QAV AU 825 — Bombs, Billboards & Bargain Buys

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 [00:00:00]

Cameron: Wel­come back to QAV Aus­tralia, [00:01:00] Tony. This is episode 8 2 5. We are record­ing this on the 24th of June, Tues­day, the 24th of June, 2025. How’s your week been, tk?

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. Good, good. Well, it’s only the sec­ond day of the week, but it’s been a week since I’ve spoke to you. How’s the last sev­en days been for you? Tony,

Very good. I, I went and saw the you can gimme an,

at the NGV the week.

Cameron: Hmm. How was he? Oh, it was a not a per­son. No, I thought

Tony Kynas­ton: impres­sion­ist

Cameron: a guy doing Mar Marel. Mabb. Marel Mas­sau. What do they call that?

not impres­sion­ism. It’s,

Tony Kynas­ton: min­ing.

Cameron: he was just, he was just doing impres­sions of French peo­ple. Of

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: here is Emmanuel Mabb. Ha. Did you, did you see the visu­al thing? There’s a slap from his wife there.

It was a visu­al joke. You missed it.

Tony Kynas­ton: That’s like [00:02:00] the, what’s the Here’s my, here’s my impres­sion of the French in World War II V. Sur­ren­der.

we, we

Cameron: Okay,

Tony Kynas­ton: know the bur­glar was a male. Look at his foot. Impres­sion. Enough of your impres­sions of Wat­son.

Cameron: uh, hold on. I got­ta turn the air­con on in my room here. Too hot. That’s in sun­ny.

Tony Kynas­ton: went for a walk before record­ing and it was, it was eight degrees with a, about a five degree wind chill. It was very cold and wind gusts. So get­ting up around 80 K an hour, I think.

Cameron: I went for a bike ride last Mon­day, and it was six degrees. It was like 6:00 AM on a Mon­day morn­ing, and I, I had my ther­mals on that. I bought for win­ter bike rid­ing and my gloves, and I got about 20 min­utes into a three hour ride and went nah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh,

Cameron: Turned around and went home. I was like, ah, this is,

what’s the point?

That’s what I thought. I gave it 20 min­utes. I still was­n’t warmed up. Could have, could have cut ice on my nip­ples, Tony. It was that [00:03:00] cold. Any­way, back to invest­ing. Uh, well, it’s been a, it’s been a week. Um, peo­ple bomb­ing peo­ple. What do they say? Hurt peo­ple. Hurt peo­ple.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, Peo­ple who Bomb peo­ple. Bomb peo­ple. I know.

Cameron: Yeah. Yeah, Bruce, he likes that one. Um. Uh, well, the lat­est news today, of course, is that Iran, in the wee hours of our morn­ing did a half-heart­ed response by the sounds of it, gave them lots of warn­ing, bombed a US base in Qatar. Uh, and accord­ing to Trump, they’ve all agreed on a truce. Iran and Israel will say, no, we haven’t.

What are you talk­ing about? And Trump’s own peo­ple are like, what news to us? But Trump’s truth social­ing that they’ve got a truce. But the result from us is the mar­ket’s up. Oil is down, my all stocks are down. I bought Karun Ener­gy on [00:04:00] Mon­day. It’s dropped 9% today.

Tony Kynas­ton: Ooh.

Cameron: Wood­side Ener­gy dropped 8% today. I was like, oh, boom.

Times for oil stocks. Uh,

Tony Kynas­ton: be

Cameron: yes, may still be, who the hell knows what’s going on over there?

Tony Kynas­ton: mis­sion accom­plished sign on it, you know, Because that always works. Yeah, yeah.

Cameron: Um, but

Tony Kynas­ton: the pre-social media truth. Social,

Cameron: yeah, it’s George W. Bush, air­craft car­ri­er.

Tony Kynas­ton: on the air­craft car­ri­er.

Cameron: I. When I got home from Kung fu ear­li­er, I planned to do my, uh, port­fo­lio reports, but I had a nap instead. So let me, uh, do my port­fo­lio reports and see where we’re at for the week. Uh, QAV dum­my last sev­en days down 1.6% ver­sus the index up 0.26. So where does that take us for the [00:05:00] finan­cial year?

For the finan­cial year, we are up 16.6 ver­sus the index up 14.6. So we, we’ve come down a bit, come back a bit from the begin­ning of the month, begin­ning of the month we’re up around 18.2. Now we’re down to 16.6. So it has not been a great month for us, but we’re, looks like we’re gonna fin­ish the, uh, finan­cial year above.

A cou­ple of points above the index, but cer­tain­ly not any mar­gin to crow about.

do you think about all that?

Tony Kynas­ton: a good year, has­n’t it? I mean, I, I think what­ev­er it was, would you say 16.8% is pret­ty good? Um. But the index has been good as well, which is real­ly sur­pris­ing. As you’ve just said, giv­en every­thing that’s going on, the mar­ket does­n’t believe Trump at all, does it real­ly? It’s just he’s just cruis­ing along.

Cameron: TACO?

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. Taco, taco trade. Yeah. Noth­ing to see here.

Cameron: Yeah,

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm.

Cameron: the whole [00:06:00] taco thing is hilar­i­ous. Yeah. But, but that said, I mean, it’s, it’s obvi­ous­ly, and we’ve, we’ve been over this for the last six months, but it’s like this incred­i­bly unsta­ble time in the us inter­na­tion­al­ly. He’s a wild card. You dun­no whether he is com­ing or going. He does­n’t know whether he is com­ing or going.

His admin­is­tra­tion does­n’t know if he’s com­ing or going. Tul­si Gabbs. Telling us that, uh, Iran’s not try­ing to build a bomb. Trump says, shut up. Yes they are. She goes, oh yeah. Yes they are. Yeah. Sor­ry. Changed my mind on that. I mean, it’s com­plete­ly, uh, all over the place. Uh, you would think. We keep say­ing that mar­kets hate uncer­tain­ty.

You can’t have more uncer­tain­ty than we have over there right now, and yet, you know, mar­ket’s boom­ing.

Tony Kynas­ton: the tar trade is you, you’ll be pret­ty cer­tain about the taco trade real­ly, can’t you? Uh,

Cameron: Wow.

Tony Kynas­ton: a dip

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Um, yeah, look, and, and if you also add to that list, the, the mar­ket’s prob­a­bly an over­val­ued ter­ri­to­ry, so it’s [00:07:00] sur­pris­ing it’s still going up, giv­en all that volatil­i­ty in the, in the real world.

It’s, it’s an inter­est­ing Yeah. But again, for the mil­lionth time, good thing for me is a novice investor about hav­ing a sys­tem like QAV is. It’s above my pay grade. What’s going on in the macro eco­nom­ics of the world. I just

we keep buy­ing and sell­ing. Yeah. Well, today more than ever, you can’t pre­dict what’s going on out there. Well, speak­ing of the port­fo­lios and mar­kets, uh, a MI had a 30% drop in a sin­gle day.

Cameron: Uh, I think that was on Mon­day. They came out with their FY 26 guid­ance and out­look. You know, we have been crit­i­ciz­ing com­pa­nies for not doing that, and this is one case where I wish they had­n’t done it. Just shoot, shut up. [00:08:00] Why? Why, why are you, why are you telling peo­ple the bad news?

Tony Kynas­ton: ASX isn’t lis­ten­ing. isn’t

Cameron: cares.

Did­n’t you get the memo? Uh, the short ver­sion is their investor day deck made it crys­tal clear that the next two years are gonna be a cash soak while out­put bare­ly moves. And, uh, the mar­ket decid­ed they did­n’t like that. Big checks. Now maybe fat, cop­per tons and cash flows in 2028. Group oper­at­ing costs are up 45%, uh, for the next year.

