NAOS CEO Insights

March 8, 2024

CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 8 March 2024

“Our guests tell us they want to travel with their pets, and we are now on a journey to make that a reality. It’s something that commonly happens overseas and is proven to work well”

Jane Hrdlicka, CEO, Virgin Australia

Food, Beverage & Q.S.R

“You see people trading down from fine dining” Steven Marks, Co-CEO, Guzman y Gomez

Books & Technology

"In Book Publishing, we obviously had difficulty. We have what you might call long COVID in book publishing... I do think there are a large number of people, probably including me, who bought books during the pandemic that they didn't necessarily finish and so, you have that stack of unread books by your bed side, which is a little tower of guilt. As I said, the tower of guilt has come down. So, the actual purchasing of books has increased again” Robert Thomson, CEO, News Corporation

E-Commerce

“The majority of checkout still goes through a guest checkout experience. That is an experience that is fraught with friction and errors and abandoned carts. And if you're a merchant and you're trying to drive conversion rate, you want the most frictionless experience” James Chriss, CEO, PayPal Holdings Inc

Retail

“What we've seen overall with consumers is that it's -- at least in our view, it's most important to get them the opportunity to purchase the product that they want to purchase wherever they want, whenever they want” John Vandemore, CFO, Skechers Inc

“Convenience [shopping] is perhaps not as important as it was previously” Leah Weckert, CEO, Coles Group Ltd

Boating

“Boats like cars are just getting more contented with comfort features, they're larger. People want more electronics on their boats” David Foulkes, CEO, Brunswick Boat Corp [world’s largest recreational boat manufacturer]

Household Appliances

“Replacement [sales] is much stronger than it's been historically and doing very well. And we did think the replacement industry would do well… because the average appliance has a life of about 10 years” James Peters, CFO, Whirlpool Corp

Commercial Property

“I think we are at the start of the fresh next cycle. We’re headed into better times because more projects will make sense. We’re seeing more and more developers pushing the button, saying “Now we’re ready to develop” Andrew Schwartz, CEO, Qualitas Ltd

Sports & Broadcasting

“In fact, rugby league started its season in Las Vegas at the weekend, hugely successful enterprise and broadening the reach and range of the game, but also having a big marketing impact back in Australia, which is obviously what we like” Robert Thomson, CEO, News Corporation

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Macroeconomic & Recessionary Fears

“The world is set up for a soft landing. The market certainly perceives there’s a very, very high delta to a soft landing. My own view is it’s a little bit more uncertain than that” David Solomon, CEO, Goldman Sachs Group

Superannuation & Retirement

“Australia is the single most successful example of a societal-level change in the production of retirement income” Marc Rowan, CEO, Apollo Global Management

Equities

“Look at where we are in the stock market today. Ten companies are 35 per cent of our [US] index. Those 10 companies are larger than the market caps on the entire market of UK, Japan, Canada, Germany and elsewhere” Marc Rowan, CEO, Apollo Global Management

Non-Discretionary Spending

“Our operational performance in the first two months of H2 FY2024 has been really strong, further confirming the lifestyle and non-discretionary nature of this industry” Harry Konstantinou, CEO, Viva Leisure Ltd

Travel

“Our guests tell us they want to travel with their pets, and we are now on a journey to make that a reality. It’s something that commonly happens overseas and is proven to work well” Jane Hrdlicka, CEO, Virgin Australia

Entertainment

“Every way we look at it, we're less than 10% of view share in every country in which we operate. And that's just a pretty small slice of the entertainment pie. We're a little over 5% of the revenue opportunity, which we see as a $600 billion-plus revenue opportunity in the areas in which we play today” Spencer Neumann, CFO, Netflix Inc

Renovations, Alterations & Additions

“As we look forward, many of you are asking when we expect home improvement demand to inflect. Although it's a very fair question, it’s unfortunately still very difficult to predict” Marvin Ellison, CEO, Lowe's Corporation

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