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section Mayne Nickless
- Dalziel and Catchlove |
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Contents
Dalziel Is New MD Of Mayne
Australian Financial Review 11/23/1995
THE chairman and acting managing director of Mayne Nickless , Mr Ian Webber, sprang a surprise last night when he announced the appointment of top retailing executive Mr Bob Dalziel as managing director of the transport and health group."Bob is a very positive, enthusiastic person, strongly customer-oriented and with a marvellous understanding of the role we need to adopt in servicing complex clients' needs," Mr Webber said.
Mr Dalziel is the latest in a string of senior executives who have left Coles Myer in recent years.
Dalziel's Leap Into The Unknown
Australian Financial Review 11/23/1995
As one shareholder said last night: "Bob's a larger-than-life character, and a very good people manager. But he doesn't know anything about transport, health care or communications. Why didn't they hire someone like (TNT Europe managing director) Alan Jones? That would have added 50c to the share price immediately."Analysts covering the retailing and transport sectors were stunned and flabbergasted by the appointment.
-----------------------------
Inside Coles Myer it is acknowledged that Dalziel - a physically imposing, charming and entertaining man - could probably sell sand to the Arabs.However, he will need far more than his polished discount retailer's style to convince bruised Mayne Nickless shareholders to stay on board.
Mayne Poaches Chief Of Coles
Discount Stores
The Age 11/23/1995
The transport, logistics, health care and security group, which has a 25 per cent stake in Optus, said it chose Mr Dalziel after an extensive international hunt.
Mayne Nickless ready to sell UK
armoured car operations
Australian Financial
Review 19 Jan 1996
MAYNE Nickless chairman and acting chief executive, Mr Ian Webber, last night unveiled yet another potential asset sale when he said the UK armoured car operations had been put on the auction block.
Stock of the week.
BRW, 1/22/96, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p72, 1/3p
Abstract: Reports that brokerage firm, Prudential Bache, considers Mayne Nickless' stock undervalued on the basis of its shareholding in Optus.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED: Extracts
From Chairman's Address (Part A) FROM CHAIRMAN'S PRESENTATION TO
THE EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING - 13 FEBRUARY 1996
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements 02/13/1996
When I spoke to you in November last year I outlined the Company's program of divesting non-core assets. At that stage we had announced our withdrawal from general security in North America and Europe, as well as the sale of the Spanish express freight business - all businesses that did not meet our strategic criteria.Subsequently, we have divested our express courier activities in the United States, Mayne Nickless Courier Systems, and announced our intention to divest our UK armoured car operations, Security Express Armaguard.
----------------------------
In November I referred to our intention to raise funds through a US 10-year bond issue. I am pleased to be able to report that the issue attracted extremely strong support. We had originally sought to raise US$250 million, but because of the strong investor demand the final issue was increased to US$350 million.
-----------------------
The net proceeds raised from the issue will be used to repay existing debt, principally associated with the acquisition of AME.Outlook
The net profit however will be lower than the same period last year primarily because of an increase in our interest expense.Optus float
The Optus Communications float is expected later in 1996,
Dalziel Takes An Option On
Better Times
The Australian 14 February 1996
Abstract -- Business Intelligence Australia Pty Ltd
Mayne Nickless' managing director, Bob Dalziel, has pledged to shareholders he will lift the company's performance to acceptable standards within three years; shareholders voted unanimously at yesterday's extraordinary meeting to approve an incentive-based directors' share option scheme; - - - -
Mayne Nickless Warns Of Profit
Slip
Source: Sydney Morning Herald 14 February 1996
Abstract :: Business Intelligence Australia
Mayne Nickless chairman, Ian Webber, has forecast a lower half-year profit- - - - - Bob Dalziel has been appointed managing director of the company, and has had one million share options issued to him; Webber says the company expects a significant improvement in revenue and earnings from health care, - - - - - -
`The Mayne Link Between
Incentive And Outcome
The Australian 17 February 1996
Mayne Nickless set new standards in corporate governance this week when its shareholders unanimously endorsed what could prove to be a landmark share option scheme for new chief executive Mr Bob Dalziel.
-------------------------
One million options were granted to Mr Dalzeil and 400,000 options to executive director Barry Catchlove, - - - - - - - . But to get their shares, Mr Dalziel and Dr Catchlove must deliver prescribed " improvements" in the share price of the underperforming conglomerate. (20% during first 3 years, 30% by 4 years and 35% over 5 years)
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If the final profit is achieved Mr Dalziel would be sitting on a $2.1 million profit and Dr Catchlove $840,000.
----------------------------
As well as achieving share growth the company must raise its earnings per share by 7 per cent compound annually, over a three year period from June 30 1995.
Moving targets. -The new
managing director of Mayne Nickless is fighting wars on many
fronts-
Bulletin (Sydney), 20 Feb 1996 : (46)-48
- - - -Bob Dalziel, describes - - - the company is focussing on its logistics and health care services, and wants to be the market leader in both; - - -
A Running Start For Mayne's New
Chief
The Age 02/21/1996
Bob Dalziel says his modus operandi is to make change happen.
- - - -- - - - But the lasting impression left by Mr Dalziel, the new managing director of Mayne Nickless, is that he means just what he says.
------------------------
A series of abnormal losses over recent years has wiped away much of the core operational profit from Mayne's transport, logistics, health care and security businesses.
--------------------------
To rectify market perception that it was too widespread, Mayne set about offloading about $300 million of what it termed non-core assets to refocus on its prime operations.
----------------------
And Mr Dalziel has set himself a tight deadline. He aims to have visited every Mayne Nickless facility by the end of March.
---------------------
By July, as Mayne rules off its books for the 1995-96 year, Mr Dalziel believes the company will have a clear blueprint for expansion.
----------------------
Institutional dissatisfaction with Mayne's performance was the catalyst behind the most recent wave of rationalisation within the group.
---------------------
``You have to assume our performance has been pretty flat for the past four years,'' Mr Dalziel told The Age. ``We've committed ourselves to a steep improvement
------------------
We're in the business of growth, so the next three to four years will be very exciting.
Optimism For Optus Creates Mayne
Chance
Australian Financial Review 03/01/1996
MARKET optimism about the outlook for Optus Communications buoyed shares in Mayne Nickless Ltd yesterday, despite Mayne announcing a 32 per cent drop in net earnings in the December half to $50.1 million.
-------------------------
The chief financial officer of Mayne Nickless, Mr Shane Tanner, said yesterday that Mayne was committed to staying as a shareholder in Optus Communications until 12 months after Optus was floated, before reconsidering its position. "You are really talking the end of 1997 and obviously that's quite a long way out," he said.
Nickless shares soar despite
earnings fall
Sydney Morning Herald - 01 Mar 1996 p.39
Mayne Nickless shares continued to spiral up yesterday on the rerating of its investment in Optus Communications, overshadowing the announcement of a 32 per cent slump in December half net earnings.
--------------------
Meanwhile, Mr Tanner said it was difficult to provide a profit outlook due to uncertain economic conditions, but he conceded the second half would be lower than the first.
Mayne Sells Out Of US Courier
Group
Sydney Morning Herald, 01/03/1996,
Mayne Nickless Ltd's $120 million sell-off of non-core businesses is drawing to a close with the sale yesterday of the group's US courier operation.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
Allocation Of Options To Executive Directors (Part A)
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
03/07/1996
- - - Directors have today allocated 1,000,000 and 400,000 executive share options respectively to Mr Robert Rae Dalziel as Managing Director and Dr Barry Rex Catchlove as Chief Executive Officer, Health Care of Australia,
Mayne Nickless out of
security
Sydney Morning Herald 09 May 1996
Mayne Nickless will sell MSS Security Services to Chubb Security Holdings Australia Ltd for about $41 million, completing the divestment of its general security operations.
Mayne Nickless House finds a
buyer at last
Australian Financial Review 14 May 1996
The high-profile Mayne Nickless House office building on Melbourne's St Kilda Road is being bought - - - - - after a year on the market. The sale, however, is understood to be at a significant discount to the expected $40 million.
Mayne Nickless drives into
downgrades lane
Sydney Morning Herald 15 May 1996
The rash of profit downgrades by Australia's leading industrial companies spread into the transport sector yesterday with Mayne Nickless declaring it would fail to match last year's result amid reports that industry analysts have halved their estimates for TNT's net profit.
Mayne Nickless dubious about its
profit chances
Australian Financial Review 15 May 1996
Mayne Nickless Ltd yesterday became the latest blue chip to warn shareholders that profits will not match earlier expectations, and Mayne will again have to dig deeply into reserves if it is to maintain the dividend payout.
Mayne Switches In Bid For Added
Value
Australian Financial Review 05/30/1996
Only three months ago, Mayne Nickless Ltd was seriously considering dumping its established transport and health-care businesses and transforming itself into a telephone company.Yesterday it did the opposite.
Newly appointed chief executive Mr Bob Dalziel revealed, after announcing Mayne's intention to offload its $1 billion-plus shareholding in Optus Communications Ltd, that the board gave serious consideration to making Optus the sole focus of its operations.
-----------------------
While the review process has several months to run, yesterday's announcement makes it plain that Mr Dalziel sees Mayne's prime focus as being transport logistics, express freight and health care.