Growth CapEx has­n’t changed. Great deal. Um, sus­tain­ing CapEx dou­bles, gold pro­duc­tion falls. Cop­per pro­duc­tion bare­ly moves, so the mar­ket, um, decid­ed to pun­ish them. I haven’t had a look at what they’ve done today, so let me [00:09:00] just have a look at that and see if I have to cry in my beer.

 Uh. Yeah, well, it’s, it’s, uh, hov­er­ing along.

So it was, was trad­ing on the 18th of June. It closed at around about 30 cents. Next morn­ing it dropped down to 20 cents and, uh, a few days lat­er it’s, uh, 21 cents. I think. Um, I think that prob­a­bly means it’s a three point trend line sell. Oh, my, my sheet is say­ing, oh, it’s, uh, no, the three point trend line sell is 20 cents.

It’s cur­rent­ly at 21 cents. I hold it in two port­fo­lios in one, two light port­fo­lios. One is up 35%. It was like a hun­dred per­cent a week ago, and the oth­er is back down to zero. I’ve only held it in the oth­er one for about a month, but it’s back down to zero. It was up about 10%. So there you go. That’s, uh, [00:10:00] those things hap­pen from time to time.

We see those big sud­den drops.

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah, and we are in con­fes­sion sea­son as com­pa­nies get close to their final results or they get a sense for where they’re gonna end up and, uh, they actu­al­ly announce their reports in audit­ed reports in August. And I’ve seen a lot of move­ments, um, in the last week or two based on these kinds of announce­ments. a cou­ple of oth­er ones which have been on the buy list, which had neg­a­tive announce­ments, I’ll go through the bad ones first, but inter­est­ing­ly enough, there’s a lot of, a lot going up with pos­i­tive announce­ments too, but the bad ones to get those out of the way. War­ren Buf­fet style. Um, ASX one, accent one, the shoe com­pa­ny, um, announced, uh, a, Well, noth­ing pos­i­tive. They announced down­grades, um, to sales and how things were going. So they’ve dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly through the cell line, and I did the pulled pork [00:11:00] on a cou­ple of weeks ago and put the kibosh on them. uh, um, not even sure they were a buy­er, remem­ber doing the pulled pork and they were hov­er­ing around their byline or the cell line.

Um, but they’ve dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly as well, get the bad news out first. On the, the oth­er side of the coin is, uh, like in, in doing down­loads to pro­duce pulled porks. For this show, I’m look­ing through the buy list and there’s been some amaz­ing upward revi­sions in some of the stocks on the buy list. If I just run through a cou­ple of them now.

Grange Engi­neer­ing, GNG, and a lot of them, um. They are often kicked off by good news in con­fes­sion sea­son, but some of them, they’ve been doing well for a while and there’s no news and they’re just going up. Um, whether that means that, you know, the, the are putting togeth­er how well they’re going to do when they do report, I’m not sure. I Ls, which is the I group, the print­er that’s doing very well, the share prices up dra­mat­i­cal­ly shape, [00:12:00] the com­mer­cial fit out. Oper­a­tor, I think you had some news on that one to talk about. Um, and come back to it if you like. San­tos Sure.

takeover. San­tos has been on the buy list for a long time,

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: has the and I guess then the fall and the oil price in the last week or so helped it, but, they are the sub­ject of a takeover, uh, which may, may or may not hap­pen.

I, I should. You know, make sure peo­ple are aware that just because there’s a takeover, it does­n’t mean it’ll be con­sum­mat­ed. It’s, um, there are two hur­dles for this takeover to go through. The For­eign Invest­ment Review, review Board, have to decide that it’s, um, allow­able in the nation’s inter­est. Um, apart from all the usu­al cor­po­rate rules they apply.

But, uh, the South Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment, uh, uh, has some laws around San­tos ’cause it’s a big com­pa­ny in, in that state. And they’ll be, have already flagged that they’re gonna oppose con­di­tions they have to sign off on the [00:13:00] sale as well, um, includ­ing keep­ing their head office in the state. So, um. That that may or may not.

Go ahead. There’s a few hur­dles to jump there, but it’s def­i­nite­ly in play. And like we’ve always said too, we gen­er­al­ly find, um, from time to time a cou­ple of our buy list stocks become takeover tar­gets because we’re not the only ones see­ing val­ue in them. And San­tos cer­tain­ly fits that pic­ture. cou­ple of oth­er ones quick­ly that have had good runs, SRG, which is the engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny, SRG Glob­al, and OO Media, OML, the out­door adver­tis­ing out of home OO, stands for, uh, is doing very well.

Um, I’ve got some­thing to say about those in a minute, which I can talk about now if you like. was a, an arti­cle about OO Media in the Fin Review week. And was, you know, basi­cal­ly one of the sort of arti­cles that the Fin does from time to time report­ing on man­agers who, who make pre­sen­ta­tions at one con­fer­ence or [00:14:00] anoth­er. And the report this time was from, uh, a chap called James Rut­ledge, but port­fo­lio man­ag­er at Per­pet­u­al. And, uh, he picked Ed as his top stock pick at the moment uh, just run­ning through some of his rea­sons. The arti­cle says, uh, A key rea­son for Rut­ledge ISS bull­ish out­look is the com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy, which he said allowed it to tai­lor its prod­ucts based on who was view­ing it at dif­fer­ent times of day. One, sta­t­ic bill­board can change adverts five times a day. That’s a real attrac­tion for the adver­tis­ing, which can be far more tar­get­ed. Rut­ledge said, he not­ed that when Edia first list­ed on the ASX, around 20% of its rev­enue came from dig­i­tal sources. That fig­ure had now climbed to about 75%, which was gen­er­at­ed from only about 35% of their assets. There is still some poten­tial there for Edia. He con­clud­ed, and year to date, the shares have jumped 42%, so [00:15:00] good run for Edia there as well.

Cameron: Well, I added them to one of our light port­fo­lios back on the 28th of May. And you know, in the last, so it’s about a month ago, and in that month they’ve gone nowhere and they did go up and then they came back down. So hope­ful­ly they, uh, show a lit­tle bit of, lit­tle bit more growth in the future.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, well, I, I per­son­al­ly sus­pect they will. I did a pulled fork on them year or two ago, and I think Rut­ledge is right. The, um, the qual­i­ty of the out­door media they’re putting up now, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you look at sta­tions, even things like uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es and office build­ings in, in lifts, et cetera, is, um, is top notch and as he says, can

Cameron: I,

Tony Kynas­ton: dif­fer­ent times of day.

Cameron: I have sold it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times in the last, how­ev­er, for many years, [00:16:00] uh, out of those, uh, eight of those were Rule one cells. And the oth­er two were, um, three PTL cells. So

Tony Kynas­ton: A it’s one of those ones that when­ev­er it comes back on the buy list and it’s like, I have to buy it, it’s, I’m like, ah, no, real­ly?

Cameron: I haven’t Apol­lo medi­at­ed it yet, but, uh, maybe I should. Every time I see it, it’s crazy,

Tony Kynas­ton: Apol­lo

Cameron: you know, and I’ve, I’ve, yeah, I’ve bought it at, uh, as low as a dol­lar 40. What’d I say it is today? A dol­lar 70. You know, it’s one, like I’ve bought it, uh, dol­lar 83 is the only time I’ve bought it above where it’s cur­rent­ly at, but the rest of the time it’s like some­thing rang­ing between a dol­lar 40 and a dol­lar 60 usu­al­ly where I’ve bought it and then I always end up sell­ing it.

So it’s, uh, nev­er real­ly got­ten off the ground for me over the years, but one day.

