John Linton
......or anywhere else for that matter other than a few dodgy US and British banks getting their long overdue comeuppances and the dinosaurs of the US and European car industries finally facing the reality that they made poor quality vehicles of an absurd body weight and size that no-one could afford to run or even wanted?
About this time last year when we were reviewing Exetel's first quarter's results and following the ongoing downwards movement in share prices we took the first tentative steps towards taking a more cautious approach to what was then being talked about as the "Global Financial Crisis" then quickly shortened to 'GFC' as it became used in virtually every statement made by a Labor politician particularly Krudd and Whine who proceeded to use it as excuse to dump $A40 billion of borrowed money into the hands of every individual in Australia (and a fair number in other countries) to ensure that unemployment didn't reach their direly predicted numbers.
As the months rolled by the unemployment figures didn't rise very much except in the banking industry which had taken the Australian people and business for a ride for the previous decade while amassing gigantic profits and while the term 'GFC' soon became worn out by extreme over use nothing happened very much around the world other than the various governments panicked their citizens into slightly different views of their personal futures. Despite all the money borrowed to be dumped without any thought in to various hand out programs and the associated "we'll all be rooned" comments from the people not in a position to dump that borrowed money nothing else happened. There was still plenty of money for Krudd and co to jet around the world "addressing the 'GFC'" and there was still plenty of borrowed money for rich Western countries to wage war against the populations of Afghanistan and Iraq and continue to buy expensive military toys to do that with.
The price of crude oil and therefore pump petrol fell a lot, the value of the $A began a long progressive rise and various economists pronounced that not only were Australians not being affected by any sort of financial crisis but were actually on average better off by figures ranging from $A5,000 to $A11,200 per year. Today I read this:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-soars-against-pound-20091008-gp0l.html
which confirmed that shares were at a 52 week or greater highs around the world (including bank stocks in Australia) and that the $A was tracking to 25 year highs against the pound and even likely to approach parity with the $US for the first time since the $A was floated. Even I, usually the most cautious of investors, sold all our family superannuation fund owned shares as they had made a handsome 85% profit since I began purchasing shares earlier in the year and why they may well continue to rise I can think of other investments that may actually give a better return.
So for almost twelve months we have been operating the Exetel business quite cautiously but have seen no change to the rate of growth, in overall financial or customer terms, over the past twelve months as we have seen in any other twelve month period in Exetel's history - in profit terms (which we pay little heed to) we have made a little more profit in that period than we did in the preceding twelve months. The changes to the ADSL pricing and plans made at the beginning of November have increased the new application rate by around 25% and we had a record application day twice in the first few days of this month in terms of new broadband application days - strangely that growth was delivered by ADSL1 not ADSL2.
So perhaps we can become a little more adventurous than we have been over the past twelve months - at least in some ways. The overall uncertainty in our particular marketplaces (data communications) caused by the continuing nonsense of the 'NBN2' and the Labor government's threats to break up Telstra via legislation have made it much harder for a tiny company like Exetel to work out any sort of sensible future medium term strategy and our previous belief that we could base that on HSPA has been destroyed by factors beyond our control (and partly on my stupidity). Because of my personal, and Exetel's collective uncertainty about the current ADSL2 market there is no 'room' to make any 'bold' moves in ADSL or in ADSL1. So we are now more uncertain and hesitant due to the specific uncertainties in our 'industry' than we ever were in the phony "GFC" period.
There has to be a more productive way to spend the remaining time left than living with the daily chaos of a Labor government and an incompetent opposition - I must move to a democracy if any such thing exists in today's world.