Directors, shareholders Express things differentlyChristopher...

Directors, shareholders Express things differently

Christopher Webb
November 13, 2005

Directors of Bill Express presented a bullish picture to shareholders at the company's annual meeting on Thursday as they fielded questions about the weak share price and funding arrangements.

The scrip recently lost 23 per cent in one day following a newspaper report outlining the relationship between Bill Express and controlling shareholder Australian Pure Fruits.

Chairman Peter McDougall responded: "It has been said that all publicity is good publicity but I think we could have done without that. The shares have recovered and I don't think there are any other issues. We have good projects under way and excellent announcements that are continuing as we have historically done."

Executive officer Ian Christiansen said: "There's isn't a lot of value in the company responding to articles which have a fair bit of flexibility in them . . . we don't see any point."

The relationship with APF had been disclosed in the prospectus, that money lent by Bill Express to APF had been paid back and that Bill Express was the beneficiary of technology developed by APF, he said.

"We think the best thing we can do to answer it is to continue on with the business and grow it forward."

One shareholder asked about the identity of Maple Finance, a lender to Bill Express. The shareholder also asked about the accompanying 11.3 per cent interest rate.

Financial officer Marc Lichtenstein responded that Maple was a private company operating out of Canada.

"This company has $19 billion of assets under management, so as you can see it's quite a significant entity," he said.

Maple had been a strong supporter of Bill Express "from very early on in the piece and no Australian institutions at the inauguration of the business were prepared to be involved in funding the financing facility that was required", he said.

Refinancing of the facility was under consideration.

Meanwhile, Christiansen said that Bill Express, which provides bill payment facilities through newsagents and other outlets, had built a successful network "that will continue this year to provide strong growth of 50 per cent to 75 per cent".

"We're not putting out guidance or forecasts as far as profitability growth (is concerned, but) obviously we would expect that it would grow at least in line with revenue . . . because we have so many new products that we could do so much with, we think that profit projections might be a little bit difficult."