Tony Kynas­ton: remem­ber it [00:17:00] had some, a lot of prob­lems dur­ing COVID as well, when gen­er­al­ly the adver­tis­ing indus­try had prob­lems. and Hmm.

that it was an out­door com­pa­ny and no one could leave their house was a big prob­lem for them. So, um, I think,

Cameron: Whatcha talk­ing about no one could leave their house in Bris­bane? We all left our house all the time. Eh? We had no prob­lems. Yeah. I dun­no what you prob­lem, you peo­ple were wor­ried about down in Syd­ney and Vic­to­ria. We, we had,

Tony Kynas­ton: to that kind of soci­ety, real­ly.

Cameron: yeah. Oh, that reminds me of some­thing. What was, I, uh, can’t remem­ber. I had a, I had some­thing about that. Any­way, keep going. Oh, media. What else you got?

Tony Kynas­ton: oh, okay. Um,

 anoth­er arti­cle on the Fin Review I picked up on. uh, to do with the who I have been cast again, a lit­tle, um, on the show. Uh, they, they have opened up an inquiry into the ASX [00:18:00] and, uh, so this

Cameron: Sor­ry, I,

Tony Kynas­ton: I

Cameron: I just remem­bered my, my joke. Not a joke, but just reminds me of you. We’ve got some friends that are Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es

and, um, you know,

Tony Kynas­ton: COVID.

Cameron: yeah. They don’t cel­e­brate birth­days or Christ­mas Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es, which sounds great to me. ’cause I hate cel­e­brat­ing peo­ple’s birth­days in Christ­mas. So I was telling Chris­sy the oth­er day, I think I’m gonna, I think I’m gonna con­vert, I’m gonna approach the JWS and say, lis­ten, I’m a pret­ty big catch.

I made a whole doc­u­men­tary about Chris­tian­i­ty. You know, I reck­on if you can get me, it’s a, but here’s the deal. I’ll nev­er go to church. I’m not doing any door knock­ing, but I won’t cel­e­brate birth­days or Christ­mas. Alright, that’s it. That’s every­thing else I’m not gonna do. But as long as then I can just say, I don’t have to cel­e­brate birth­days or Christ­mas, I go, Hey, sor­ry, Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness.

And I thought that would be a per­fect Curb Your Enthu­si­asm episode. If Lar­ry ever comes back, that would be a per­fect one. Con­vert to become a Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness so you don’t [00:19:00] have to cel­e­brate birth­days and Christ­mas. Get out­ta jail free card.

Tony Kynas­ton: That’s very grinchy of you cel­e­brat­ing

Cameron: Uh,

Tony Kynas­ton: I get, but peo­ple’s birth­days.

Cameron: I, eh, I’m hap­py to say hap­py birth­day, but invite me to a par­ty. Ugh, please. Real­ly? No, let me out of it. I don’t even wan­na cel­e­brate my birth­day, let alone any­one else’s birth­day. Except yours. Of course.

Tony Kynas­ton: you.

Cameron: You and Chris­sy.

Tony Kynas­ton: And Fox.

Cameron: it. Every­one else. Ah, no, not even him. My kids are like, eh, what­ev­er. Yeah, you sur­vived anoth­er year.

I should get the reward for that. I kept you alive for anoth­er year.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh

Cameron: Any who? Back to what you were talk­ing about. Sor­ry.

Tony Kynas­ton: No, that’s okay. It’s, um, deep insight into your per­son­al­i­ty I think we’re hav­ing in this show.

Cameron: Hey, I am autis­tic. Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. I’m not sure that’s, that’s an [00:20:00] accu­rate descrip­tion, but any­way, I know peo­ple who are autis­tic. Um,

Cameron: okay. Well take that away from me too. Then.

Tony Kynas­ton: peo­ple, not to say you’re dys­func­tion­al, but you, you want to join the Jeho­vah’s

Cameron: Neu­ro­di­ver­gent is the word.

Tony Kynas­ton: tick on the list of check­list for dys­func­tion­al peo­ple.

Cameron: Neu­ro­di­ver­gent is the word I pre­fer Tony. Hmm. Please

Tony Kynas­ton: Neu­ro­di­ver­gent. Okay. Yeah, as you were.

Speak­ing of neu­ro­di­ver­gent orga­ni­za­tions, the ASIC have launched an inquiry into the ASX. I’m not sure who I’m refer­ring to the most in the, out of those two orga­ni­za­tions in terms of being neu­ro­di­ver­gent. Um, any­way,

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: quote from last week’s, uh, Fin Review, the Aus­tralian Secu­ri­ties and Invest­ments Com­mis­sion said it would appoint an expert pan­el to deter­mine if the ASX was fit to oper­ate the coun­try’s finan­cial mar­kets and the crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture that under­pins Aus­trali­a’s [00:21:00] 4.2 tril­lion super­an­nu­a­tion sav­ing sys­tem. Um, yeah, so watch this space. They’re announc­ing dif­fer­ent, uh, peo­ple to sit on the pan­el and decide whether the ASX is up to, to

Cameron: Are you gonna be one of them?

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, no, I’m not. It might make a sub­mis­sion, and

Cameron: Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: the arti­cle goes on to talk about why ASIC are doing it. It does­n’t have to do with pro­tect­ing. know, our, our, uh, pro­tect­ing our, um, abil­i­ty to get access to infor­ma­tion the com­pa­nies we invest in, um, to get it accu­rate­ly and time­ly. No, it’s, it’s more around the fact that there’s been mar­ket out­ages in the oper­a­tor, uh, by the oper­a­tor and oper­at­ing the ASX. Um, and of course the chest replace­ment sys­tem, which has basi­cal­ly been derailed. and so ASIC is say­ing, Hey, we need some­one who’s gonna be oper­a­tional­ly much more robust. But in a round­about way, I think that does talk to the prob­lems as ASX is hav­ing on mar­ket [00:22:00] dis­clo­sures because, um, they’re obvi­ous­ly dis­tract­ed with just keep­ing the ham­ster wheel run­ning for the, um, share mar­ket.

Cameron: Or just as an orga­ni­za­tion not able to ful­fill their remit, which is, you know, run not only the tech­nol­o­gy tech­no­log­i­cal trad­ing sys­tem, but you know, make sure that the com­pa­ny’s on it play by the

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah,

Cameron: upon rules.

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah, cor­rect. But as, as far as I can tell, that sec­ond ele­ment isn’t part of the review, but, uh, I think it should be.

Cameron: Mm

So what hap­pens if they, if ASIC decide they’re not fit for fit, for pur­pose?

Tony Kynas­ton: it? Well, it must have the right to remove the, the, the abil­i­ty for the ASX com­pa­ny to be the oper­a­tor of the mar­ket. There are oth­er mar­ket oper­a­tors in Aus­tralia, by the way. So I, I imag­ine they could Mm

or they could sim­ply

 I mean, and it’d be inter­est­ing to see who would, who might come across from [00:23:00] over­seas, um,

Cameron: mm

Tony Kynas­ton: oper­a­tor from over there to, to take the A mm Fun times.

Yeah. Talk­ing of fun times Vir­gin list­ed today. Yeah. The num­ber two air­line car­ri­er. I’ve got a joke here. I don’t know if it’s real­ly a joke, but can we call it Vir­gin? That’s sec­ond time around. Does it? Does it have to be called, called some­thing else it’s, it’s been list­ed. It went broke and now it’s com­ing back onto the mar­ket.

Cameron: Yeah. Uh, just, yeah. What dirty hoe is that? What you’re.

Tony Kynas­ton: wear black at the wed­ding, maybe. Uh,

Cameron: Oh, dear me,

Tony Kynas­ton: uh,

Cameron: so, uh.

