Annoyingly, the presentation ceased from 1000 to 1009 AEDT...

Annoyingly, the presentation ceased from 1000 to 1009 AEDT before resuming, as there was some major problem with the conference call. After that, the line was again quite poor, so maybe check later on that TIKR website (which has many transcripts of company conference calls) to make sure I heard everything correctly.

Mr John King made the point that MYR was now one of the biggest online retailers in Oz. As a comparison, David Jones' online is $365 million and ADH $187m.

The number of new members of the MYR ONE rewards program rose 168 per cent faster than in FY 20.

Mr King said that improved store formats at locations as diverse as Werribee (Melbourne) and Bondi (Junction) (Sydney) were delivering improved results in trading (and presumably profit).

The aim is to have 'cleaner' inventory. (I assume this means fewer items that sit on shelves unsold for many months, or have to be eventually cleared). Stock turn is at about four per annum: MYR wants to increase this.

Giving a brief trading update, Mr King said online sales had been rising. (That won't surprise many).

He said as soon as stores reopen from lockdowns, 'they start flying'.

MYR now (sadly) has a lot of experience in closing (due to lockdowns) and reopening stores.

With MYR ONE, Mr King noted that Virgin Australia had doubled its membership base from five to 10 million. (It though went broke, so not to my mind a company to refer to).

The Board has not discussed a spin-off of the MYR ONE loyalty program despite, as one analyst said, shopper satisfaction (net promoter score or similar) 'going through the roof'. (What I like is the consistent rise over the past four FYs: see the slides).

MYR can switch between physical stores and online sales, meeting the needs of Australians whether or not particular stores are in lockdown.

The number of active MYR shoppers has increased overall (counting both those who shop only in bricks-and-mortar stores, those who only shop online or those who do both) during the past year.

Access to brands has been helped by the success of some like (Polo?) that have been ranged. MYR sees itself as a 'brand builder' not a 'brand taker'.

I tried to get in the queue to ask questions but for some reason the connection didn't seem to work.

Who knows what Mr Solomon Lew will think, but to me, given the headwinds imposed via the Sydney and Melbourne lockdowns, MYR is doing fairly well at present. There a lot of room for online expansion if we ever get out of the COVID-19 one trick pony policy situation.