--------------------------
There would be offshore acquisitions and joint ventures, as the health care arm expands into Asia and as logistics moves for growth in North America and Europe. There would also be opportunities for organic growth in both divisions in Australia.
-------------------------------
He (Mr Dalziel) described health care as a capital-intensive business which offered "exceptionally good" and stable returns over long periods.
Mayne Game: $1bn Strategy
Shift
Australian Financial Review 05/30/1996
Mayne Nickless Ltd will sell its investment in Optus Communications in a surprise $1 billion-plus withdrawal from telecommunications and will reinvest the proceeds in its core transport and health-care operations.
-------------------
Analysts yesterday estimated the 25 per cent stake to be worth around $1 billion.
Mayne to quit its Optus
stake
Sydney Morning Herald - 30 May 1996 p.29
Bob's bold step needs big
plan.
Sydney Morning Herald - 30 May 1996 p.29,32
BOB DALZIEL yesterday made the bravest decision for a new chief executive for some time - deciding to sell an investment on the verge of excellent growth on the promise that he can generate a higher return on the $1 billion-plus in proceeds.
----------------------
- - - - won't win universal praise. There is a question mark over both the timing and just how Dalziel plans to spend the cash.While Dalziel last night was adamant that Mayne has no need to own passive investments like Optus, it certainly proved a saviour in recent years as the transport and health care group lost its way.
-----------------------
Apart from Mayne's nascent health care operations, there was not much apart from Optus offering any prospect of acceptable earnings growth.
-------------------
At every opportunity, the Mayne board made it quite clear that it wouldn't part with the Optus investment.
-----------------------
Dalziel could go down in corporate history as the man who handed over $500 million to others and was unable to achieve a consummate improvement in Mayne's value from its operations.
----------------------
By September, Dalziel expects to be in a position to outline his grand vision. This will be awaited with a lot of interest. Mayne's hiring of Dalziel from a retail background at Coles was viewed as a surprise, given the strategic and operational problems the company is facing.
----------------------
His plan will need to be a real winner.
Optus fans give Mayne
raspberry
Australian Financial Review 31 May 1996
Mayne Nickless managing director Bob Dalziel and chairman Ian Webber yesterday received a rude reminder of why many of their institutional shareholders hold Mayne Nick shares: phones, phones and more phones.
--------------------------
As soon as the news sank in that Mayne Nickless was getting out of the telephone business for good - via the disposal of its shareholding in Optus Communications - the market gave the shares an awful drubbing.
Analysts Stick With Mayne
Despite The Lack Of Detail
Australian Financial Review 05/31/1996
It is rare to get analysts to say they like a company that won't reveal where it's going, but that is exactly what seems to be happening with Mayne Nickless.
--------------------------
In return for the market's faith, he offered little but vague promises of a refocusing on core businesses, a mention of a possible debt reduction and brief reference to a capital return.
--------------------------
Mr Dalziel said on Wednesday he was re-taking the reins at Mayne. "We want to control our destiny, and we will not achieve that through passive investments," he said.
-----------------------
"By capitalising Optus future growth today, Mayne Nickless has the potential to reinvest into its core businesses of health care and logistics, rather than rely on external management for future growth.
------------------------
"You don't need to be a genius to guess they are going to make acquisitions on the health-care side, and they do have a very good logistics business.
--------------------------
Its health-care business - Australia's largest private, for-profit hospital group - is seen as providing the best returns and the highest growth over the next few years.
--------------------------
After this? Industry watchers suggest that after debt reduction and a probable $1 a share capital return to shareholders, the health-care business is where the action will come.
-----------------------------
Observers regard Mayne's health-care business as easily the market leader in private hospitals, managing one out of every three beds.
Investors dump Mayne
Sydney Morning Herald - 31 May 1996
Mayne Nickless's share price dropped 37c to $7.28 yesterday as investors damned its decision to quit its 24.99 per cent stake in Optus Communications.
-----------------------
Analysts said that without Optus the shares were worth only $6.50 and until Mayne's strategic review was completed, in three months, the stock would remain weak.
Mayne may return $350m to its
holders. Business.
Sydney Morning Herald - 05 Jun 1996
Mayne Nickless is considering handing back up to $350 million to shareholders via a capital return or by offering shares in Optus Communications at a big discount to the issue price when the telecommunications group floats.
DALZIEL GIVES MAYNE NICKLESS NEW
FOCUS
Business Review Weekly 09 Jun 1996
Selling its Optus stake gives the company cash for its health-care operations and allows it to go deeper into the world logistics industry. Less than six months after Bob Dalziel was made managing director of Mayne Nickless, the company is selling its 25% stake in Optus Communications and is on the verge of announcing a $200 million-plus acquisition in the United States or European logistics industry.
-----------------------------
However, the market expects it to spend $300 million in a capital return to shareholders (or about $1 a share), another $300 million on reducing debt and the rest on acquisitions and organic growth.
-------------------------------
However, strong focus on this area has been softened slightly by Dalziel's signal that Mayne Nickless will also be expanding its health-care business closer to home. He says a large proportion of the Optus sale proceeds will be dedicated to its health-care business. It has already wrapped up three big joint ventures in Indonesia, involving commitments of $100 million over the next four years, and is seeking similar partnerships elsewhere.
------------------------------
Dalziel says the group wants to expand into radiology and pathology over the next few years. Pathology and radiology remain highly diversified industries, ripe for the same consolidation process that occurred in private hospitals 10-15 years ago.Dalziel says the group will also increase its relationships with state governments through the management of public hospitals and the location of public and private hospitals on shared sites.
---------------------
Dalziel realistically has only a year to persuade investors of the merits of the strategy or face a tumbling stock price and inevitable pressures from the board.
Mayne weighs the options. Bond
Street
Sydney Morning Herald - 10 Jun 1996 p.32
They (institutional shareholders ) have told the Mayne's boss, in no uncertain terms, how they would like the company to divest its shareholding. And with the company saying it wants to become an active manager again, Mr Dalziel is virtually forced to listen to what the fund managers are saying or risk losing their support postOptus.
Mayne Assessing Interest In
Optus Stake
Sydney Morning Herald 06/21/1996
Mayne Nickless wants an expedited sales process because the board is leaning strongly towards selling the Optus shares as part of the second carrier's float later this year.
Security Exit May Cost Mayne
$60m
The Age 06/27/1996
Lead Paragraph (LP) Mayne Nickless faces a $60 million loss from its foray into the British general security industry after agreeing to sell its operation for just E4 million ($A8 million).
--------------------------
``This transaction completes Mayne Nickless' exit from the European security sector and follows the divestments in October 1995 of its 49.55 per cent shareholding in GMIC Security, a Belgian security company, and its earlier divestments of Security Express Alarms in the UK and Cinsesa, a Spanish security alarms business.''
Mayne Completes European
Retreat
Australian Financial Review 06/27/1996
Lead Paragraph (LP) Mayne Nickless Ltd has completed its retreat from the European security sector by selling its Security Express Armaguard business in the UK for 4 million ($A8 million).
Mayne loses $64m on sale
Sydney Morning Herald 26 Jun 1996
Mayne Nickless has suffered a book loss of about $64 million after selling its loss-making UK armoured car division, Security Express Armaguard, for $8 million.
Big three transport giants
paring back to the core
Australian Financial Review 27 Jun 1996
The kingpins of the transport sector have been staging their own sale of the century over the past 18 months. It is set to continue - - - - -
BRIEFS -- MAYNE'S CHIEF IN
EUROPE RESIGNS
Australian Financial Review 07/09/1996
Mayne Revamp In Europe
The Age 07/09/1996
Mayne Nickless is set to bring forward a planned restructuring of its operations in Europe and North America following the sudden resignation of its European chief executive, Mr John Cole, on Friday.
-------------------------
Mayne has been disappointed by its performance in Europe, where it has been plagued by operational problems and, in the case of Britain, intense market competition.
Mayne Nickless: D-day on
Optus
Sydney Morning Herald 10 Jul 1996
Mayne Nickless will reveal this morning how it will sell its 25 per cent shareholding in Optus Communications - with a public float still considered the most likely outcome.
Mayne opts for Optus float
Sydney Morning Herald - 12 Jul 1996 p.21
Mayne Nickless in untested
waters
Sydney Morning Herald 22 Jul 1996
MAYNE Nickless has looked at investing a significant portion of the proceeds of the sale of Optus in Purolator, a large Canadian-based express freight company.
End of the road
Australian Financial Review 25 Jul 1996
The Australian trucking industry has become so ruthlessly cost-effective that the corporate icons who built it can't compete any more. Bob Mills explains why.
The Market Demands To Hear The
Mayne Objective
Australian Financial Review 08/09/1996
The managing director of Mayne Nickless Ltd, Bob Dalziel, has been working on a strategic review of the company since January. He unveils the strategy next week and Mark Skulley reports that the reaction will be crucial for both Dalziel and Mayne Nickless.
-------------------------
Meanwhile, the market would be happy to hear that Mayne is expanding its investment in Australian health care, particularly given a Federal Coalition government supportive to encouraging private health insurance, an ageing population and higher life expectancy.