Tony Kynas­ton: I mean, very lucky for the lis­ters because the oil price dropped today, but that’s the biggest cost for an air­line. So if they had have list­ed with the oil price up, it might not have gone [00:24:00] as well. I checked before I came on the, the stock price was up 9% from list­ing, which, there’s arti­cles around the last day or so say­ing that the price was kind of engi­neered to do that day one because, um, I think every­body who plays in mar­kets would like to see the IPO win­dow open up again.

There has­n’t been many IPOs in the last 12 months on the ASX. Anoth­er of the ASX, um, and there’s been a lot of com­pa­nies leave the ASX either by takeover or by going pri­vate. and so it’s a shrink­ing mar­ket, so it’d be good to see the IPA mar­ket open up again. One way to do that is to get peo­ple inter­est­ed in stag prof­its from list­ings, but, um. That all aside, and I haven’t done the num­bers on Vir­gin, I haven’t run that through my check­list or any­thing, but I’m always very skep­ti­cal of buy­ing a com­pa­ny when it’s list­ed was owned by a pri­vate equi­ty com­pa­ny. And does­n’t mat­ter which one, in this case it’s Bain, I don’t have any oth­er expe­ri­ence with them.

But there’s been plen­ty of [00:25:00] cas­es of equi­ty com­pa­nies tak­ing com­pa­nies from pri­vate to pub­lic and some­times tak­ing them from pub­lic to pri­vate to pub­lic. And uh, then they have the, the com­pa­nies limp after that share price goes back­wards. And in some worse cas­es they actu­al­ly go bank­rupt again.

Cameron: What’s your the­o­ry on why that is? Have they just gut­ted it before they float­ed or what?

Tony Kynas­ton: I think, um, this one might be a bit dif­fer­ent. One of the main rea­sons is they often, uh, gear them up. Um, so they like to take com­pa­nies with good, strong oper­at­ing cash flows like we like, and then use that cash flow to pay the inter­est on debt. And so they gear them up, um, which actu­al­ly makes their return on equi­ty look real­ly good because the, the equi­ty shrinks because the debt, um, eats into the assets. and uh, they often sell things. So, you know, I remem­ber when Mabb was tak­en over by pri­vate equi­ty. They sold off the, uh, CBD stores in, uh, Mel­bourne, at least I [00:26:00] think in Syd­ney as well. Um, so they make a of mon­ey out­ta that and then the com­pa­ny back share mar­ket and it’s got. know, its lease costs are up because it does­n’t own the prop­er­ty any­more, it’s got­ta pay the rent on them.

So, that’s just one exam­ple of, of how pri­vate equi­ty can make short-term deci­sions, which may not be in the best long-term inter­ests of the com­pa­ny. And the fact that they sell the, the com­pa­ny prob­a­bly means that they’ve, they’ve, you know, squeezed the lemon as much as they can in the short term, and they’re not gonna wait around for the long term to see if it works out or not. So I’m always very skep­ti­cal of, of buy­ing from pri­vate equi­ty when it real­ly loos­es. I’m hap­py to and see what hap­pens with Vir­gin it reports at least once, maybe a cou­ple of times down the track.

Cameron: Mm. Okey dokey. Blue, blue Horse­shoe loves Ana cot. Steel. That was the quote we were try­ing to remem­ber the oth­er week. I just looked it up.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

 Good [00:27:00] quote. what else have I got? I’ve got, uh, Karun, you spoke about Karun before and,

Cameron: hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: it’s dropped off again today ’cause the air oil price is down. I, I had a look at the oil price graph itself. It does­n’t look like it’s a sell again, but um,

Cameron: it’s a, it’s a Josephine, I think it’s just below the cell line now.

Tony Kynas­ton: no, Uh, by line I mean.

Yeah. Okay. So it may come back.

We’ll, we’ll see. Um, but yeah, Cor­rine obvi­ous­ly went up when the oil price rose, but it also had a bit of a run because, uh, if peo­ple remem­ber from the pulled pork, I did Karine, uh, oper­ate oil fields over in Brazil, fun­ni­ly enough, in a area called the San­tos Basin, even though it’s not. To do with San­tos, the, oth­er oil com­pa­ny list­ed in Aus­tralia. Um, but they picked up a cou­ple of new, uh, blocks as they’re called, new, uh, oil areas in the basin by bid­ding to the, uh, Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment. Uh, and they picked up six blocks and [00:28:00] the San­tos Basin, and they’re rea­son­ably close to the ones now. So there’s economies, um, to do that. And obvi­ous­ly, you know, once the oil starts to, to flow from that, it’ll, um, it’ll be, uh, top line and I would think bot­tom line growth for the com­pa­ny.

So the mar­ket looked favor­ably on that, even though the shares are

Cameron: Speak­ing of, actu­al­ly, they recov­ered a bit, um, today, so I just checked, speak­ing of oil, um, the pulled pork that I’m doing in our US show is on a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny called Pre­ci­sion Drilling, which is real­ly inter­est­ing. I’ve, I’ve been learn­ing a lot about, um, what they do. But they have these, like their, their, um, moat, if you like, is high tech drilling rigs that are all AC or bat­tery pack oper­at­ed.

You can, uh, you can wheel ’em in on a flatbed and set [00:29:00] ’em up and be drilling with­in, like by lunchtime. And they move, they can walk,

Tony Kynas­ton: Wow.

Cameron: move across the land and you can keep stick­ing holes in the ground. They can, they can drill, I think it’s 7,000 feet a day deep two Empire State. Build­ings end to end down in a day, appar­ent­ly, these things.

any­way, yeah. So I’ve, I’ve been learn­ing a lot about oil rigs,

Tony Kynas­ton: have dropped those on the ram and instead of bunker

Cameron: bombs.

 Mm.

Tony Kynas­ton: hole.

Cameron: If they tried to blow a hole in a row instead Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: a big hole and

Cameron: Hop­ing oil would come out.

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm.

Cameron: Hmm. That bomb that they dropped, the bunker buster bomb was fas­ci­nat­ing too. Read­ing up on what that can do. Pret­ty crazy tech.

Tony Kynas­ton: And how to exe­cute it. ’cause I think it only goes down 60 meters or some­thing. So they had to do it in waves to get, uh, down any­where near the bunker that they were try­ing to get to. [00:30:00] there’s

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: some to say they did­n’t, did­n’t get the bunker. I’ve

Cameron: Mm Mm I don’t think we’ll know until the, some inde­pen­dent inspec­tors get over there to have a look at what’s going on, but Iran’s not gonna be very hap­py about that. You can imag­ine they weren’t hap­py about it before they start­ed get­ting bombed, so I can under­stand it. Any­way.

Any­way, what else you got?

Tony Kynas­ton: got, uh, well trig­ger warn­ing our old friend tourism and Le Tourism and Leisure. Well, tourism Hold­ings is now called, was back in the mar­ket news last week. Um, it’s now called Tourism Hold­ings after Apol­lo Tourism merged with a, uh, a com­pa­ny in New Zealand. but, uh, this is a, a a a quote from the arti­cle.

A con­sor­tium led by BGH cap­i­tal has offered $2 30 New Zealand per share for THL, is Tourism Hold­ings, uh, which is list­ed in the, on the New Zealand Stock Exchange. That’s well above the 1 46 New Zealand clos­ing price [00:31:00] on Fri­day. Um, the con­sor­tium already con­trols 19.99% of THL, which includes the Che Broth­ers, 11.8% state. group shares jumped 50% on Mon­day after the bid was announced. So you obvi­ous­ly sold out too soon on Apol­lo Tourism and Leisure Camp.

Cameron: Six years too soon.

Tony Kynas­ton: The

Cameron: black band them.

