Ann: Pause in Trading, page-45

Thank you . Perhaps more Sydney people have enough money to spend on discretionary items then Geelong people.
My contrarian view on a takeover is to question why it would be so attractive to either private equity or to another company. 2023 sales were flat compared to 2022, and profit was down (from memory) about 38%. In the update at the AGM it was stated that sales for the first twenty weeks of FY24 were down 11% compared to FY23, so profit will look ugly. For a while I feared that it would go bankrupt. I am less fearful of that now, but still consider that Dusk was one of my big mistakes. My cost base is $2. There is a chance that over several years it will reach that again, as the economy gradually improves. If the company survives to 2032, perhaps the Olympics will be a catalyst, with all the international visitors.
Conditions now are abnormally bad, but they were abnormally good during the pandemic, so the truth is somewhere in between.