Private operators win wider role
in public health system
Courier Mail 14 Aug 1996
The state government has opened the door for the private sector to increase its involvement in Queensland's public health system.Queensland Health has appointed officers to work specifically with the private sector on projects.
- - - - has shelved plans to allow privately operated public hospitals to go ahead - - - - - - the government was happy for Queensland to remain the only state in Australia which did not have a privately run public hospital.
Mayne To Carve Up Optus Pie
The Age 08/15/1996
Mayne's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, told a briefing in Sydney that a larger part of the proceeds from its 25 per cent holding in Optus would also be used to fund business growth. He said that about two-thirds of the capital funds raised from the sale would be invested in the group's growing health-care operations. The rest would be used in other businesses and to retire debt.
------------------------
Over the past two years, more than 65 per cent of the group's total investment capital has gone into health care, including $50 million into pathology in the past year alone.
Mayne has eye on overseas
targets
Sydney Morning Herald - 15 Aug 1996
Mayne Nickless is set to embark on a substantial international acquisition program as it prepares for a new strategic focus following the sale of its 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications.Mayne's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, said yesterday the company had identified a substantial acquisition opportunity in France, two in Canada and two relatively small ones in Australia.
-----------------------
Mr Dalziel also said Mayne Nickless would grow by "customer bridge building"."We don't believe we always have to buy businesses to grow," he said. "We are going to grow our business by moving into different markets as often as possible with existing clients."
--------------------------
Following a comprehensive review of the company's operations, Mr Dalziel said Mayne Nickless had developed a strategy based on four commitments:* to focus on three business streams - health care, time critical express and contract logistics;
* to put priority on investing in the health care division over the next two to four years;
* to be more customer driven;
* to change from an Australian company operating internationally to an international company operating regionally, with its principal ownership in Australia.
Mayne revamps to target health
care
Courier Mail 15 Aug 1996
Mayne Nickless is to slash its business units from 21 to 11, - - - - - and switching its growth focus to the burgeoning health care sector.
Mayne Takes Healthy Punt On Its
Future Bottom Line
The Age 08/16/1996
MAYNE Nickless's briefings of analysts earlier this week was clearly aimed at getting the message across to the market that there is life after Optus. The sub-text to the message is that Mayne plans to aggressively pursue a high-growth replacement for its Optus investment.
--------------------------
The briefing, however, appears to have caused something of a rethink, with the Mayne share price responding immediately yesterday to the disclosure of Mayne's plans for the billion-dollars-plus of cash and $400 million-plus of profit it will generate from selling its 25 per cent interest in Optus.
---------------------------------
It is health care on which Mayne has clearly set its target as its primary business. Mayne's Bob Dalziel told the briefing that, of the funds released by the Optus sale that were reinvested in operations (some of the funds are earmarked for debt reduction) two-thirds would be devoted to expanding the health care business.
Mayne To Cut 500 Jobs At At
Express Freight Arm
Sydney Morning Herald 08/16/1996
Mayne Nickless will cut up to 500 jobs from its newly formed Australian express freight division, Mayne Nickless Express, as part of a major restructure.
------------------------
On Wednesday, Mr Dalziel said 150 jobs already had been shed following the merger of Wards/Skyroad, Security Express, Jetsroad, Ipec Road, Parceline and the Ipec Specialised Services businesses.
The Mayne Numbers Game
Australian Financial Review08/19/1996
Investors last week happily pushed Mayne Nickless shares to a two-year high, content about two key factors in the company's future
Dynamo In Mayne's Power
Surge
The Australian 19 Aug 1996
Abstract (from Business Intelligence)
The article profiles Mayne Nickless under new md Bob Dalziel; the company's achievements under his management have included completion of its asset sales program, a restructure of its remaining operations into three core streams, a board revamp, and plans for an aggressive Asian expansion; Bob Dalziel's main priority in the short-term is to boost Mayne's profits; he discusses the strategy he adopted upon becoming md, which was to refocus the company's direction; Mayne's main growth priority will be its healthcare division; the company share price has risen considerably since he took the helm, and may reach $A10 by mid-1997; Sally Jackson.
Acquisitive Mayne eyes
opportunities
Courier Mail 19 Aug. 1997
"We have acquisitions most certainly in healthcare that we are looking at all the time." He (Dalziel) said.
Budget Healthy For Mayne
Nickless
The Australian 20 Aug 1996
Abstract (Business Intelligence Australia)
A two-year high is experienced for the value of shares in Mayne Nickless, the biggest private hospital group in Australia; the Australian Budget, to be announced today, is strongly expected to contain incentives for people to move into private health insurance;
Mayne Nickless on the
mend
Australian Financial Review 02 Sep 1996
Mayne Nickless Ltd reckons to have cleared the decks after a big write-off in abnormals led to an 85.4 per cent slump in net profit to just $11.6 million for the year to June 30. Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel yesterday labelled the results as "unsatisfactory" - - - -
Mayne gears up for '97.
Business.
Sydney Morning Herald - 03 Sep 1996 p.25
Mayne Nickless's net profit plunged 85.4 per cent to $11.6 million in the June year, but the directors believe they have cleared the decks for an improved performance in 1997 and beyond."Most of the hard stuff has been done", Mr Bob Dalziel, Mayne's managing director, said yesterday.
Mayne Nickless On The Mend
Australian Financial Review 09/03/1996
Mayne Nickless Ltd reckons to have cleared the decks after a big write-off in abnormals led to an 85.4 per cent slump in net profit to just $11.6 million for the year to June 30.
--------------------------
The star performer was Mayne's health care division where revenue increased 70.4 per cent to $520 million, while earnings before interest and tax rose 46.6 per cent to $69.4 million.
Mayne Looks Ahead To Strong
Year
The Age 09/03/1996
The Mayne Nickless managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, yesterday predicted a big improvement in profit in calendar 1997 after announcing that net profit had dropped 32.8 per cent to $85.1 million in the June year.There was strong growth in the health-care division, but core earnings were eroded by Armaguard Australia, the group's logistics operations in France, its British express freight arm Interlink Express, and a sharp rise in interest costs associated with the group's 25 per cent shareholding in Optus.
Text (TD) Compounding this were abnormal losses of $109 million. This included a $69-million writedown on the British armored car business it sold earlier this year, and a writedown of almost $24 million on the goodwill value of its poorly performing logistics businesses in Holland and Belgium.
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But an upbeat Mr Dalziel foreshadowed a strong turnaround over the next year, and said the company was assessing possible acquisitions in North America, France and Australia.
----------------------
``We're looking at the 1997 year as being a very positive year for us.''
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* Outlook optimistic - expects significantly improved results from European logistics, health care and after the sale of 25 per cent Optus stake.
Health Care Lights Way For
Battle-worn Mayne
The Advertiser 3 Sep 1996
Abstract (Business Intelligence Australia)
Bob Dalziel, says that the 1996-97 financial year will see a much brighter result; Mayne Nickless' main areas of business are health services, express freight and logistics; - - - -
MN Profit Slump
'unsatisfactory'
Daily Commercial News 4 Sep 1996
Abstract (Business Intelligence Australia)
Transport and health services company Mayne Nickless reports a net profit fall of 85.4%, to $A11.6m, for 1995-96; the company describes the result as unsatisfactory, - - -
Institutions Eye Mayne's $1.2bn
Optus Stake
Sydney Morning Herald 09/09/1996
Mayne Nickless is under pressure from its institutional shareholders to hand over the whole of its $1.2 billion stake in Optus Communications in the coming entitlement issue.
----------------
However, Mayne Nickless's largest shareholders have been pushing the group's management to reserve all of the shares for an entitlement issue, ensuring their access to Optus.
Caring for Optus not Mayne's
game
Sydney Morning Herald 09 Sep 1996
SHAREHOLDERS in Mayne Nickless are well within their rights to lobby hard that all the company's Optus Communications shares should be distributed to them rather than used to bolster the size of the impending float. Accommodating Optus Communications should not be a concern for Mayne Nickless.
A private bonanza
The Australian Financial Review September 11, 1996
While the Federal Government tries to get its health policy right, investment markets have more confidence in the shape of the future. In the third article of a special series on the health industry, National Business Correspondent Alan Deans reports - - -ABSTRACT: Australasian Business Intelligence
the article is the third article in a series of articles on the health industry in Australia; this article discusses the private health sector and the need for an increase in investment in that sector and a greater number of players; - - - - - -
Mayne Nickless has Optus
gift
Sydney Morning Herald 30 Sep 1996
MAYNE Nickless shareholders are expecting a very handsome gift. The word is that they will receive a large tax-free capital return with their entitlement to shares in Optus Communications - - -
MAYNE NICKLESS COMMITTED TO A
1996 FLOAT OF OPTUS COMMUNICATIONS
Australian Stock Exchange Company
Announcements10/18/1996
Mayne Nickless today re-affirmed its commitment to achieving a float of Optus Communications in 1996.
Optus insists its float will go
ahead
Sydney Morning Herald - 19 Oct 1996
Optus Communications and its major shareholder, Mayne Nickless, were adamant they had a solution to float the $4.5 billion telephone group this year, despite a potentially damaging legal dispute between its pay TV offshoot, Optus Vision, and Seven Network.
-----------------
The dispute has placed in doubt this year's public float of Optus Vision's 46.5 per cent owner, Optus Communications.
