EQT bids for waste, football; Telstra outage costs CEO; LA Lakers sold for $17b
News in brief
Growing mobile revenue, thanks to price hikes, has helped Telstra report a three per cent jump in full year profit to $2.4 billion, but net revenue was lower. On average, Telstra now earns $45.30 per mobile user, per month.
ANZ chief executive Nuno Matos said the bank’s transformation is on track, even as the country’s fourth-largest home loan lender said mortgage applications fell 12 per cent since the federal budget change to property taxes.
Origin Energy, Australia’s largest integrated electricity generator and retailer, said the expansion of its grid-scale battery portfolio will help to offset lower wholesale electricity prices. Its positioning should allow it to meet rising demand for power triggered by the surge in data centre developments.
The Tomago aluminium smelter will get a $2.5 billion, 10-year bailout paid for by federal and NSW governments in a deal that will also involve a $1.1 billion facility upgrade by Rio Tinto.
Former Disney boss Bob Iger, and Josh Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are buying the Los Angeles Lakers basketball franchise for $US12 billion - the highest price ever paid for a sports team.
Fear-o-meter
Super Members Council on Aussies using AI for super advice and research:
Australians are turning to artificial intelligence to help them understand their super and prepare for retirement, with new research revealing they’re doing so because they currently can’t access affordable guidance and financial advice from safe and trusted sources.
Research by RepTrak commissioned by the Super Members Council found:
- two-thirds of Australians had either already used AI for super and retirement information - or would consider doing so
- more than one in three Australians have already used tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to obtain information about super and retirement
- among those who have used AI, it is most used to learn the basics, ask questions and compare options,
- while more broadly, most Australians expressed concerns about privacy, security and accuracy and would prefer speaking to a human about sensitive personal financial information.
The RepTrak findings suggest Australians are embracing AI as a convenient and accessible source of information but remain cautious about relying on it for major financial decisions.
Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert said the research highlighted a huge and growing need for affordable, trusted financial guidance which outdated laws prevent people’s own trusted super fund from being able to deliver to them.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
In this special Fear & Greed panel, recorded at the launch of NTT DATA’s Innovation Centre Australia in Sydney, Sean Aylmer speaks with executives from Fortescue, Google Cloud and NTT DATA about innovating with AI, and why businesses need to stop “Frankensteining” AI onto old processes:
“Frankensteining AI essentially means you're trying to take AI and apply it to a 30-year-old process. It doesn't work. It ends up being cosmetic and not structural. So the businesses that are winning, they look at an entire workflow, so an entire mortgage lending process, an entire insurance claim process, and they reimagine what would AI look like if we were to start that process from scratch.
They're also actually connecting these AI agents to real systems. I mean, I don't know if you've used a chatbot before where you've asked it a question and it's come back and it's given you a rubbish answer and you thought, I'm never going to use that again. It's a trust-building moment. So you must connect these to core systems.”
Swiss private equity giant EQT Infrastructure has lobbed a $9.4 billion bid for Australia’s largest waste collection company Cleanaway. The Cleanaway board has given a nod of approval, providing EQT exclusive due diligence with a view to recommending the bid to shareholders.
EQT’s proposal was at $3.13 per share, a 32.1 per cent premium to its closing price on Wednesday. Yesterday its share price jumped more than 15 per cent to $2.73, so clearly there’s some doubt as to whether the deal will go ahead. The company said there had been an initial proposal of $3 per share prior to the higher offer.
While the board likes the deal, big shareholders aren’t so sure, with some voicing frustration yesterday that the company hasn’t done better. Cleanaway’s share price is down five per cent over the past year, even after yesterday’s surge.
Meanwhile, the AFR is reporting that EQT is in advanced discussions to buy a controlling shareholding in the Melbourne Storm – one of a handful of privately controlled clubs in the league.
Greed-o-meter
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