I hear all that, and you probably won't be too surprised when I say that I concur. Destruction of shareholder value by capital hungry businesses, run by managers who believe that they are blessed with the ability to make grand strategic allocations (of capital), despite their dismal track record, is de rigueur for a large ASX listed company. This, of course, is excacerbated by the pretense of "shareholder alignment" that stock options offer ("heads" we win, "tails" you lose).
Experience tells me that the worse the culprit, the more laden with smily faces, corporate strategies, colorful charts, box-ticking-laden re gender diversity, environmental sustainability, community giving, etc etc, are the annual reports. Where's my bucket?
Companies like REH, ARB and ONT are the antithesis of this. And a huge part of the reason thst I am willing to buy them on a high multiple.
DLX is not a business I am too familiar with. Clearly it has incredible brands, and I am guessing, commensurately attractive economics. A quick look at their annual reports indicates that they are clearly a different beast from REH and ARB (in character). They also seem to carry substantial debt. On a superficial assessment, I am guessing they are not run by managers who of as independent a mindset as what I ideally like (if I'm going to buy a business at a high multiple).
With respect to ORI, you may know that they have new management (now headed by Alberto Calderon). The new management has been making much noise about the reckless capital allocation that occured at the top of the cycle. Whilst I'm not going to buy a business on the basis of lip, I do think that a business at the bottom of the cycle, which has been bruised by capital spending in boom times, is likely to have become a born-again Scrooge, for a few years anyway.
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