AFR has a dip at RW

Interesting little rear window article in the AFR today having a go at Richard White and his withdrawals from the WTC ATM. Extract below. I’ve been very happy with the rise of WTC over last few years even with the odd roller coaster but there is a level of key man risk

But here’s the thing. White is, actually, nowhere near as boring as he makes out. He has many, many houses, both prestige and prosaic, reflecting a voracious and broad appetite for Sydney property. He spends his winters in Saint-Tropez with his glamorous girlfriend. And he definitely doesn’t invest his wealth into WiseTech. Or he hasn’t, for many years.What White actually does is take money out of WiseTech, to the tune of $1.1 billion in share sales alone, mostly over the past four years. It’s a veritable cash deluge not even White’s property plays have been enough to soak. Maybe he’s stuffing it in the mattress, or spending it in Europe, or buying up warehouses full of leather jackets. All preferable, evidently, to keeping it in the logistics business he founded.In the two months to June alone, White sold $166 million worth of shares across seven separate 3Y notifications at an average pace of $24 million a week.This follows years of earlier sales, most of which have come since 2020 when he ran three separate “trading programs” resulting in regular, highly lucrative weekly sales. We’ve tracked these US-style divestment programsalmost as closely as we’ve tracked his related party transactions (he’s WiseTech’s US commercial landlordas well as its CEO) and property purchases.Of course, we couldn’t begrudge the guy some diversification. The question here is: who does he think he’s fooling?!White regularly scoffs at sceptics who say the company’s best days are behind it. He still owns 35.8 per cent of the company (down from 51 per cent at the 2016 float), and his personal wealth (to lesser and lesser extent) still relies on everyone else continuing to think it’s a good time to buy in.The thing is, White isn’t buying in. He’s taking cash off the table, insisting upon WiseTech’s future fortunes all while steadily seeking his own elsewhere. Does he think no one notices? Here’s some free advice he can certainly afford to pay for: they do.