Windfall may be on way for
Mayne
Sydney Morning Herald 23 Oct 1996
MAYNE NICKLESS shareholders could receive an even bigger windfall under one plan being considered to give them the entitlement to all of Mayne's stake in Optus Communications carrier comes to fruition.
Tug Of War Over Best Time For
Optus Float
The Age 11/04/1996
IT now seems likely that even if the listing of Optus Communications goes ahead this year as expected, it will not be accompanied by a new capital-raising from the public. A series of unexpected hurdles has suddenly appeared and the midnight oil is being burnt by those trying to put together a float.It looks as though anything that requires underwriting will be too risky and therefore too expensive: - - - -
--------------------
In fact, there is still a good chance that a listing of Optus won't go ahead this year at all, in which case it could drift years into the future.The man pushing hardest for a fast float is Mayne Nickless's chief, Bob Dalziel, who is desperate to get his company expanding into his chosen fields, having decided that telecommunications is not one of them.
Webber to step down next year
Australian Financial Review 13 Nov 1996
Ian Webber is set to step down as chairman of Mayne Nickless Ltd early next year, after a decade and half as the company's fulcrum as executive and chairman.
Mayne confident Optus will float
by end of year.
Sydney Morning Herald - 13 Nov 1996 p.31
Optus Float Dispute Impasse
Herald Sun 13 Nov 1996
Abstract (Business Intelligence Australia)
Optus Communications chairman Russell Fynmore says a settlement of the legal dispute with the Seven Network is still a possibility;
Optus Will Be Floated This Year:
Mayne
The Age11/13/1996
Mayne Nickless yesterday expressed confidence that the $4 billion float of Optus Communications would be concluded this calendar year despite a series of unresolved issues that threaten to postpone the telco's public listing.
Mayne chief formulates his
prescription
Australia's Business Review Weekly 18 Nov. 1996
Now he has brought Mayne Nickless out of intensive care, Bob Dalziel is considering his next move, which will reshape the health and transport conglomerate. In doing so, he is relying on common sense, rather than consultants, to guide him.
---------------------------
By the time Bob Dalziel eventually sat around a table with the seven senior executives of Mayne Nickless, he had been in charge of the company for two months.
---------------------------
When Bob Dalziel started work at Mayne Nickless in mid-January, the first people he went to see were the institutions - "the owners", as he calls them. He visited 15 of them, one after another, with Mayne's chief financial officer, Shane Tanner. At the February board meeting he was able to give directors the news: the company's involvement in Optus probably had to go.
-----------------------
The big winner was Barry Catchlove, head of Health Care of Australia - Mayne's burgeoning health care division. This, it was decided, was where the company's future lay. Two-thirds of future expenditure would go into health.
-----------------------------------
Is Mayne Nickless likely to remain a two-business conglomerate: transport and health care? Hardly. It is more likely that Dalziel will persuade the Mayne Nickless board to spend $1 billion or more on a new acquisition in a different field, "a new health care", as he puts it.From the company's only business a century ago, express freight now represents 17% of its assets, earns a margin on sales of just 3% and grew by only 3.5% last year. Now under the management of former Coca-Cola executive Phil Smith, the parcels division is clearly under pressure to justify its existence.
--------------------------
The company that bears their names is no longer the parcels company they began, but is now mostly a health care provider - and Australia's first fully integrated one at that. So what's it doing in the freight business?
Mayne chief formulates his
prescription
Business Review Weekly 18 Nov 1996
Abstract: (Business Source Premier)
Profiles Bob Dalziel, head of Australian-based Mayne Nickless. His involvement with Mayne Nickless; His management style; The history of Mayne Nickless; The business of Mayne Nickless; How it has adjusted to changing market forces; Chances that the company will focus more and more on the health care business in the years to come; Future areas of expansion for Mayne Nickless, including Canada; Details.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Business Review Weekly 11/18/1996
There is hardly anything less popular in today's sharemarket than a diversified conglomerate, as Mayne Nickless chief executive Bob Dalziel has been continually reminded in his first year in the job. Special correspondent Alan Kohler explains how Dalziel has gone about the task of remaking Mayne Nickless. He has done so, for the most part, using the existing executives. He has shied away from consultants, arguing that the conclusions flow from "common sense": the decision to quit Optus was largely made for him by the company's institutional shareholders. The question of what kind of a business Mayne Nickless really thinks it is remains. Dalziel is thinking of applying the funds raised from Optus to a fresh acquisition, possibly in a new line of business. The biggest part of the business is now its health-care division, which is pursuing innovative strategies. The challenge is to display similar innovation elsewhere in the business.
Chairman's Address:-- MAYNE
NICKLESS LIMITED:
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
11/26/1996
- - - - - given the new shape and strategic direction of the Company that has emerged under the stewardship of a new-look Board and the Managing Director, Bob Dalziel.
------------------
Let me say at the outset that the Board and management believe that our profit performance for the last financial year was disappointing.
----------------------
Ideally, I would have liked to have been in a position to outline in detail what is being proposed, but that is not possible at this stage, as there remain outstanding matters, such as Channel 7's decision to seek a court ruling in relation to seek a court ruling in relation to its shareholders' agreement with Optus Vision. It is inappropriate for me to comment, to speculation on a matter that is now before the courts.
Mayne Nickless dives
The Age 28 Nov 1996
Investors wiped almost $80 million off the market capitalisation of Mayne Nickless yesterday as uncertainty about the group's 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications escalated.
Seven Action Delays $4.5bn Optus
Float
Sydney Morning Herald 11/30/1996
The planned $4.5 billion sharemarket listing of phone group Optus Communications was delayed indefinitely yesterday because of a potentially damaging legal action by Seven Network.
Mayne Nickless up on talk of
Optus peace deal
Sydney Morning Herald 16 Jan 1997
Mayne Nickless shares jumped 15c to $8 yesterday on rumours of a settlement of the stoush that held up the $1 billion-plus float of Optus Communications. There was strong talk that pay TV group Optus Vision had reached a settlement with the Seven Network over a potentially explosive court battle
Mayne: Optus peace plan.
Sydney Morning Herald - 28 Jan 1997
The efforts to end the bitter pay TV dispute between Seven Network and Optus Vision will intensify this week with Mayne Nickless to unveil a proposal aimed at breaking the deadlock and paving the way for the float of Optus Communications.
--------------------------------
It is understood the Mayne Nickless proposal involves not only a cash payment to Seven but a complete restructuring of Optus Vision's ownership.
Mayne Nickless prays for a
way.
Sydney Morning Herald - 30 Jan 1997
MAYNE Nickless desperately needs some form of resolution at today's Optus Communications shareholder meeting if it is to have any hope of selling its 25 per cent stake in the phone company this year.
----------------
The biggest problem is Kerry Stokes over at Channel 7. He has initiated legal action against his fellow shareholders in Optus Vision for various breaches of shareholder agreements.
Optus Vision $170m loss
Sydney Morning Herald - 28 Feb 1997 p.29
Optus Vision has suffered a staggering $170 million loss for the six months to December, sending the pay TV industry into a sea of red ink that now totals more than $1 billion.The loss compares with a full-year deficit of $159 million in 1995-96 and $48 million for the previous corresponding period.
Mayne slides on fear of div cut.
Business.
Sydney Morning Herald - 12 Feb 1997
The slide in Mayne Nickless shares continued yesterday, with the stock falling 4c to $7.68 in the belief that the group might be forced to cut its dividend this year.Any reduction would be related to Mayne's inability to offload its 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications.
-------------------------
The delay has seen Mayne Nickless's gearing levels jump to more than 80 per cent
---------------------------
Institutional investors and analysts are concerned that Mayne Nickless's credit rating may be lowered if its debt levels are not attended to soon. This has led to speculation that Mayne Nickless may have to bring forward the sale of other assets, such as the group's transport assets in Britain and Canada.
Mayne Suffers 13.8pc Fall
Australian Financial Review 02/28/1997
Mayne Nickless Ltd is looking for improved second-half earnings after a 13.8 per cent fall in interim net profit to $43.14 million.
-------------------------
Mr Dalziel said that health acquisitions such as the private hospital interests of Australian Medical Enterprises and three pathology businesses bought last year had exceeded expectations.
-------------------------
Mr Dalziel said the company was continuing to investigate accelerated growth strategies in health care and express freight, but that growth would be hurt if the company had not sold its Optus stake by June-July.
Mayne Warns Of Intention To Exit
Optus By July
Australian Financial Review 02/28/1997
"There is no doubt that if we do not exit Optus by June-July it will inhibit our ability to grow this business," he (Dalziel) said at the announcement of Mayne Nickless' interim earnings."That's what we've advised the ratings agencies and that's what we intend to do. We do not want, we cannot allow, our failure to get out of Optus to impair our growth opportunities."
------------------------
Mr Dalziel would not reveal the detail of the four Optus exit options.
