CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 13 September 2024

Mining Services

“If you look at the global mining industry it tends to be a fairly conservative industry, and technology adoption can take a while…There’s really no reason why any producing mine would stick with the old fire assay technology [process for extracting gold] where they’ve got PhotonAssay available." Dirk Treasure, CEO, Chrysos Corp Ltd

Lithium Prices

“It does indicate that at these current prices, people aren’t going to be able to sustainably operate. We’ve all sort of known that for some time, and we’ve been waiting for supply to start coming out of the market” Joshua Thurlow, CEO Lithium, Mineral Resources Ltd

Ports

“Our ports are the lifeblood of our economy. The blue highway is the most critical path to our national prosperity. We often take for granted just how critical our ports are across a range of industries and communities." Mike Gallacher, CEO, Ports Australia

Domestic Housing

“So we’re doubling down on high rises. We see the trends and demographic shifts – we’ve had a million people coming in the last few years. So there’s a need for housing. So consumers need housing, and they need all forms” Tony Lombardo, CEO, Lendlease Group

“In terms of [apartment] pricing, COVID completely broke the egg, if you like, and wages, prices and the like have all escalated. So what we’re seeing in apartments is the existing stock is being pulled up in value by the pricing in the new stock” Don O’Rorke, CEO, Consolidated Properties Group

International Students & Education

“No [government set international students] cap is a good cap. And quite frankly, international education is Australia’s largest services export, so I’m not sure why we’re looking at remediating it” Anouk Darling, CEO, Scape [Australia’s largest student accommodation provider]

UK Economy

“If you look more recently, in July and August, we've seen some early signs of a slight pickup in demand from the housing market, which is obviously very welcome.” Darren Waters, CEO, Eurocell Plc [window & doors manufacturer]

Inflation & Interest Rates

“Because we're one of those services that rely on so many suppliers and services to provide products to us it does feel like we are getting price increases almost every week that we then have to pass on… We are seeing more people look to alternative methods to save money, such as providing their own catering as $100 a head adds up.” Kelly Scott, President, Australian Funeral Directors Association

"If the forecast is right, we've got to get through the next five to six months, I'm hopeful we've got a better future in front of us" Peter King, CEO, Westpac Banking Corp‍

Recreation & Outdoor

"However, the macroeconomic environment and high interest rates continue to put pressure on consumer demand. As a result, the demand has declined more than anticipated while promotional activity has intensified." Jose Boisjol, CEO, BRP Inc [parent co. of Ski-Doo, Can-Am and Sea-Doo]

International Consumers

“We do not see customers deferring their maintenance. We also don't see them trading down for lesser value lubricant.” Lori Flees, CEO, Valvoline Inc.

“I certainly spend time paying attention to what the big banks will report, what the credit card companies report, what the various governments, like when if the U.K. government puts out some statistic around consumer spend there. We pay attention to all that. I've not seen a step up or down in terms of consumer spend. It's been pretty consistent…So, I think consumer spend is not necessarily getting better or worse.” Jeff Hoffmeister, CFO, Shopify Inc

Healthcare

"In medical IT, the demographics of the western world is alarming. I think some countries are now even below 1 child per woman averaging, that means those countries will disappear. And some of the main GDP growth countries from 20 years back or 10 years back are now having a big problem…We need to make health care more efficient, or this will not work." Torbjorn Kronander, CEO, Sectra AB

Industrial Printing & Labelling

“I think we were living in an area with a fair amount of industrial investments sitting on the sidelines... Brady traditionally is very dependent on overall economic health of the underlying countries that we serve. Not too surprisingly, if countries are doing well, there tends to be an investment in industrial production and capacity…So what we're looking at, I think, in the coming year is more of the same of what we've seen over the past year” Russell Shaller, CEO, Brady Corp [international manufacturer of printing, label and barcode machines]

Blockchain

“The early blockchains were a computer science breakthrough that allowed you to not have an intermediary between every transaction. That made it global, decentralised. But they were still kind of slow and kind of expensive…So, it was kind of like the early days of the Internet with dial-up modems.” Brian Armstrong, CEO, Coinbase Global Inc

Computer Chips

“Demand is so great that delivery of our components, our technology, infrastructure, and software is really emotional for people,” Jensen Huang, CEO, Nvidia Corp.

Advisory & Consulting Firms

“It’s [fast software implementations] the industry solution that will completely transform the current flawed model where organisations waste billions every year on third-party consultants commercially incentivised to drag out complex implementations” Ed Chung, CEO, TechnologyOne Ltd