Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Julian Leys: Building Industry Federation CEO on Fletcher Building's financial loss

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Julian Leys: Building Industry Federation CEO on Fletcher Building's financial loss · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fletchers have had a pretty crappy year. It's fair to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: say four hundred million bucks. The net loss for last
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: year twice as bad as the previous year six hundred
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and forty million dollars, and losses over two years. Julian
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Lee's is a Building Industry Federation CEO with me this morning, Julian,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Good morning.
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  Speaker 2: Good morning, Ryan.
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  Speaker 1: Geez, how much longer can you keep that up?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Look, it's I think only only features could probably
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: withstand a loss like that. But it does underscore against
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  Speaker 2: the broader downturn that we're seeing across the whole construction sector,
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  Speaker 2: where these sorts of economic pressures that we're seeing are
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  Speaker 2: really reducing profitability and activity.
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  Speaker 1: Plus they've got this Sky City lawsuit hanging over them.
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  Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of other risks that have been
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  Speaker 1: going to be factored in two.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look absolutely, but you know what, I think the
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: really interesting thing about this result was that they're actually
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: their underlying profit went from five hundred and nine million
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  Speaker 2: down to three hundred and eighty four and that really high.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It's the fact that they were having squeezed margins across
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  Speaker 2: you know, all of their all of their work and
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  Speaker 2: that also again sort of highlights what we're seeing around
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  Speaker 2: sort of delays, the and just the low margins that
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: that the sector is now having to face. And that's
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  Speaker 2: and that's not good.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And the way that they're talking is like basically they're
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: in a holding pattern at the moment, they're hunkering down,
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  Speaker 1: you know, environment remains uncertain, focus on cost control, operational discipline,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is probably the sensible thing. Particularly, I guess
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: you know, they talk to their shareholders. But you know,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: if you look at the sector, we've gone from last
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  Speaker 2: year we had ninety nine billion dollars across building in construction.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: That's dropped five billion dollars to ninety four billion this year.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: So it's come down a lot. We've seen a lot
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: of job losses. I think it's been reported around twelve thousand.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: So they are taking that conservative coach. I guess what
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: we have to now to look at is what's going
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  Speaker 2: to be the things they are going to drive the
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  Speaker 2: sort of recovery. You know, are there signs that you know,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: building in construction is going to sort of come out
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  Speaker 2: of us? Are we at the bottom? Ryan?
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  Speaker 1: We'll see how those OCR cuts announced yesterday and the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: track forward impact that Julian, Thank you. That's Julian Lees,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: who's Building Industry Federation Chief executive. For more from Early
• 2:24
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• 2:27
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