Mayne Plan To Sell Optus Before
$2b Europe Bid
The Age 02/28/1997
Mayne Nickless will finalise a strategy to sell its 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications by mid-March, allowing it to bid about $2 billion for Europe's largest private hospital operator, Generale de Sante. ------------- It is understood Mayne has made the short-list of companies to buy Generale de Sante from French utilities giant Generale des Eaux.Generale de Sante is Europe's largest hospital operator and the fourth largest in the world, - - - -
--------------------------
The news that Mayne could get out of Optus by July was the main factor in its shares rising 11 cents to $7.67. Revenue from the expanded health-care services division soared 50 per cent
Mayne $2bn French plan
Sydney Morning Herald February 28, 1997
For Mayne to be able to lodge a serious bid it would need to be confident of getting the funds from selling its shareholding in Optus Communications. This sale is expected to raise between $700 million and $1 billion.
Optus float has been finally
sunk
Sydney Morning Herald 28 Feb 1997
BOB DALZIEL at Mayne Nickless seems to have finally conceded what many people have believed for a while - Kerry Stokes has derailed the Optus Communications float. Now Dalziel can get on with the job of working out another way of getting rid of Mayne Nickless's 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications
-----------------------
The Mayne Nickless core business performance could be described only as mixed and in line with expectations.The star performer was once again the health care division which boasted a 44 per cent improvement in earnings before interest and tax. The full contributions from some acquisitions helped this along but even without this boost it is clear that health care is the growth business within the Mayne Nickless stable of assets.
--------------------
The problem for European logistics operators is that they are beginning to witness the same problems the UK participants have been feeling for a while -increasing competition and dwindling margins.
-----------------
But the success of health care, relative to the other two divisions, demonstrates that the tail is increasingly wagging the dog.
-----------------------
And the market probably will react well to moves to increase the weighting towards health care.
Buy-out Sets Up Optus For
Float
The Age 03/29/1997
The marathon legal battle over the loss-making pay television company Optus Vision has been settled, with the parent, Optus Communications, buying out its partners.The complicated settlement removes the main obstacle to a multi-billion-dollar float of Optus Communications, - - -
Optus To Float As Dispute
Settled
Sydney Morning Herald 03/29/1997
Mayne Waits For Word On $1b
Health Bid In France
The Age 04/01/1997
Mayne Nickless is pressing ahead with a bid for Europe's largest hospital operator, Generale de Sante, and expects to know by this weekend whether it has snared the French company.The bid - expected to be around the $1 billion mark - is the first leg of Mayne's plan to build an international health-care business centred on Europe.
-------------------------
Senior Mayne executives have been in Paris for the past month poring over Generale de Sante's books
----------------------
Mayne wants to take a majority stake in Generale de Sante, leaving the French parent with a small interest.
----------------------
Last month this was cut to a short-list of four, including Mayne.
----------------------
Mayne's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, has his sights on Europe as the desired area of growth in health care.
Mayne In $1bn French Bid
Sydney Morning Herald 04/01/1997
The bid - tipped to be about $1 billion - is the first leg of Mayne's ambitious plan to build an international health care business centred on Europe.
---------------------
THE BIG HOSPITAL RUSH
---------------------
* Targeting Europe because of large health privatisation
* Bidding for Generale de Sante, Europe's largest hospital operator
* Private health industry has huge growth potential worldwide with strong profit margins
Optus Winners And Losers
Australian Financial Review 04/02/1997
Last Friday's three-way settlement of the Optus Vision litigation drama - - - - The winners are Mayne Nickless managing director Bob Dalziel and Seven Network chairman Kerry Stokes.
`Mayne off short list for French
group
Sydney Morning Herald - 05 Apr 1997
- - -- but Australia's Mayne Nickless has missed out.
Webber steps down at Mayne
Nickless
The Age 08 Apr 1997
Mayne Nickless's long-standing chairman, former managing director and occasional artist-in-residence, Mr Ian Webber, yesterday retired from the board after 15 years of overseeing an expansion and restructuring of group operations.
--------------------------
When Mr Webber joined in 1982, Mayne Nickless was little more than a national trucking group. He headed the company through the 1980s, extending the core business overseas and adding several new arms, such as courier and express freight, logistics management, health care and later, telecommunications.
Nerves rule as Mayne Nickless
dips
Australian Financial Review 07 May 1997
Shares in transport and services group Mayne Nickless fell yesterday as investors became wary of the prospects for its partly owned Optus Communications.
Mayne Restructuring Claims
Another Victim
Australian Financial Review 05/16/1997
The chief executive officer of Mayne Nickless Express, Mr Phil Smith, has suddenly departed - - -
--------------
The surprise move follows the departure in recent months of other key executives from the express businesses, including Mr Bob Hudson and Mr Vince Johnson, the heads of two of the main five express operations.
--------------------
It is understood that more management changes are likely to occur in the coming months, followed by further staff redundancies as different business systems are integrated.
Axing Halts Optus Float
The Age 06/14/1997
Sweeping leadership change at Optus, including the dumping of the chief executive, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, appears to have dashed plans for the group's long-awaited $4 billion float this year.
----------------------
Mr Bob Dalziel, the chief executive of the 25 per cent Optus shareholder Mayne Nickless, has been appointed Optus's deputy chairman and will act as non-executive chairman for now.
New Man At Optus Has To Fix Pay
TV
Sydney Morning Herald 06/14/1997
The new chief executive of Optus Communications, Mr Peter Howell-Davies, has been handed the difficult task of fixing the company's heavy losses in pay TV after the resignation of Dr Ziggy Switkowski from the position.
---------------------
Optus Vision is expected to post a loss of about $340 million in the year to June. Unless the losses can be stemmed, the sharemarket float will be indefinitely delayed.
Shareholders Pressure Optus To
Quit Pay-TV
Australian Financial Review 06/16/1997
Optus Communications' new management wants to quickly restructure and eventually sell its loss-making pay-TV operation as part of a strategic shift designed to re-establish the company as a specialist telecommunications carrier
Canberra asked to ease rules on
Optus (foreign ownership)
Sydney Morning Herald - 27 Jun 1997
The Federal Government has been approached to relax the foreign ownership conditions in Optus's licence in a move that could allow Cable and Wireless to take majority control and provide an exit strategy for other shareholders.
------------------------
Cable and Wireless is looking to buy BellSouth's 24.5 per cent stake in the telephone company.Cable and Wireless also would require approval from the Federal Treasurer, Mr Costello, under the provisions of the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act to go above 49 per cent.
New look for Optus on D-day
Sydney Morning Herald - 01 Jul 1997 p.27
Optus Communications is set to announce a major shake-up of its ownership structure possibly as early as today - the day Australia's telecommunications market enters a new era of deregulation.
Breakthrough On Optus
Australian Financial Review 07/02/1997
British telecommunications giant Cable & Wireless plc has secured the right to control Optus Communications after agreeing to a $1 billion cash and asset swap with US shareholder Bell South for its 24.5 per cent stake.The deal brings to an end one of the most acrimonious and tortured sagas in the telecommunications industry.
--------------------
It also paves the way for Optus's long-delayed float and places Cable & Wireless in a position to run the company. The deal values Optus at $2.20 a share.Mr Bob Dalziel, who is Mayne Nickless's managing director and Optus's acting chairman, said last night that the restructure would pave the way for Optus's float to proceed as soon as possible.
------------------------
The proposal still requires authorisation under the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act as well as an overturning of the current foreign investment conditions relating to Optus which restrict any one foreign investor to 24.5 per cent of Optus.
Mayne Sees Daylight At The End
Of Optus Tunnel
The Age 07/03/1997
This has been a horrible year for Optus and Mayne and one that has forced Dalziel to become a near full-time Optus dealmaker as crisis after crisis has forced difficult negotiation after difficult negotiation.
----------------------
The Government won't prevent Cable & Wireless from moving to 49 per cent of Optus and will probably allow it to exercise sufficient of the 299 million options it was issued this week to move to outright control and the ability to consolidate Optus in its own accounts.
---------------------
While the Optus float and Mayne's exit from the register have been delayed until next year at the earliest, most of the issues that derailed the planned float this year have either been resolved or are now more easily capable of being resolved. That light at the end of the tunnel is starting to look like daylight.
The Day Optus Shareholders
Nearly Pulled The Plug
Australian Financial Review 07/04/1997
So it was, then, that when Bell threatened to call in the liquidators, Dalziel went toe-to-toe. Having moved to Mayne two years ago from the ruthless corporate environment of Coles Myer, and becoming increasingly frustrated because he wanted to float Optus and sell his shareholding, Dalziel had to play tough and so made his own threat of liquidation.
---------------------------
Now all that remains is the Government's approval. The noises out of Canberra are positive so far.
Mayne Nickless in key deal
with CRI
Australian Financial Review 18 Aug 1997
Mayne Nickless Ltd is to outsource its property services under a strategic agreement with CRI, continuing the trend by major corporates to reassess the impact of property on their bottom lines.
CRI wins service deal
Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday, 19 Aug 1997
Mayne Nickless yesterday appointed the property development and project management company CRI as a preferred supplier of property services including advice, project management, development management and financial structuring.
Mayne close to deals on Europe
sales
The Age, Tuesday, 19 Aug 1997
Mayne Nickless is in final negotiations with several bidders for a possible sale of its logistics businesses in western Europe, a move expected to raise about $250 million. While analysts expect Mayne Nickless to sell the businesses in the Netherlands, - - -
Mayne retreats from Europe
The Age, Thursday, 21 Aug 1997
Mayne Nickless has retreated from the European continent by selling its two European logistics businesses for 930 million French francs ($A202 million). Faced with a similar choice of "get big or get out" in Canada, Mayne Nickless is negotiating ...