Tony Kynas­ton: they’ve been, um, been around with this com­pa­ny and this busi­ness for a long time and they, they seem to be, uh, good at tim­ing their entries and exits and takeovers bet­ter than our Got their pay­day.

Hmm.

Cameron: Hmm. Good for them. Con­grat­u­la­tions to the Che Broth­ers.

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh,

Cameron: for the Che Broth­ers.

Tony Kynas­ton: from Bris­bane, by the way.

Cameron: Yeah, I know,

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm. I,

up, get them on the

Cameron: I did.

Tony Kynas­ton: How?

Cameron: Well, they were like, for peo­ple who don’t remem­ber the sto­ry, they were the first stock we bought in our QAV dum­my [00:32:00] port­fo­lio back in the day. And I was gonna go down and invite them to come on the show and have a chat.

But then we had to sell them before I could do that. Then we bought them, then we sold them, then we bought them, then we sold them, and then I was like, you know what? You can bite me on the Apol­lo.

Tony Kynas­ton: Any­way, they’re still there. Um, up to cap­i­tal gains cut­off time, June 30, don’t get caught hold­ing gains if you have cap­i­tal loss­es, which you haven’t, uh, real­ized. So, I know if you are part of a ser­vice like Navexa or Share side or some­thing sim­i­lar, you can run reports to check out whether you are meant to pay cap­i­tal gains tax this year or not, then, um, take appro­pri­ate action if you hap­pen to have some­thing which is at a loss which you haven’t sold. Um, not tax advice, seek tax advice. But, uh, I guess don’t get sur­prised if you, um, if, and say to your­self [00:33:00] after June 30, oh, why did­n’t I sell that to off­set that game? They’d be aware of And as I said last week, does­n’t apply to QAV sub­scribers because none of our stocks ever go down. So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s all, it’s all wins.

Well, that’s the upside from Apol­lo Tourism and Leisure and new media. They, they gen­er­ate some cap­i­tal loss­es along the way for us. Yeah.

Cameron: Yeah, bal­ance it up. That’s good.

Tony Kynas­ton: Um, got­ta pull cork on Cog Finan­cial, which I can do now if you like.

Cameron: Well, a cou­ple of news items before you do that. Um, WGX West Gold Resources, um, they put out a, an announce­ment yes­ter­day. Fletcher’s Zone maid­en min­er­al resource of 2.3 m. Stage one Fletch­er Resource almost dou­bles the cur­rent beta hunt resource. West Gold Resources is pleased to announce its [00:34:00] maid­en min­er­al resource esti­mate.

MRE for the Fletch­er Zone at the beta hunt Mine in the south­ern gold­fields of West­ern Aus­tralia. Stage one drilling only test­ed one kilo­me­ter of the two kilo­me­ters of known strike of the Fletch­er Zone, with a stage P two pro­gram now being planned test strike and depth exten­sions. What does that all mean?

No idea, but they’re pret­ty hap­py about it. And, uh, man­ag­ing direc­tor and CEO Wayne Bramwell was rub­bing his hands and chuck­ling, uh, like a, like I know some sort of guy in a movie appar­ent­ly. So it’s good news for WGX. Appar­ent­ly if you’re a WGX hold­er, they come on and off our buy list. Lemme see what hap­pened to their share price.

Oh, it’s been tank­ing ever since. So share price was at $3 yes­ter­day. It’s dropped down to $2 96. So, uh, there you go. Appar­ent­ly no one cared about that [00:35:00] news, but they were pret­ty hap­py about it.

Tony Kynas­ton: prob­a­bly prob­a­bly going with the gold price. But, um, yeah, I mean, dun­no much about West Gold, what, what they’re basi­cal­ly say­ing, like is they have more assets um, their explo­ration has pro­duced. So that’s the thing about. Uh, min­ing com­pa­nies and often­times more so with gold min­ing com­pa­nies because, and I guess all com­pa­nies as well, you don’t know how much is under­ground.

And so they do a lot of work to try and firm up what, you know, how much gold is under their tens. And when they get to a stage where they can pret­ty accu­rate­ly claim, um, what’s under­ground and they can add that as an asset to, um, to the, the com­pa­ny’s book, uh, you know, book val­ue. uh, so that’s, you know, one tick for that.

Um, but it also will then feed into how long the gold mine life is. So that’s anoth­er impor­tant thing. If you’re doing a dis­count­ed cash flow and the [00:36:00] mine’s gonna quit next year ’cause it runs out­ta gold. It’s gonna be a small val­u­a­tion. But if it’s got. Resources that can be used for next 10 years. It’s adds dra­mat­i­cal­ly to the val­u­a­tion. but of course the back­ground to all that is they would’ve been talk­ing for a long time about what they thought the resources were going to be and if they’re, they’ve over­shot or under­shot those esti­mates, um, that can also dri­ve the share price. So not sure what hap­pened with West Gold, but that’s the back­ground to what you’re say­ing.

Cameron: You know who does know what’s under­ground?

Tony Kynas­ton: The bunker bump, the bombers beat the B two bunker bombers.

Cameron: No. Now the Wombles

Tony Kynas­ton: Okay.

Cameron: under­ground. Over­ground, Wombling free. The Wombles of Wim­ble­don com­mon are we. Mak­ing good use of the things that we find? Things that the every­day folks leave behind? You used to watch the Wombles, Tony,

Tony Kynas­ton: no, I do rec­og­nize

Cameron: what?

Tony Kynas­ton: No, I [00:37:00] thought that were a lot of

Cameron: You did­n’t watch the Wombles. Uh, the Wombles were great. So sad. Uh, that song writ­ten by Mike Bat, he cre­at­ed a nov­el­ty pop band, the Wombles, after record­ing the theme song for that and, uh, made a ton of mon­ey out of it.

He also com­posed the song, bright Eyes for Water­ship Down.

Tony Kynas­ton: No. I thought that was, um,

Cameron: Oh,

Tony Kynas­ton: Paul Simon. No. What did he sing it?

Cameron: all Simon. No. Art Gar­funkel sung

Tony Kynas­ton: Garth uncle then.

Cameron: Yeah. But it was writ­ten by Mike bat. Good luck to Mike bat. He did well out­ta those. That, that, that brings a tear to my eyes. That song, when­ev­er I hear it f so I don’t know, gets me, gets me in the feels.

Tony Kynas­ton: we ever do a ani­mal based ani­ma­tion movie, we’ll call Mike back to do the sound­track for us.

Cameron: Alright, um, shape. You men­tioned, [00:38:00] uh, shape before they did put out a trad­ing update as well. I think you men­tioned that. Um, pro project wins, fore­cast­ers rev­enue is sup­posed to be up increase of 14% year on year. Uh, and Pat is expect­ed to be up 31%. Um, all good stuff for shape. Do we own shape? Let me see.

Shape, shape, shape, uh, shape of things to come. Uh, yeah. We do own shape March 25. I bought it $2 95. It’s up 41% since the 5th of March. Wow. Good job. Shape resources.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm. Espe­cial­ly after

Cameron: Uh

Tony Kynas­ton: them.

Cameron: oh. When did you do that? Yeah,

Tony Kynas­ton: around the prob­a­bly about the same time I’m guess­ing. Yeah. Wow. Look at that. [00:39:00] Uh, I think that’s all I’ve got. Tony, why don’t you do your cog, haven’t you done cog before?

Cameron: I feel like you’ve done cog before.

Tony Kynas­ton: I felt like I had two and I could­n’t, I tried to search for, it’s not on the pulled pork list. to search the web­site

 men­tions of it, so we’ve cer­tain­ly talked about it before. But, um, I have,

Cameron: Hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: a num­ber of years ago. So, um, way back, prob­a­bly in the first year of QIVI would’ve thought, and

Cameron: Real­ly? Hmm.

