Ann: Full Year Results - Financial Year Ended 30 June 2024, page-9

At this point I think the entire leadership structure needs to be completely rebuilt. It's not any individual person, it's the whole corporate culture. That's why I supported the takeover, I'd just had enough. Like I said it's been happening for 15 years. They just can't seem to grasp that commodity prices are cyclical.

They paid US$800M for Karoon's Browse Basin gas fields in 2014 at the height of the oil boom which are still sitting there untouched. Colossal waste of money.

Then oil crashed and a couple of years later they sold their entire conventional business to Beach for peanuts in a panic - including the Perth Basin assets which have proven to be the best onshore gas field in decades. Oil recovered and Beach made back the entire purchase price in 2 years. They've taken a writedown now on some of those assets but they certainly made a packet in the meantime. Origin could have bought up and secured the entire Perth Basin very cheaply if they'd had the foresight, instead they divested it at the bottom of the market.

Then there's obviously commodity weakness during Covid so they divest 10% of APLNG. Then surprise surprise, it cycles again, this time due to Ukraine. The 10% they gifted away is raking in money.

2022 NEM is in crisis due to renewables flooding the market and sending coal plants broke so they try and sell the entire company. Surprise surprise, market self-corrects and recovers, valuation proven to be too low, which everyone in the entire market seemed to know except Origin's board who thought it was a good deal and even delayed the vote to try and get it across the line.

When I have seen ORG management comment on this they make the argument that they are too highly leveraged so when the market goes south they need to divest for safety. No doubt that's true, APLNG was a huge debt load for a company Origin's size, but then they should be stress-testing the business, realising they can't for example support the conventional business if oil crashes, and divesting it at a cyclical high for a good price. Not waiting until it all hits the fan and then having to sell in a firesale.