Ann: Chairman's Letter to Shareholders, page-35

I for once would have a little issue with the presentation of key data on this page below, if I was in the Wavish / Mathieson camp:

• The incline of the arrow for liqour business (LHS) looks steeper than the incline of the arrow for ALH (RHS); somewhat indicating that Liqour did better than Hotels and gaming - whilst they are not!!! Growth for liquor was 4% whilst growth for Hotels was 4.8% in revenue. Must must also keep in mind that Hotel venues were restricted during COVID whilst Dan Murphys and BWS were not!!! IMHO, there is visual trickery going on in this presentation, even if you just look at the size of the respective blue blocks.
• EBIT growth was quite comparable (a difference of 0.1 percentage points over 4 years), but yet just if you don't look at the numbers Dan Murphys and BWS look unduly better than Hotels in this display.
• If you do the numbers: The liquor business turns over $9.905bn and achieves an EBIT of $0.658bn, i.e. 6.65% is netted from the revenue. If you look at the earnings of Hotels: They made a revenue of $1.979 and achieved an EBIT of $0.428bn; i.e. 21.6% is netted from the revenue!!! This makes Hotels massively more profitable per dollar employed - but the graphics don't show it.
• Taking the group picture: of a total of revenue of $11.884bn, Hotels contribute just 17% (1.979), yet their EBIT contribution is 39% of the group's EBIT. The liquor business has 83% of the revenue, but contributes only 61% of the group's EBIT of $1.086bn.

I am not surprised that the Wavish / Mathieson group - rightly or wrongly - talks about capital employment, or wants more say. At the very minimum, they can rightly be unhappy in the ways results were presented here. I am surprised though, that this kind of optical trickery was performed by the Chairman in all seriousness.

All in IMHO.