M Nickless Gets Out Of European
Ventures
Australian Financial Review 08/21/1997
Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel said yesterday the company had concluded that long-term and viable European logistics operators had to "get big" or get out..
---------------------
Mayne has sold the contract logistics businesses - Heijden Logistics in the Benelux region, and France Distribution System (FDS) in France
`Mayne sells logistics in Europe
for $202m
Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, 21 Aug 1997
Mayne Nickless has sold the bulk of its European contract logistics operations, once touted as a key driver of future growth, for $202 million to United Kingdom-based group Hays. The move again highlights Mayne's focus on its healthcare division, where it is directing 70 per cent of capital expenditure and development funds.
-----------------------------------
Meanwhile, Mayne finance director, Mr Shane Tanner, said last week's decision by the Foreign Investment Review Board to allow British telecommunications group Cable & Wireless to take a majority stake in Optus "paved the way" for Optus to float next year."We'd love to think it will be in the first half but, realistically, we have to resolve complicated pay TV issues," he said
Truck majors in 10pc pay
deals
Australian Financial Review, Thursday, 28 Aug 1997
Major trucking companies are close to conceding the Transport Workers Union's latest wage claim, with Mayne Nickless, Brambles, Discount Freight Express and McPhee Transport all believed to be offering pay rises of 10 per cent in negotiations - - - -
Asia is the arena for refocused
Mayne Nickless.
Corporate Finance, Sep97 Supplement Road Ahead Issue
154
Abstract: Focuses on the expansion of Mayne Nickless Ltd. in Asia. Metamorphosis of the company into a health care specialist; Coping with exotic exposures - - -
Mayne Nickless not happy with
$100m profit
Sydney Morning Herald 02 Sep 1997
Mayne Nickless's annual net profit has jumped to $100.29 million, enabling the health care and transport group to launch a $175 million capital raising to help pay for expansion plans.The annual profit for the year to June was a vast improvement on 1996's $11.6 million profit when Mayne booked one-off losses of $108.77 million.
------------------
Still, Mayne's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, said: "We're not happy with the result. We've got a lot more to do."
--------------------
Health Care of Australia's revenue jumped 38.3 per cent to $720.3 million, with EBIT soaring 41.5 per cent to $95.8 million. The company will "fast-track" growth in health care.
Mayne's reforms bring
dividends
The Age, Wednesday, 03 Sep 1997 (387 words)
Mayne Nickless's extensive efforts to restructure operations and sell loss-making businesses are finally showing signs of success, with the group's full-year pre-tax operational profits breaking above $200 million for the first time.
--------------------------
Mayne Nickless is now firmly fixed on an Optus float for the third quarter of 1998, and it will reconsider its involvement if those plans are again put on the backburner.
Freight business may be sold
after $12m loss
The Age, Wednesday, 03 Sep 1997
Mayne Nickless is considering selling its Australian express freight businesses, Ipec and Jetsroad, after the units lost $12 million in the year to June.
------------------------
Mr Dalziel said directors were not satisfied with the group's results. He said express freight businesses could generate significant improvements, and health care was still a young business.
IPEC and Jetsroad face dead end
if they stall
Australian Financial Review, Wednesday, 03 Sep 1997
Mayne Nickless yesterday warned it will dump its loss-making IPEC and Jetsroad road freight operations within a year if they fail to turn a profit.
------------------------
The sale threat comes after Mayne and its two big transport groups, Brambles and TNT, have already exited general freight markets because of tight margins.
`Optus stake jams Mayne
profit
Australian Financial Review 03 Sep 1997
Stronger profits and a blossoming health-care division were yesterday insufficient to mask continuing disappointment in Mayne Nickless Ltd's inability to quickly offload its $1 billion
Optus stake.
-----------------------
However, Mayne Nickless was unable to offer shareholders any prospect that it could sell its 24.9 per cent stake in Optus ahead of the third quarter next year and instead said it would commit to its share of another $400 million capital injection into the group.
-------------------------------
"We are not happy with this result and there is a lot more to do," he said. "We are only now, after two years of pretty solid reconstruction . . . starting to produce not just volume growth, but profitable growth."
-----------------------------
The key driver of the group's earnings was once again health care, which returned a 41.5 per cent increase in pre-tax earnings to $95.8 million with revenue up 38.3 per cent to $720.3 million."We are unhappy with the returns but this is a young and immature business," Mr Dalziel said. Mayne Nickless is the world's sixth-largest health-care operator.
------------------------
In April, it withdrew from the $1 billion race to buy Europe's largest private hospital operator, Generale de Sante. But yesterday Mr Dalziel ruled out any major acquisitions in the current year.
(Fulcrum)
The Age, Wednesday, 03 Sep 1997
Returns now the Mayne concern MAYNE Nickless is a radically different company now from the big, lumbering heavy haulage conglomerate of the 1980s. Thank heavens. Its management have ceased whingeing about the intractable problems on the waterfront or the lobbying to get big trucks on little highways.
-----------------
Big Bob Dalziel has made a big difference. As he bellowed down a bleak video-conference line into Mayne Nickless's boardroom yesterday, he made no bones about what he thought of failed businesses.
------------------
Health care is long-term and there seems little doubt about that.
Cashed-up Mayne sets date for
Optus float.
The Australian September 3: 1997
Mayne Nickless has set a deadline of September 30 next year for the float of Optus Communications otherwise it will revert to exiting its 25 per cent stake through a trade sale.
`Mayne deals bolster cash
reserves
Courier Mail 3 Sept. 1997
- - - Mayne's annual results which showed a solid recovery in profit after tax - - - -
------------------------
Mayne's managing director, Bob Dalziel, said that the company was "not happy with the result" overall because it still included poor performance from some areas.
------------------------
The group has been undergoing an internal revolution in the nearly 2 years - - - - -
---------------------
That more ruthless approach has seen Mayne quit 11 businesses in that time - - - -
------------------------
The best-performed sector of Mayne's business - - - - was Health Care of Australia - - -
--------------------------
HCoA has been diversifying into Diagnostic services - - -
`Deadline set for Optus
float
Courier Mail 3 Sept. 1997
Partners in Optus Communications have set a deadline of September 30, 1998, to float the company
`Health care growing pool for
big fish, says giant
Courier Mail 8 Sept. 1997
Mayne Player Plans Hospital
Spree
Australian Financial Review 10/18/1997
Mayne Nickless Ltd's Health Care of Australia plans to spend up to $300 million this financial year on domestic hospital privatisations and to boost the division's revenue by 40 per cent to more than $1 billion.
---------------------
Dr Catchlove said Mayne Nickless was committed to spending 80 per cent of its 1997-98 capital expenditure budget on health-care acquisitions, which managing director Mr Bob Dalziel has described as the engine room of the diversified industrialist's profit growth
No More Money For Optus'
Australian Financial Review 11/07/1997
But he said more "rationalisation of the pay-TV market and the achievement of a competitive local telephony market" were required before any sale could proceed.
----------------------
Two thirds of Mayne Nickless's capital budget is earmarked to expand healthcare operations, which it is hoped will generate revenue of $1 billion next financial year.
Mayne To Fix Express Units
The Age 11/07/1997
The underperforming road express operations have been singled out for attention. In addition, the company will focus on its expanding healthcare business as a growth priority in both Australia and Asia.Mayne will earmark two-thirds of its "medium term" new development capital for investment in this business. Healthcare assets are now valued at $958 million and account for 32 per cent of Mayne's asset base of $3 billion.
-----------------
- - - - - the same could not be said for its Australian and Canadian time-critical express -priority parcel and document delivery service - businesses. A poorer performance by these two units led to an EBIT decline of 12.1 per cent
Business kicks in on health
Courier Mail 15 Nov. 1997
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
Chairman's Address To Shareholders
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
11/24/1997
I would like now to turn briefly to last year's performance by the Company. It certainly showed significant improvement over the previous year, even though it also reflected the continuing restructuring of the Group.
------------------------
Despite that outcome, we recognise that we must achieve better returns on shareholders' funds. Our future strategy is clearly committed to that objective.
-------------------------
Briefly, the health care group reported a good result. The time critical express businesses in the United Kingdom performed well, but in Canada and Australia were somewhat disappointing.
-----------------------
In health care, we have strong joint venture partners in the Kalbe group in Jakarta and PT Ready Indah in Surabaya. Our investment to date is about $40 million and HCoA has assessed the market carefully. The new facilities are in areas of high demand from the growing middle class population, our target niche for quality health care services.
--------------------
Mayne Nickless will continue to work towards the opportunity for an early float of Optus but, of course, we would consider carefully any alternative divestment path which might prove more advantageous to our shareholders, should it arise.
Mayne Nickless seeks rise for
non-executive directors
Australian Financial Review 24 Nov 1997
Mayne Nickless Ltd shareholders will be asked to approve a $150,000 rise in the maximum total remuneration payable to non-executive directors at the health care and transport group's annual meeting in Melbourne this morning.
Mayne to cut Optus exposure
Australian Financial Review, 25 Nov 1997
Diversified industrialist Mayne Nickless Ltd may sell its quarter interest in Optus Communications in a trade sale, denying shareholders the opportunity to gain exposure to a potential public float of the telecommunications group next year.
