The size and established nature of Lineage Logistics with thousands (!!) of employees globally means his salary and bennies most definitely jumped substantially vs those at a startup, in addition to a more prestigious job title. It is important to remember that startups aren't for everyone as they require a much more dynamic approach, carry a substantially higher career risk (e.g. risk of failure and impact is higher the older one is), and the modus operandi is less structured than what many executives in their 40s and 50s have become used to. That's one of the reasons the turnover rate of traditional industry execs that joined fast-paced industries and/or startups has been historically very high. And that's not even considering the prestige factor of being able to brag at cocktail parties that you manage 500 people or more and have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars. So from a career progression and planning perspective of a mid/late-career professional that move makes perfect sense. For someone with several startups under his belt and seeing the kind of structured, hierarchical firms that Steven's worked for (per his Winedepot bio), I reckon the cushy nature of a GM role at a large global player was a massive vertical move opportunity with immediate career progression & financial benefits that were too good to turn down. Let's be honest, it's hard to argue with that, and good for him leveraging his experience at DW8 as a springboard to a bigger role. The rather curated nature of his LinkedIn profile experience supports that theory as he's cut of any experience below a CxO level which carries its own connotations imo.
Steven wasn't a director so his departure doesn't require a filing under Listing Rule 3.1., nor was he tied in with a share incentive (as far as I can ascertain from filings). So his economic leverage from the success of the venture is not comparable to that of individuals tied in, and who one could argue are thus seen as more critical to the firm's LT success. That doesn't undermine his contribution and work in any way over the past year, but it helps put things into a perspective. And as any startup CEO knows, skill sets required during different stages of a firm's development change and while a year ago Steven's experience may have been more critical, the bench is now a lot deeper with several people who possess substantial logistics experience, including Munn and Stankovski. While none of us can comment on notice period terms of Steven's contract, it is noteworthy to remember Dean's apt saying to 'hire long and fire short'. That motto makes a lot of sense in a startup and would imply that unless he's 100% certain a person is irreplaceable the contract terms agreed wouldn't prevent him from acting accordingly -- and that goes both ways. That doesn't mean this is what happened here, it is simply for context. Who gets shares awarded and who doesn't usually has been a fairly good guide for their relevance within well-run firms and I certainly don't put DW8 into the same basket as firms perpetually milking shareholders and enriching themselves by transferring their wealth via CRs to sustain otherwise uneconomical operations. So that's another indicator to consider.
The logistics backbone is in place and has been road-tested during the past year performing well even during crisis times. The technology platform capabilities have been expanded to where beta besting for the Marketplace is in progress which will offer additional SaaS components on top of the IaaS aspects. The firm's bench has been expanded and includes several individuals bringing additional experience in those mission-critical areas who also bring entrepreneurial experience and those are tied into the financial success of the firm. Structural trends in the industry are aligned favorably and numerous leaders in the wine/beverage industry categories have signed up and more are signing up, validating the needs for this type of industry solutions suite. And most importantly, we are just beginning the second component of the multi-pronged strategy that eventually will go beyond Australia. Last week's Bibendum news IMO is not yet fully understood in terms of what it truly means for the firm and the meaningful impact this will have on DW8 fundamentals (i.e. its financials), but also in terms of signaling to other distributors that their business models can adapt and prosper as the degrees of separation between consumers and producers in the wine and beverage industry continue to shrink. Not sure about you, but I have to repeatedly take a step back to avoid getting lost in the weeds when evaluating where we are vs. where we reasonably can be expected to be in 1, 3 and 5 years. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. DYOR, GLTAH.
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