ceo`s previous company`s growth

RE: Greg Baker the managing director of
Customers Ltd.
The former boss of Cashcard, created Australia's largest non-bank network of ATMs
prior to selling out to the Yanks for $335 million. Early investors in Cashcard increased their
original outlay a staggering 100-fold (that's 10,000 per cent) over 10 years.
Two years have passed and now Mr Baker is calling the shots at Customers Ltd, a company with
striking similarities to Cashcard.
Customers owns and operates a network of 1700 automatic teller machines throughout Australia,
most of which are the ``no-name'' ATMs found in pubs, clubs and convenience stores.
Withdraw cash from one of these machines and your bank will levy a fee of at least $1.50 for using
a ``foreign'' ATM - industry jargon for a machine not owned by your bank. It's this fee that
generates most of Customers' income.
As owner of the teller machine, it receives $1.10 from each transaction, with the user's bank taking
the remaining 40. Out of its $1.10, Customers then pays interchange fees and other costs, such as
maintenance and security guards to deliver the cash, but it's still left with a healthy profit. So much
so that it can usually generate enough income from a new ATM to repay its cost within 12-18
months.
In January 06, Customers signed a joint venture with Bendigo Bank to build an independent payment
processing business.
Bendigo and Customers currently pay third-party banks to approve and process the millions of
ATM transactions on their machines. By having their own payments-processing operations the two
will be able to lower costs.
``By joining with Bendigo we immediately have scale, with 100 million transactions a year,'' Mr
Baker said. ``The venture will be self-sufficient from day one.
``The lower costs, greater functionality and more modern technology actually creates more business
opportunities.''
Having the capability to process payments means Customers will potentially be able to offer
retailers eftpos and kiosk systems (for paying bills, mobile phone top-ups etc), which should further
drive its revenues in the years ahead.

Analyst Martin Pretty said Customers was well positioned to benefit from proposed reforms of the
ATM system.
``The Reserve Bank of Australia appears to have elected not to completely overhaul the current fee
system, instead indicating it will support ATM owners like Customers who wish to introduce
alternative fee structures,'' Mr Pretty said.
He highlighted the company's high level of debt and the threat of criminal activity (the escalation of
ram-raid attacks on ATMs) as key risks to the company's growth.
Mr Baker said Customers had only lost two machines to ram-raids and was protected from major
losses as it did not own the cash inside its machines and required vendors (pubs and convenience
store owners) to insure their ATMs.
CCZ Statton Equities analyst Chris Prunty said that Mr Baker's track record at Cashcard has been
the main driver of Customers' spectacular share price growth over the past year.
``Baker was successful at Cashcard and the market is putting its faith in him to do the same again,''
he said.