-----------------------
Mr Dalziel, who is also acting chairman of Optus, said he was focusing on divestment of the Optus stake with the board's blessing.
-------------------
MAYNE LOOKS TO BUILD GLOBAL HEALTH-CARE CHAINMayne Nickless Ltd has formed a high-level executive team to examine avenues for expansion of its Health Care of Australia arm and create a major international health-care group.
Mayne likely to quit Optus
before float
Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday, 25 Nov 1997
Mayne Nickless has indicated for the first time that it is seriously considering offloading its $1 billion stake in Optus Communications before the proposed float of the telecommunications and pay television company next year.
Mayne to consider options on
Optus sale
The Age, Tuesday, 25 Nov 1997 (471 words)
Mayne's $1.1b Optus Stake "tying
Up Funds"
The Courier-Mail 25 Nov 1997
Abstract:- Business Intelligence Australia
The Mayne Nickless involvement in Optus is tying up funds and even making it difficult for Mayne to raise money.
Mayne Admits Optus Burden
Herald Sun 25 Nov 1997
Abstract::- Business Intelligence Australia
Rayner and Mayne md Bob Dalziel believe uncertainty surrounding Optus is having an adverse impact on Mayne's credit rating.
Limited options left for
Mayne
The Age, Wednesday, 26 Nov 1997
Mayne Nickless' frustration at its inability to extricate itself from its investment in Optus Communications appears to be mounting. Its impatience resurfaced at this week's annual meeting when it flagged its interest in reviving the trade sale option - - - -
HCoA preferred choice for Noosa
Hospital
AMAQ Dec 1997
Getting serious on a trade
sale
Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, 04 Dec 1997
After two years of trying to arrange a float of Optus Communications, its 25 per cent shareholder, Mayne Nickless, seems to have almost thrown in the towel and is moving more aggressively to sell its holding via a trade sale.
$48m loss for Mayne
Nickless
Australian Financial Review 31 Dec 1997
Healthcare and transport group Mayne Nickless Ltd made a $48.7 million loss on the $202 million sale of its underperforming European contract logistics operations in August this year.
The Mayne Chance In Asia
The Daily Telegraph 5 Jan 1998
Abstract Business Intelligence Australia
HealthCare of Australia, a division of Mayne Nickless, intends to quadruple its investment in the Asian region. This move will see the private health care operator become the biggest operator in the Indonesian market within two years. The pressures on the financial markets in Asia had created opportunities in India and the Philippines which the company intends to take advantage of. The company has already invested $A50m into the Asian region.
Health Care to lift Asian
investment
Courier Mail 5 Jan.1998
Mayne Nickless subsidiary, Health Care of Australia is moving to sieze the opportunity offered by the Asian slump, announcing plans to quadruple its investment in the region.
----------------
We aim to become the biggest private health care operators in Indonesia within 2 years and we are also examining opportunities in India and the Philippines.
Under Doctors Orders
The Australian 9 Jan 1998
Mayne Nickless is snapping up health care assets all over the place. But its best acquisition was probably one of its first.A case could be made that the single most important public health asset Mayne Nickless has privatised so far is Dr Barry Catchlove, - - -
--------------------
So important is the operation (HCoA) to Mayne Nickless that the 112 year old conglomerate, formerly a straight transport group, has already come close to converting into an almost pure health care stock.
--------------------
HCoA's present agenda is to keep on expanding, and Catchlove is trawing through every buying opportunity at home and overseas. - - - - There are opportunities flying around in Asia where some large conglomerates are looking at going back to their core activities.
--------------------
At home the spate of public hospital privatisations and colocation projects is continuing.
--------------------
Catchlove is unenthusiastic about the prospect of empire building HCoA into a multinational concern. The group looked at and rejected some opportunities in Canada and is not too keen on Europe any more,- - - - - "I think it’s a regional business".
-------------------------
"There is a view in the public sector that that's where quality begins and ends and the private sector is just some greedy money-grubbers or misguided nuns or something.But the reality is that if we don't provide a quality product were out of business. If we do an excellent job at what we do we will make money . . . because if you run your business efficiently and provide high quality you cannot help but make money.
------------------------
Its my experience that that the good private sector is more committed to quality, to training staff, than the public sector. It’s a much better employer.
-------------------------
One of its (HCoA) key performance measures is the number of hours devoted to every patient per day. Across the HCoA group the average is 11 hours a day, compared to 15 hours at many public hospitals."If you increase that 11 hours by point-one of an hour, to 11.1 hours, it takes $2 million off our bottom line, that’s how sensitive it is," He (Catchlove) says. "And when we've taken over (public hospitals) and reduced the average hours per patient to 11, there was no complaint about the quality or the service. So there are huge inefficiencies."
-----------------------
HCoA is riding the crest of the wave. Posting a more than 40 per cent rise in pretax profits to almost $80 million in 1996-97 and an almost 40 per cent rise in revenue to $720 million.
-------------------------
(A Far Side cartoon used by Catchlove). It showed two spiders spinning their web across the bottom of a slippery dip. One says to the other. "If we pull it off, we'll eat like kings."
Delay On Optus Hits Mayne
Sunday Age 02/22/1998
THIS time last year Mayne Nickless' managing director, Bob Dalziel, told analysts and journalists the company's growth opportunities would be impaired if Mayne Nickless had not quit its Optus Communications investment by July.
-----------------------
It has been a costly delay. Aside from $52 million annual interest bill, management attention has been diverted, Mayne Nickless' share price has been suppressed and there has been the unquantifiable opportunity cost of big-ticket acquisitions in the health sector.
----------------------
"We have accelerated growth opportunities (in health care) to find and we need to get on with that job this calendar year," Dalziel said a year ago."We can't allow our failure to get out of Optus to impair our growth opportunities. And it will if it goes past July (1997)."
Optus float delayed to '99
Sydney Morning Herald - 23 Feb 1998
Mayne Need To Free Up
Capital
Australian Financial Review 02/25/1998
Mayne Nickless's apparent inability to offload its 24.9 per cent stake in Optus Communications before next year may force the company to hasten the clean-up of its transport and logistics operations to fund the expansion of its core health-care operations.
-------------------
One analyst said Mayne "must sell something" to fund the capital expansion of its booming health-care operations, which are the engine room of the group.
--------------------
"They are carrying a lot of historical baggage and they have a lot to do that they are getting on with, but the market wants results."
Mayne share price slashed after
posting $60m interim
Courier Mail 25 Feb. 1998
Haemorraging in parts of the health division, reduced profitability in the time- critical express business and lower margins in the armoured car unit hurt the groups earnings.
-------------------
"However at the same time in our core business of healthcare, in particular, specifically in our high acuity, free standing private hospitals, we've incurred during calender year 1998 a less than satisfactory performance.
`Mayne posts $59m earnings, sets
its sights high
The Australian 26 Feb. 1998
Mayne Nickless has set itself an ambitious target of improving earnings by 10 to 15 percent every six months after unveiling a 37 per cent rise in December half profit.
---------------------
But directors vehemently rejected the reports insisting the company had adequate sources of funding expansion plans without the Optus proceeds.Abstract:- (Business Intelligence Australia)
The figures, released on Wednesday, February 25, 1998, show an interim profit of $A59.2m, compared with $A43.1 in 1996.
Mayne commits to Optus float
Sydney Morning Herald - 26 Feb 1998
Mayne Nickless stressed yesterday that it was pushing ahead with plans to sell its $1 billion-plus investment in Optus Communications into a float - - -
------------------
In addition, Mr Dalziel said the company had sufficient cash flows to fund its expansion plans in health care without the $1 billion from a sale of Optus.
Optus $400m falls short
Sydney Morning Herald - 07 Mar 1998
Optus Capital Raiser Ends
The Age 03/07/1998
Optus Communications yesterday completed a $400 million capital raising from existing shareholders as part of its efforts to refinance and cut its estimated $3 billion debt burden.But the UK-controlled telecommunications group is believed to have fallen short of its target: some small shareholders are understood to have declined the offer while expressing concern about repeated delays to Optus's plans to float on the Australian Stock Exchange.
----------------------
Optus recently posted half-year losses of $83.6 million, after its interest bill more than doubled to $112.9 million.
Mayne jumps on Optus float
hopes
The Australian 27may98
MAYNE Nickless shares rallied 3 per cent in late trade yesterday amid renewed hopes the company could float its 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications within 12 months.
Mayne's Integration Move
Australian Financial Review 05/28/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd yesterday unveiled a new executive structure that will drive the evolution of the company into an integrated provider of healthcare, transport and logistics services around the world.Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel has created an "inner cabinet" of key executives that will spearhead the group's development once it has offloaded its 24.9 per cent stake in Optus Communications this year.
The chief executive of Mayne's Health Care of Australia, Dr Barry Catchlove, will become executive director responsible for acquisitions, while the head of the group's European interests, Mr Bill Kirk, will oversee Mayne's existing business portfolio.
-------------------
Dr Catchlove, who is credited with the rapid development of the group's healthcare operations, will earmark acquisitive opportunities in light of the warchest of funds likely to be created by the Optus sale.HCoA's Mr Keith Cadell, director of group operations, will step into Dr Catchlove's shoes at the helm of what is the group's main profit centre.
