“curious time” for an equity raising, page-9

It probably has got more centres in its sights. There are nearly 17,000 childcare centres in Australia [number extracted from http://ifp.mychild.gov.au], and GEM has only a few hundred of them. ABC Learning had over 1,000 centres when it collapsed, and I would expect GEM to try to get well past that total. ABC sank under weight of debt, and GEM will have learned from that debacle not to over-use debt. I expect GEM therefore to progressively add to both debt and equity as it builds up its portfolio. I'm actually not wildly enthusiastic about that, because I think shareholders would be better served if GEM grew (more slowly) using only debt and profits.