“I remember when I was working in Asia and we had a view that kombucha was the next great category and made some investments – made some inorganic investments to try and get ahead of the curve. And here I am five years later, and that trend did not take off the way we had expected”
Supermarkets
“Recent floral demand trends have remained stable with our major supermarket customers, and Australian revenue growth is expected to be around 4% for the first half. Demand for lower priced supermarket floral products remains consistent amidst moderating consumer spending. Demand from florists remains weak, impacting sales through our wholesale markets channel” Hugh Toll, CEO, Lynch Group Holdings Ltd
Domestic Economy
“We expect consumer pressures to remain high over the coming year” Drew O’Malley, CEO, Collins Foods Ltd
Food & Beverage
“I remember when I was working in Asia and we had a view that kombucha was the next great category and made some investments – made some inorganic investments to try and get ahead of the curve. And here I am five years later, and that trend did not take off the way we had expected” John Murphy, CFO, The Coca-Cola Co.
Renewables
“Australia’s got a significant surplus of oil seeds and of the oil seed that we export, principally to Europe, we reckon about 75 per cent of that ends up ultimately in renewable fuel” Robert Spurway, CEO, GrainCorp Ltd
Mortgages & Interest Rates
“After the first quarter's end, major lenders made up some of the ground they lost in the September quarter, however there are signs that more competition and choice is returning to the marketplace” David Bailey, CEO, Australian Finance Group Ltd
“While we saw a near immediate impact on sales off the back of the November rate rise, this is not inconsistent with previous periods of interest rate rises and expect to see a recovery in sales once the market regains confidence about the risk of future rate rises. Prior to the most recent rate rise, we had seen demand returning to the market” Phil Kearns, CEO, AVJennings Ltd
Cybersecurity
“Cybersecurity is incredibly complex and it has become an arms race. On one side there are the defenders and on the other side, the attackers” Richard White, CEO, WiseTech Global Ltd
Technology
“I've been on the road pretty much nonstop, especially over the last month. I've been throughout Europe. I've been now in Asia. I've been throughout the United States, and I just continue to see these same trends which is customers are investing for the future, and they're investing and inspired by AI to give them more productivity” Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce Inc.
“It is important to note that Chat GPT is not really intelligent and I don’t think there’s any chance of that becoming a sort of a monster. In fact, you should think of AI as a really big artificial and a tiny little intelligence. The intelligence that it presents you is the average of all the documents it has consumed” Richard White, CEO, WiseTech Global Ltd
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Mining & Infrastructure
“The mining and industrial sector, with a total addressable market of $34.7bn, containing significant aged infrastructure essential for maintaining output to its markets, is expected to continue to require structural integrity audits and upgrades for many years to come. This includes both inland mine site infrastructure and port load out marine structures” Phil Harcourt, CEO, Duratec Ltd
Hospitals & Healthcare
“Moving to an update on business trends in each region. Activity in Australia continues to improve with every category growing over the pcp [previous corresponding period] in the first quarter save maternity which has continued to decline albeit at a slower rate than past years” Craig McNally, CEO, Ramsay Health Care Ltd
“I mean, just compare COVID to flu, it's 3x the health burden. So that has to normalise in our belief, sometime. It might take a while, but there's 3x more hospitalizations, there's 3x more deaths. So you would think that, that would get more to like a flu like level” James Mock, CFO, Moderna Inc.
Online Retailing & Black Friday
“The demographic shift trumps any of those macro trends” Mark Coulter, CEO, Temple & Webster Ltd
“Black Friday was better than I thought it would be – when comparing ourselves with last year, we performed very well” Gerry Harvey, Executive Chair, Harvey Norman Ltd
International Vs. Domestic
“As we’ve had more airline capacity added, and some of the airfares are coming off the record highs we had. People are looking at value and they’re looking at price. Those two things for international travel are now as attractive as they’ve ever been” Dean Long, CEO, Australian Travel Industry Association
Commercial Property
“You’re seeing a real bifurcation in the office market” Tony Lombardo, CEO, Lendlease Ltd
Legal
“In this environment, there are naturally pockets of patchy demand in some practice areas such as real estate and equity capital market but an uptick in others such as disputes, regulatory advice and insolvency” Paul Jenkins, CEO, Ashurst
Supply Chain & Manufacturing
“We should absolutely go down the journey of it, but total independence [from China] of supply chain is not a real practical thing for a decade or two” Jensen Huang, CEO, NVIDIA Corp.
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