It is the highest quality business in my portfolio and it is attractively priced.
Plus for a company at this size, you hardly see founders still in the business.
Rod recently left Xero which is a bad sign. REA's CEO recently stepped down. CEOs who are hired generally make short-term decisions based on EPS or EBITDA numbers one year out not ten. They might not even be in the business in the next 10 years so why make long-term decisions. Just make the short-term ones and get your bonus.
With Andrew, it is still about the long game.
Looking at FY18 results, a hired gun would most probably cut off Brazil and Mexico because they didn't make the numbers look good. Some of them would also cut off early-stage investments and some would stop investing in the education sector completely after SEEK Learning.
Regardless of all these setbacks, the operating cash flow looks superb at $495m (excluding interest, finance costs and tax). We are cash flowing at close to 10% yield! At 15-20% growth rate, we would be cash flowing 20% within the next 10 years.
Another thing, investors also forget to look at is Zhaopin. Their main competitor, 51Jobs is valued at USD$4.5B. If you value it that way, based on current valuation, you are almost getting SEEK ANZ, SEEK Asia, Jora and other early-stage investments and OES for free. OES' sales have grown from $28m to $119m in the past year alone.
These are some of the reasons why I think SEEK is the highest quality business in my portfolio.
Management is the #1 reason.
SEK Price at posting:
$17.32 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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