awkwardly fronts investors and lays out radical plans for the family’s media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo to expand into... retirement communities. Dismissing the advice of senior company executives, without the support of his siblings, and clad in a company-branded flight jacket, he pitches the market the seemingly outlandish strategic pivot. Surprisingly, it works.
The fictional episode sprang to mind this week as the biggest investor conference in Australia took place in Sydney. The Macquarie Australia Conference has become a staple of the local equities market, one of the last chances for companies to get their messages across to investors before the end of the financial year and for analysts and institutional shareholders to (gently) grill companies about their performance. Capital Brief reporters have been on the ground all week, and while there was nothing on the scale of Kendall Roy, there were still plenty of noteworthy performances.
Jack Derwin reported on the rare public appearance from Cettire chief executive Dean Mintz, whose ultra-low profile up until now only added to the intrigue surrounding the online fashion retailer. Jack also attended a presentation by former investment banker and now HMC Capital chief executive David di Pilla, the architect of the Chemist Warehouse-Sigma Healthcare deal, who slickly spruiked the company’s new $2 billion energy transition fund, to be chaired by former prime minister Julia Gillard.
John Buckley watched Nine Entertainment Co chief executive Mike Sneesby publicly criticise social media behemoth Meta for walking away from lucrative content agreements with news publishers, while declining to detail how the company will manage the fallout if its own $20 million-plus deal is not renewed. And Kate Burgess listened to AGL chief executive Damian Nicks argue that coal has only 10 to 12 years left as a viable source of power in Australia.