Tony Kynas­ton: eh, so they and I went back and had a look at their share price and they ran from 55 cents five years ago to a dol­lar 81, and now they’re back to 90 cents. Um, and they’re on a, they got back to 90 cents, sor­ry, in Novem­ber, 2024. And now they’re on a tear again up to a dol­lar 53. So they. You know, they’ve, uh, what’s that? Tripled, I guess, over in the last five years, but they have gone up and down along the way. Uh, who are COD Finan­cial ser­vices? [00:40:00] They’re a, a finance bro­ker.

A finance bro­ker. Aggre­ga­tor, I guess is prob­a­bly a bet­ter, a bet­ter descrip­tion of them. So they, Pro­vide frame­works and ser­vices if you’re a finance bro­ker out there, arrang­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly equip­ment leas­ing, and par­tic­u­lar­ly for small to medi­um enter­pris­es. the way, I mean, their busi­ness mod­el is they, they go off to, loan providers and do a bulk buy­er deal, uh, much the same as a co-op would, I guess. and then go out and sign up small indi­vid­ual bro­kers like accoun­tants or who­ev­er. Um, uh, and then those peo­ple get a, a good price to go and offer to their clients who might be in the mar­ket for, um, equip­ment for a build­ing site or a pho­to­copi­er or what­ev­er. So that’s, that’s the Hmm.

they also obvi­ous­ly do a lot more than that?

So they, they have a good IT sys­tem. They have good train­ing. So if you are in the busi­ness of doing this, they pro­vide a lot of your. Back­end [00:41:00] sup­port for it and leads, gen­er­a­tions and all that kind of stuff. They, they claim to stream­line the loan­er appli­ca­tion process using their IT plat­forms, all of the paper­work out­ta the busi­ness.

So a lot of good stuff. If you’re a small bro­ker out there in that space, uh, they claim that they have a lender pan­el of 50, um, or more asset, uh, lenders. Um, they arrange com­mer­cial loans for equip­ment pur­chas­es, every­thing from cof­fee machines to dump trucks. This is all from their web­site. they do a lot inno­v­a­tive leas­ing space.

So we’ve spo­ken about. Com­pa­nies like Mel­lon Shake­speare who that kind of ser­vice. They, these, uh, cog also help facil­i­tate that for the small­er end of the mar­ket. Um, they have a car buy­ing ser­vice, which I thought was inter­est­ing. So, because, uh, part of that fleet man­age­ment and inno­vat­ed lease space is you are buy­ing, um, cars on bulk [00:42:00] and then prob­a­bly in the next four years. them again. often­times at a whole­sale type price, you can, you can source vehi­cles for peo­ple at whole­sale prices, so that, that’s an attrac­tive add-on. If you’re a small, um, small bro­ker, um, with a client base, you can them that ser­vice as well, which might be attrac­tive for them. and they also, um, facil­i­tate cross busi­ness access too.

So, you know, if you, if you, um, are on their, uh, on their books, uh, you might pick up some busi­ness from oth­er peo­ple in their books and vice ver­sa. Um, so that’s, uh, that’s cog. What else can I say about them? Um, they have, uh, they rep­re­sent 8.9 bil­lion per annum of net asset financ­ing. So that’s the, through the bro­kers on their books and, and the loans that they’ve, um, sourced from the, the big lenders. They [00:43:00] oper­ate through a num­ber of dif­fer­ent, uh, uh, ban­ners. Like for exam­ple, in this inno­v­a­tive leas­ing space, uh, they oper­ate through Fleet Net­work, Pay­wise, B car wise, and a cou­ple of oth­er brands. Um, they, uh, they oper­ate peer tope lend­ing. Um. For a real brand called Equi­ty One. And, uh, that’s a fee-based busi­ness, so they’re not exposed to changes in inter­est rates. Um, so they’re, they’re kind of fair­ly, um, inno­v­a­tive. They’ve been around for 20 years. they were formed, uh. Fol­low­ing the merg­er of two asset finance aggre­ga­tors being Con­sol­i­dat­ed Finance Group and Plat­form Finance Group. Uh, con­sol­i­dat­ed Finance Group was orig­i­nal­ly estab­lished in 2005 and Plat­form Finance in 2010. sep­a­rate aggre­ga­tion busi­ness­es, they com­pli­ment­ed their mod­els with com­pli­ance sys­tems and infra­struc­ture to sup­port the asset finance bro­ker­ing firms and bro­kers who were part of their [00:44:00] groups. so that’s the his­to­ry. They’ve been around for a while. I think they were spun out of, uh, a larg­er busi­ness when, um, this divi­sion was, uh, set up, uh, and became prof­itable and the oper­a­tors saw some oppor­tu­ni­ties. Uh, and it’s, it’s, you know, been around for 20 years, been suc­cess­ful since then. Um, recent­ly in the news, uh, back in. Uh, March, and this is from the AFR. Uh, eyes on Cog Finan­cials reg­is­ter after Tony Robin­son Storms the board accord­ing to the AFR 26. to quote this arti­cle, grab the pop­corn. Things are about to get inter­est­ing at Cog Finan­cial Ser­vices. A sleepy lit­tle rollup of broking leas­ing and lend­ing busi­ness­es cap­i­tal­ized at $189 mil­lion on the ASX Finan­cial Ser­vices exec­u­tive, Tony Robin­son, who last year sold ASX list­ed PSE Insur­ance to UK Giant. [00:45:00] Donor for 2.2 bil­lion was announced as cogs new chair­man after Wednes­day’s mar­ket closed.

This is Wednes­day at the end of March. He’s brought along anoth­er PSC oper­a­tive John Dwyer as a non-exec­u­tive direc­tor investors are expect­ing mir­a­cles both at the busi­ness lev­el and in its m and a prospects. the ASX fil­ings missed is this Robin­son’s arrival has also sparked a change on its share­hold­er reg­is­ter. Street talk can reveal NAOs Asset Man­age­ment and cog direc­tor Cameron McCul­loch’s. C uh, GEGM invest­ments, where the sell­ers behind the par­cel of about 28 mil­lion COG shares trad­ed by Stock­bro­ker Mor­gan short­ly after 6:00 PM That’s not sur­pris­ing. Giv­ing nails last year halved stake from 31.2% to 16.56% while McCul­loch’s just moved to an NED, um, et cetera, et cetera.

So. A few things hap­pen­ing. It [00:46:00] does­n’t look like the share price. Price has done much since then, but it has been going up pos­si­bly because of this, uh, Tony Robin­son get­ting on the board and peo­ple expect­ing, um, m and a activ­i­ty. Um, he cer­tain­ly has a track record for it with, uh, the insur­ance com­pa­ny that he sold, um, after grow­ing. so. He’s, he’s, he’s see­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty in this space and has, um, onto the board. He, uh, I should say he’s, he and Dwyer his friend, will be grant­ed 2.5 mil­lion unlist­ed options with a one $30 exer­cise price and a 31st of March, 2028 expiry. Um, so that’s a 38.2% share price increase that the X‑P-S-S‑C duo think COG is capa­ble of deliv­er­ing in the next three years. cog word, uh, cog word down. Um, up until March 33% for the past 12 months. So, um, we’ll see, see what hap­pens. Watch this space. And again, per­haps [00:47:00] this, uh, Tony Robin­son has seen things to like about this com­pa­ny as, as we are. Um, lat­est results rev­enue was up 7%. M Pat was down 3%, but, uh, they, uh, add back a whole heap of trans­ac­tions, adjust­ments because of the roll ups and claim 3% growth on an adjust­ed basis. I’m not sure if that’s the way to mea­sure the com­pa­ny. Um, I kin­da like npa, but, um, down 3% rev­enue up. I’m gonna use the QAV, going through the QAV num­bers. I’m going to use June 20, 24 num­bers so we don’t have in Stock Doc­tor Decem­ber num­bers for some rea­son, I’m not sure why. Uh. But, um, so these are going back ways, this basis, uh, you know, there were, there were good num­bers.

