John Linton
.........or is just my 'eyesight' suffering from cataract growth at an amazing speed?
Trying to work out what is happening in the current ADSL market places is hard enough but making even a wide ranging estimate of what may happen in the April - June quarter that is only a couple of weeks away is, at least for me, completely impossible - for the first time in almost 9 years of pretty close association with the supply and sale of ADSL services in Australia. I have always been able to make pretty accurate estimates as to what will happen over the coming 3/6/12 month periods and as time moves and the actual results as they happen become real my estimates and forecasts pretty much match the realities - which has always been re-assuring in continuing to decide where to invest our very limited funds and which major areas of the marketplaces to pursue. But now, I don't have any idea of where the market places in which we have been involved in are heading and have even less clue as to what other companies actions will be.
Pretty depressing if you have a responsibility to plan for the future and put in place actions and investments to bring those plans to reality. Not being anything but essentially pragmatic (or perhaps arrogant?) I am taking the view that if I can't see the future relatively clearly then it is probable, perhaps highly probable, that several or more than several other people in other companies are having the same problems. Because if there is anyone with a clear sense of the current market's direction it doesn't seem to be apparent to me. Perhaps all that means is that I have lost, or never had, the ability to actually understand what happened/is about to happen in ADSL markets and its suppliers. Then I look back over the past nine years and decide that is unlikely to be the case.....but I certainly can't see what is going to happen in the next three months.
So - this becomes an issue, not today, but over the coming 6 - 9 months but does make some significant decision making today more difficult that it has been than in any time we have operated Exetel. For instance - investing another $A8 million in Exetel to buy two SCCC STM16s which have a theoretical 'life of ten years' only has a relevance if there is a need for that band width in 2020. If there is only a need of it for 2 years then the finance equations change dramatically. Similarly buying additional real estate (or even committing to the rental of additional real estate) becomes very different. Then there are the less large decisions like employee growth decisions and hardware investments and.....all the other trivia involved in running a company of Exetel's size.
I spent most of Sunday playing with different scenarios of our Australian and Sri Lankan 'business plans' and finished up totally confused....I needed a Mrs Victor (especially as played by Miranda Richardson) to tell me "Jim - you think too much"....because the conclusion I came to was to just do what we have been doing for the past six years - reducing every cost we can by automation and 'discussion' and to aim at the lowest possible profit margins consistent with not losing money and making enough money to support the endangered species we have committed to assist. I realised I had wasted another Sunday on pointless speculation and got nowhere. There are no real changes we can make in the short term to the long term objectives we have aspired to since we began the business although current circumstances are very different. I wish i was more certain about what changes will occur over the coming months - but I don't - and messing around with the closed loop that is bound by the limits of the information I currently have is as fruitless an exercise as it ever was. A total waste of time.
Next Sunday I am going to take a few days off to 'celebrate' a key birthday of most people's working lives in Japan with my wife and those of my children who can be spared to spend time away from their employer's needs for them so frivolously. I chose Japan as the 'venue' for this occasion as I would like to show some of the people closest to me two things that changed my perception of working life so completely when I went there for the first time in my 'adult' life some thirty years ago. If that doesn't work out then we will hopefully enjoy a few days in a different cultural environment.
I have wasted too many weekends over the last six years and now have too few to waste any more.
PS: Another analysis explaining why the 'NBN2' remains a craven political sound byte attempting to cover up a major election promise breaking fiasco:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/how-highspeed-broadband-will-be-the-death-of-telstra-20100314-q60n.html