I understand both sides of the argument, and am of the opinion that G8, with some operational changes could deliver to both shareholders and families.
There are some very good educators working for G8, there are also a lot of young and inexperienced educators working in many centres (not only G8's) the National Quality Standards (NQS) regulation changes on qualified staff and staff to child ratio's left centres desperately trying to recruit staff and fear of non compliance has led to (in some cases) quantity of staff not quality staff within centres.
IMO G8 need to offload some of those smaller non profitable centres. Any centre with licensed places 39 and under should be carefully assessed.
In their last reports they supplied figures for some groups of their centres. I think this form of reporting fails to identify localised issues. An example would be the Community Kids group, their biggest group holding, that has a large number of centres spread across four states. This group would probably have between 30/40 centre managers, over fifteen area managers and four regional managers. Assessing the performance of centres, identifying challenges and finding solutions should be examined by area, not by group.
Things have steadied at G8, the departure of Affinity from the ASX and JH from corporate childcare are, IMO contributing factors. Identifying and addressing areas of need within individual centres will keep families happy, happy families will improve occupancy, that will improve profits and shareholders will make plenty of lolly. It is achievable.
GEM Price at posting:
$3.79 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
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