Stock price, uh, used was a dol­lar 53, was greater than IV one of 46 cents and IV two of a dol­lar 21. Um, but was 10% above con­sen­sus fore­cast. So, um, we’re see­ing val­ue. The [00:48:00] mar­ket is not nec­es­sar­i­ly, so a DT is around $300,000. So, um, not over­ly large, but would suit port­fo­lios up to about a mil­lion dol­lars.

Um. In total val­ue, uh, com­pa­nies pay­ing a div­i­dend of, uh, a yield of 4.8%, which is pret­ty good, but not quite high enough to score for US Stock Doc­tor to finan­cial health and trend is strong and recov­er­ing, and we like recov­er­ing com­pa­nies and we score at, um, a two for that stocked qual­i­ty rank is only 59 and the REST score is five out of nine. and COG is marked down in the REST score for things such as long-term debt is increas­ing. but that’s not a bad thing. So if you’re an equip­ment leas­er, you want long-term debt to be increas­ing because you are then on sell­ing it out, break­ing it up and on, sell­ing it out in small equip­ment loans at a high­er price.

So that’s, that’s show­ing growth in the busi­ness. So, I know the F score is, is a pret­ty good thing, but when it comes to finan­cial com­pa­nies it can [00:49:00] get a bit skewed. So, um, uh, ency­clo­pe­dia have it as qual­i­ty score of 59, large­ly because of that increas­ing debt. The over­all stock rank though in stock Edia is 96, which is, um, pret­ty good, pret­ty high. Uh, p at times of the results was 11.6, which was the low­est in six halves, but it is high­er than that now. But we will score it for that. Prop cap is 6.66 times, so it’s, uh, it’s low but it’s get­ting up towards our cut­off of sev­en. Net equi­ty per share is a dol­lar oh one, share price is a dol­lar 53. So we, um, we can’t score it for that. And I do high­light there’s a lot of good bill on this bal­ance sheet ’cause they have been aggre­gat­ing com­pa­nies. Uh, NTA is only 13 cents. so depend­ing on how you like to view things, bear that in mind. share price how­ev­er, is greater than book and book plus 30% and obvi­ous­ly greater than net tan­gi­ble assets.

So we’re not scor­ing it to be able to buy it. Uh, at book price earn­ings per share [00:50:00] growth is 33% and growth over P is 1.93. So it’s scored a two for that. and uh, there has been a direc­tor around since 2016. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, that was the guy men­tioned in the AFR, uh, AFR arti­cle who’d sold down near­ly half his shares.

So Cameron McCul­loch, um, is still list­ing own­er­ship at 16% even though, um, he sold down. He has been around for a long time. I could­n’t quite, I. Call him an own­er founder, but, um, he’s cer­tain­ly been along for the ride for a long time with this com­pa­ny. So I’m gonna score him as an own­er, founder, um, and give it a score for that. It’s, uh, a recent three point trend line uptrend does­n’t have con­sis­tent increas­ing equi­ty and over­all scores, 14 out of 16 for qual­i­ty with a few twos in there on the, on the check­list, uh, and um, the QAV score of 0.13. [00:51:00] So get­ting down towards the bot­tom of the buy list and cer­tain­ly the prop calf was get­ting up towards our thresh­old, risks.

The founder, Cameron McCul­loch, sold near­ly half his stake at the end of March. And I think the share price has been up since then, so he might ru that, but, uh, pos­si­ble he had to do that to, to allow, uh, the, um, Robin­son and his mate to get onto the reg­is­ter. I’m not sure. Um, but the pos­i­tive was, um, this expe­ri­enced oper­a­tor in the, in the finance sec­tor, Tony Robin­son becom­ing chair of the com­pa­ny.

So that’s, uh, cog Finan­cial.

Cameron: Hmm. Thank you, Tony. We do own it in a light port­fo­lio. We’ve held it for about a year. It’s up about 12% since we bought it, so not shoot­ing out the lights, but that’s not bad. 12, 12% up in a year. I’ll take that. There you go. Very good. Um, well, [00:52:00] what else have I got? Uh, noth­ing. I think that’s it. After hours.

Tony Kynas­ton: not about after hours. lots have you got for us? How the hors­es,

Yeah. Good. We had a win last Mon­day. We did­n’t know we talked about oh

week, Blac had a

Cameron: no, we had,

Tony Kynas­ton: We had Navar­ro on Blac had a win, which hmm.

And Quel­lo Dora­to races tomor­row being Wednes­day the 25th of June, race three in sale. So I think at this stage is the favorite in the mar­ket, but see. Um, I dun­no when you put this out, I’ve post­ed it on the Face­book group as well, if any­one’s, um, inter­est­ed. Uh, that might be, um, well, it’s worth watch­ing any­way. As I said before, I went to see the French impres­sion­ist at the NGV, which was a exhi­bi­tion. real­ly well pre­sent­ed.

 Uh, well, van Gogh’s always to high­light. fun­ny thing is

Cameron: What did they [00:53:00] have?

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, the house in, what’s it called?

Cameron: Well,

Tony Kynas­ton: or, or turns, I can’t remem­ber what the, what the called. It’s a one of Van Gogh’s, very ear­ly impres­sion­ist ones. Um, it’s, it’s a rur­al scene. The fun­ny thing was though, that, um, Alex brought me the jig­saw puz­zle for­ward at Christ­mas time from the NGV. So they were either oh wow.

but I think this was actu­al­ly an exhi­bi­tion held over Hmm.

COVID time, so they could­n’t put it on. Um, it’s, uh, I think it comes from the Boston Gallery, one of the paint­ings I’d either seen before or seen some from. The series so sim­i­lar, obvi­ous­ly, there’s a lot of Mon­et in there.

There’s some Manet, um, Sici­ly’s. So yeah, I kind of like, felt like I’d seen a lot before, but, um, it’s pre­sent­ed real­ly well. So they’ve, kind of set up dif­fer­ent rooms, um, and dec­o­rat­ed them in the peri­od style of, uh, of what would’ve been [00:54:00] a salon at that time, I guess. And, uh, that was real­ly inter­est­ing.

I thought so, real­ly well pre­sent­ed exhi­bi­tion and I was a guest of, uh, my stock­bro­ker or Minette, so it was, uh, was­n’t an over­ly crowd­ed way to see it, um, which was real­ly nice too. So that was good. Um, I watched Kel­ly’s Heroes again last night. Speak­ing of bur burn­ing bridges and big, beau­ti­ful bridges.

Yeah, just hap­pened to be on Fox­tel last night, so I watched

Cameron: Oh, real­ly? Oh,

that’s great.

 Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: but I still love Don­ald Suther­land’s per­for­mance and, um, you

Cameron: And Don,

Don Rick­les. Yeah,

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: yeah, yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: a lot. I always think of Don Rick­les. Yeah.

one of the

Cameron: Oh, real­ly? Yeah. So real­ly? Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm.

Cameron: cast.

Tony Kynas­ton: Movie flags towards the end. But the start’s bril­liant. Just, uh, yeah, it’s a beau­ti­ful bridge. It’s gonna be there. Don’t gimme the neg­a­tive waves. [00:55:00] Uh,

Cameron: I wa I watched a film I haven’t seen in, uh, 16 years, and I know that because it’s the film that I put on the night. Chris­sy moved here from Seat­tle for the peo­ple who came back to our house after the wel­come din­ner, uh, which is the fly. David Cro­nen­berg. Jeff Gold­blum

Tony Kynas­ton: yeah. the fly. Uh, so I had­n’t seen it since then and I had­n’t seen it 20 years since then.

