Business News - WA
At Close of Business podcast August 29 2024
(upbeat music) All the latest business news from WA deliver daily. (upbeat music) At close of business, news briefing. (upbeat music) - Good afternoon and welcome to the Outclothes of Business podcast. I'm Sam Jones and I'll be reading your afternoon headlines. West farmers retail businesses carried its lifted profit for the full year while its lithium business posted a $26 million loss pinned on wheat prices for the battery metal. The Rob Scott led conglomerate posted a 3.7% uptick in its net profit after tax to $2.6 billion. It also posted revenue of $44.2 billion up 1.5%. West farmers earnings before interest in tax also lifted 3.3%, $3.9 billion. Its board declared a fully frank dividend of $1.98 per share for the full year up 3.7% from the prior period. Its Kmart group was a standout for the year delivering $958 million in earnings up 24% and revenue of $11.1 billion up 4.4%. The company's bunnings, office works and West farmers health and industrial safety portfolios all recorded increases in earnings and revenue for the financial year. And in sport, Leadville Oval is set to receive a $3.8 million upgrade from the state government which will be completed across two stages. Construction is tipped to get underway in October and could be finished by March next year. Tendering for the project will be facilitated by the city of Vincent. The initial stage of the project is based around infrastructure including a new playing surface, construction of above ground dugouts and irrigation systems. Additional need, the venue will have 1,000 lux level floodlights installed which will allow both WAFL and WAFLW matches to be televised under broadcast quality lighting. And finally, Federal Resources Minister Madeline King has told the WA business community a union push into the Pilbara was an opportunity for collaboration with industry and warned against hysteria around industrial relation reforms. Speaking at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA Business Breakfast at Crown this morning, Ms King said opposition alternative facts were stoking unfounded fears of extreme union action. New legislation introduced earlier this year enabled unions to start collective bargaining negotiations without majority support of the workforce it represents. It led the Western Mine Workers Alliance to send a team of union organizers to the Pilbara to gather support from workers at various BHP mine sites. That visit came after three New South Wales coal companies were ordered to enter multi-employer bargaining talks by the Fair Work Commission and moved CCIWA Chief Economist Aaron Morrie said risk stifling investment. Mr. Morrie said there were fears the mining industry was returning to the bad old days of industrial action in the Pilbara. That's all for today's headlines. You can read more at businessnews.com.au. Coming up on the podcast, Mark Bio and Isabel Vieira discuss a tech company, U-Group. I'm Michael Thompson, join the nine news team for the day's biggest stories and breaking news from across Perth, Australia and the world. The most trusted reporters on the ground with exclusive stories you won't see anywhere else. Plus WA's most comprehensive weather and the latest sports news with the inside scoop on the AFL. Finance editor Chris Cola also brings you the latest news on business from interest rates to the stock market. Nine news, your news, nightly at six, on nine and nine now. Welcome back to the At Close of Business podcast. I'm Isabel Vieira and today I'm joined by Mark Bio. So Mark, in the latest edition of the Business News magazine, you wrote about U-Group and Coen and at Business News, we write a lot about tech startups, but this one in particular is actually making money, making it a little bit different. It certainly is. Yeah, look, a great story and I think I prefaced the article by saying it's actually a model for success for a lot of tech startups. They've shown the way to actually make money. So this business set up, so U-Group has in the letter U, if anybody's out there googling. They were set up six years ago, growing very substantially over that time, revenue last financial year, $16 million, expecting more growth in the current financial year. More importantly, the business has been cashflow positive for more than three years and they've actually bought back half the money that was put in by their early investors. So those sort of numbers are the envy of numerous other startups out there. And the way they've done it, they've monetized something that we often think of as very mundane and until now, completely overlooked shopping receipts. So they get people online to sign up and who are willing to basically share their shopping receipts and we're talking hundreds of thousands of shopping receipts every day across the USA in particular, that's their biggest market as well as Australia and Canada. And then what the company does, they use their automation and their AI to analyze all the information they get from those receipts and sell that information to marketing and market research companies. And judging by those numbers I quoted earlier, there is a keen market out there for what they've produced. - There you go. And tell us about the key people behind the business. - Yeah, look, there are three founders. Tyler Spooner is the main person along with Brenda Lau and Jason Gann. I guess one of the key things about Tyler, when he set up the business, it was actually his fourth business. But he said to me, he's got no interest in what he calls a zombie startups. So businesses that somehow survive but are never going to thrive. So with his first three businesses, he had a crack, that didn't really work. So he learned from the experience and moved on. And there are some key learnings that he's applied in new group about engaging with people, marketing online, using data. So that experience combined with his co-founders evidently is a very successful formula. - There you go. - And your group turned down an ASX listing. What's the story there? - Well, look, again, a very unusual aspect of this story. Many other tech companies would die for an ASX listing, so they can get a few dollars in the bank. In this case, one of the unusual things is that Tyler said he went along and spoke to some brokers and explained to them that they were already making money. And all the brokers just about fell out of their chairs 'cause they'd never come across an early stage tech business that was actually cashflow positive and making profits. There's also, there's an escrow period that normally applies if you're a startup business listed on the ASX, which means the founders are not allowed to sell their stock for a defined period of time, you know, one or two years. In your group's case, because they already passed the "profits test" that escrow didn't apply. But the other, I guess, more fundamental point that Tyler made is a lot of tech companies over-promise and end up under-delivering and investors get burned. He didn't want to do that. He said he wasn't prepared to list if he couldn't just give a realistic appraisal of the company's prospects. But look, as it's turned out, they're now self-funding, traveling very well, and really excited about the growth opportunities that lie ahead of them. Brilliant, well, it's a great story, and listeners can check out the full piece in August 19th to September 1st edition of the Business News magazine, or read it online today at businessnews.com.au. Mark, thanks for joining us today. - Thank you. - The latest business news, deliver daily. Subscribe and rate the show, wherever you listen to your podcasts. For all the latest business news, visit businessnews.com.au. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]