Cameron: Oh, it’s fan­tas­tic. Absolute­ly fan­tas­tic. Like gold bloom, it’s 86, right? Gold bloom is pure gold bloom At the begin­ning of it, like, you know, we think of gold Gold­blum, you know, doing the, um, the, the dia­logue, uh, deliv­ery, uh, like this. And I know, and I’ve seen him in roles in the eight­ies where he did­n’t do that.

But in this one, the open­ing scene, he’s at a, like a sci­ence par­ty where Gina da, he’s hit­ting on Gina Davis, who’s a jour­nal­ist, and [00:56:00] straight out­ta the gate he’s doing. Clas­sic gold bloom. Uh, you should, uh, I’m work­ing on this, uh, thing and it’s, uh, real­ly remark­able. You should come back to my place. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, Yeah.

Cameron: then he, he talks into going to his lab to see this thing, and as soon as he walks in the lab, there’s a upright piano and he sits down and starts play­ing a lit­tle jazz num­ber on the upright piano. I’m like, well, that could­n’t have been in the script. I was talk­ing to Hunter about it, break­fast on the week­end and say­ing, you know, gold bloom had, you know, that all of the, uh, the, the, the, uh, paus­es and, and all that, you know, it’s not in the script.

He’s. Devel­oped this style of deliv­ery and, you know, sci­en­tists, uh, build­ing a tele­por­ta­tion sys­tem, has a jazz, has a piano and plays. Jazz, isn’t in the script. He’s just gone to Kro­nen­berg. You know what, I, I play jazz piano. Would­n’t it be fun if we put that in? So he’s like, worked all the stuff in and it’s fan­tas­tic.

But any­way, it’s great. The spe­cial effects are great. Like I always love [00:57:00] Cro­nen­berg, his abil­i­ty to make stuff hor­ri­fy­ing and creepy. And even though it’s late eight­ies stuff, it’s great ’cause it’s phys­i­cal effects. It’s, um, gross and hor­ri­ble and ter­ri­ble. Almost like Lynchi­an kind of ter­ri­fy­ing stuff. But it holds up well, you know, I mean, the make­up, when he’s turn­ing into the fly, you know, it’s not up to.

20, 21st cen­tu­ry stan­dards by any means. But it’s great. It’s hor­ri­fy­ing. He’s pulling his teeth out and pulling his fin­ger­nails off and all the goos­es com­ing out and that kin­da stuff. It’s real­ly still quite vis­cer­al­ly dis­gust­ing, uh, how­ev­er many years lat­er it is. So, yeah, no, I loved it. I loved every­thing about it.

Gina Davis is hot.

 He’s f it’s got the clas­sic, it’s got the clas­sic, um, douche boss, her boss who’s a douchey Rea­gan era dude with a suit who’s try­ing to sleep with her and treat­ing her like she’s just trash. And [00:58:00] it’s, you know, the clas­sic eight­ies every film in the eight­ies, like Die Hard and all of those had the Ghost­busters, all had the, the trashy, trashy male misog­y­nis­tic boss who’s try­ing to sleep with the sleep with his staff.

Any­way, yeah, good. High­ly rec­om­mend

Tony Kynas­ton: I, I

Cameron: Tay­lor. Got

Tay­lor got robbed.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh.

Cameron: Stand­ing out front of a night­club. Uh, the oth­er day appar­ent­ly chat­ting up a girl and some­body ran into him real­ly hard and kept going, like bumped into him walk­ing past. And then about 30 sec­onds lat­er, he t tweaked and he checked his front pock­et and his phone was gone.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, no.

Cameron: They stole his iPhone. Yeah. So there you go. He was pissed about that.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. he had any oth­er neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences in LA ’cause of the riots or the, no. Okay.

Cameron: He says he does­n’t, he would­n’t even know what’s [00:59:00] going on. He’s in Hol­ly­wood

Tony Kynas­ton: Yep.

Cameron: it’s like two, it’s down­town, which is two sub­urbs over, but we know sub­urbs in LA are big, but he says, no, you would­n’t even know it’s hap­pen­ing there. So, so far, so good. Um, still read­ing the Gor­bachev mem­oirs, which are fas­ci­nat­ing.

He’s just become gen­er­al sec­re­tary, so it’s into. Him try­ing to fig­ure out how to roll out Perk­er in the ear­ly part of the, well, the ear­ly part of his, uh, term as gen­er­al sec­re­tary. So 85, 86, which is inter­est­ing. And, uh, Chris­sy and I are going to see a string quar­tet on Thurs­day night at pac.

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: See KO’s string quar­tet, num­ber eight being per­formed.

Super excit­ed.

Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, good. Yeah.

Cameron: Part of my Shostakovich obses­sion. I’ve nev­er seen him per­formed live before. So excit­ed [01:00:00] about that. Yeah. And we had din­ner with Peter Ard and his part­ner Robin, as I said last night, which was, uh, love­ly. He’s 88 going strong, sharp as a attack. He’s just signed a three year con­tract with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land to work in their sus­tain­able futures, uh, depart­ment or some­thing, social sci­ences depart­ment 88.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: Hmm. Yeah.

Tony Kynas­ton: year con­tract this.

Cameron: Yeah. But you know, he’s, I’ve known him for 25 years and he’s, uh, just the same, like, you know, as far as I can tell, he walks a bit slow­er, but no dete­ri­o­ra­tion of his men­tor fac­ul­ties at 88. So, um, we, we had lunch on Sun­day and, you know, a cou­ple of hours, him and I debat­ing every­thing from Trump, Putin, Stal­in, Iran, ai, the Labor Par­ty, just a wide rang­ing top­ic of [01:01:00] every­thing, you know, he’s, um, intel­lec­tu­al pow­er­house.

So

Tony Kynas­ton: Wow. You it’s impres­sive.

of it and record­ed it.

Cameron: I’ve done lots of pod­casts with Peter over the years. You know, it’s just lots of Peter just get­ting on his soap­box and talk­ing about all of his ideas that all of his books,

Tony Kynas­ton: Mm-hmm.

Cameron: um. Yeah, no, but he’s, uh, always fun to hang out. Like just, I, I I I can only hope to be that, um, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, um, acute in my late eight­ies, you know, or alive in my late eight­ies for a start, let alone that intel­lec­tu­al­ly acute, you know?

Tony Kynas­ton: And opti­mistic enough to sign

Cameron: Alright.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: Peter, Peter is the world’s great­est opti­mist. You know, he’s, he’s still telling me, oh, I think, you know, the Trumps and the Putins and the Xi Jin­ping’s are on their way out. You know, we’ve got this mid­dle class that’s gonna do [01:02:00] this and every­one, you know, it’s all, you know, the peo­ple aren’t gonna, you know, stand for author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments.

And I was like, yeah. I don’t know, man. I think that’s high­ly opti­mistic. Uh, he’s very, very opti­mistic about every­thing. It’s, it’s his, it’s his best and his worst qual­i­ty. I think he’s like incred­i­bly opti­mistic, but to the point where I find it naive­ly opti­mistic. But, uh, hey, I’m not 88, so you know, what do I know?

He’s been around a lot longer than me. He,

Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm. At least still opti­mistic.

Cameron: it.

Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

Cameron: Yes. Imag­ine being still opti­mistic at 88.

Tony Kynas­ton: And not, not as cyn­i­cal as I am already.

Cameron: Yeah. All right. QAV a good week, Tony.

Tony Kynas­ton: Hap­py ASX.

[01:03:00] [01:04:00]