Mayne Nickless unveils new
management roles
The Age 28 May 1998
The healthcare and logistics group Mayne Nickless yesterday unveiled a massive restructuring of its senior ranks. The aim is to extract maximum synergies within the group and place it in the box seat before the critical expansion of its healthcare operations - - -
------------------------
Dr Catchlove will become executive director with responsibility for new growth and acquisitions and Mr Kirk will become chief operating officer.
-------------------
"I guess the fact that Barry Catchlove is the driver on the growth side of things is a pretty big hint that they are going to spend on healthcare."
-------------------
Mayne Nickless has focused on offshore healthcare in Indonesia but, given the political instability there and the amount Mayne Nickless has to spend, analysts speculated that further offshore healthcare investments were more likely to occur in the United States or Europe.
Mayne, GIO in rejig of top
staff
The Australian 28may98
In other developments, Mayne Nickless has announced a reshuffle of its top executives to position the company for growth after the divestment of its $1 billion, 25 per cent stake in Optus Communications later this year.Barry Catchlove, chief executive of Mayne subsidiary Health Care of Australia, takes on a new role as executive director of the Mayne Nickless group, reporting directly to the group chief executive, Bob Dalziel.
------------------------
Mr Catchlove and Mr Kirk, together with Mayne chief financial officer Shane Tanner and Mr Dalziel, will comprise the newly formed executive committee, whose main purpose is to devise and set strategic direction and policy for the company.
Everything's In Place For The
Mayne Man
Australian Financial Review 06/13/1998
Mayne Nickless managing director Mr Bob Dalziel says the four corners of his strategy for the group's emergence as an integrated healthcare and logistics service provider are in place.
-----------------------
As the market speculates wildly on the timing and nature of the sell-down, and as Mayne shares continue to strengthen on the prospect of entitlement to the offering, Mr Dalziel is reluctant to talk specifics.
----------------------
The group has reduced its portfolio of businesses from 23 to nine
------------------
Mr Dalziel says a series of opportunities for growth as an integrated healthcare and logistics service provider "have been through the board in April and May" and are ready to roll once the proceeds of the Optus sale are banked.
-----------------
"They are significant savings and that frees you up to grow again . . . and we are now all about growth."
The Mayne thing's the right
timing
Australian Financial Review 17 Jul 1998
That Bob Dalziel has yet to act on his 1995 promise to divest Mayne Nickless' stake in Optus now seems to prove rather beneficial.
--------------------
And now that the sale of the Federal Government's remaining two-thirds of Telstra is off the agenda following the Senate's rejection last Saturday of the full privatisation bill, the climate for an Optus offering has been further enhanced. Australia's second-ranked cellular phone company will, for a while, have potential investors in the sector all to itself.The positive noises that an Optus float may be just around the corner -Mr Dalziel has targeted September - have not fallen on deaf ears since investment upgrades are starting to flow from sharemarket analysts.
----------------------
"Unfortunately, this is a group that has promised and not delivered, and a float has been tried and not delivered."Things look good now, but you should never value a stock on a best-case situation."
Rerating lifts Mayne
The Australian 17jul98
MAYNE Nickless shares closed on record highs yesterday on the back of a global rerating of cable TV operators
Mayne gets even bigger in
pathology
Courier Mail 5 Aug. 1998
Mayne adds to health care
unit
Courier Mail 5 Aug 1998
Mayne's HCA gets booster
The Australian 05aug98
MAYNE Nickless yesterday boosted its presence in the fast-growing pathology services market by purchasing the NSW-based Macquarie Pathology for an estimated $45 million.
The acquisition, conducted through Mayne Nickless' Health Care of Australia group, consolidates HCA as the nation's biggest pathology provider.
-------------------------
The purchase of Macquarie adds 45 pathology centres to HCA's existing NSW network of Hampson Sugarman Pathology, which was bought in 1995 and has a strong regional presence in the Hunter, North and Central coasts as well as southern Sydney.
`Conflict of interest concern
over new health body chief
Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Aug 1998
`BRIEFS - - - Mayne director
joins HIC
Australian Financial Review 08/07/1998
Mayne Nickless executive Dr Barry Catchlove relinquished his position on the company's board yesterday to take up the chairmanship of the Federal Health Insurance Commission. But Dr Catchlove, who is a former chief executive of Mayne's health division and has been a company director since October 1994, will remain part of managing director Mr Bob Dalziel's new four-man executive committee, and retain his new role as executive director of acquisitions.
Mayne's strength raises
eyebrows
Sydney Morning Herald - 08 Aug 1998
The company employing the new chairman of the Health Insurance Commission (HIC), which polices pathology payments, has just captured 20 per cent of the $1 billion-a-year pathology market.
Mayne says 'yes' to $8b Optus
float
Courier Mail 16 Aug. 1998
`Mayne results delay gives clue
to Optus float details
Sydney Morning Herald - 24 Aug 1998
Optus readies to float this
year
The Australian 28aug98
OPTUS is close to finalising a draft prospectus which will allow the company to list on the share market by the end of the calendar year. It is understood Optus has recruited global investment as its float adviser - - -
PORTFOLIO
The Age, Sep 1998
MAYNE Nickless shareholders who have been banking on the float of Optus Communications risk being disappointed again today when Mayne unveils its 1997-98 result.
Mayne nearing point where Optus
stake will have to go
The Age, Sep 1998
Poor Bob Dalziel has called the imminent float of Cable & Wireless Optus so often over the past 18 months that his restatement of Mayne Nickless's timetable for selling its stake yesterday added little to the sum of knowledge about Optus's plans.
Big shareholder is raring to
go
Business Review Weekly, Sep 1998
Betting on the timing of the Cable & Wireless Optus float has become a popular sport among finance punters. For Mayne Nickless, the bet is more than a bottle or two of champagne.
Turmoil Adds To Timing
Problem
Australian Financial Review 09/01/1998
Just how badly does Mayne Nickless chief Bob Dalziel want to collect his $780 million to $1.2 billion profit on the sale of his 25 per cent stake in Optus? And by rushing the sale, will he threaten a bigger profit down the track?
------------------
- - - - - but if the US market continues to unravel, local investor fears that he will give the company away to get the float off the ground will increase.
-------------------
Market risk is the risk facing the float and it all comes down to a question of timing and how much profit Dalziel wants to take.
Investors waiting for Optus to
call
The Australian 1sep98
SOME investors might be disappointed Optus did not use yesterday's profit announcement to unveil the timing of a $6 billion float. But the shakeout of global financial markets in the past week has challenged the conventional wisdom - - -
Talk of Optus delay hits Mayne
Nickless
Sydney Morning Herald 01 Sep 1998
Mayne Nickless shares fell by more than 5 per cent at one stage yesterday on rumours that the Optus float might be delayed further because pricing of the phone company's $US1 billion bond issue had stalled due to the recent volatility in the US bond market. Analysts said US bond market condition
Optus: the most confusing
company
Australian Financial Review 05 Sep 1998
What's the difference between $2 billion and $10 billion? It's the range of analysts' opinions about the true worth of Optus. But the uncertainty masks one sure fact: the float can't be put off indefinitely.
Mayne Nickless set to unload
freight operations
Australian Financial Review 09 Sep 1998
Transport and healthcare group Mayne Nickless Ltd is in final negotiations to sell its underperforming IPEC and Jetsroad express freight operations, with a sale announcement expected within days.
Optus hangs on the line.
BRW, 09/14/98, Vol. 20 Issue 35, p56, 5p, 1 chart, 2c
Abstract: Business Source Premier
Presents information on the delayed float of Australian company Optus Communications, which is also known as Cable & Wireless Optus. The necessity of debt raising; Shareholders Mayne Nickless and Cable & Wireless in discussions over the float date; Float to be conducted through a book build transaction; Timing of the float and concerns over the shortage of scrip; How management changes have undermined morale and weakened service-oriented culture.
Mayne Nickless to get off the
road
Business Review Weekly, 14 Sep 1998
The century-old company is to quit the transport industry and concentrate on its health-care and logistics businesses Mayne Nickless will cut the last links with its past when it announces the sale or closure of its Australian express-freight operations on September 15.
-----------------------
They have lost at least $30 million in the past three years as competition forced margins down. - - - - the transport business has been a problem for the company for years.
----------------------
The express-freight businesses were Mayne Nickless's worst-performing business in the 1996-97 year, losing $12 million. They are believed to have lost another $10 million in 1997-98.The Australian transport industry has undergone a transformation in recent years, particularly in ownership. The former big trucking operators - TNT, Brambles and Mayne Nickless - have, over several years, discarded most of their general transport operations. Part of the reason was the change in the nature of competition in the early 1990s. - - - - - is estimated that between them, Mayne Nickless and TNT held 90% of the express-freight market between 1987 and 1991
Fear Of Floating
Business Review Weekly 09/14/1998
The rapid changes in financial markets must be causing sleepless nights for executives of Optus and its main shareholders, Cable & Wireless and Mayne Nickless. The Optus float, as reported by Neil Shoebridge and Adele Ferguson, was to be announced when the company released its annual results two weeks ago. However, the international downturn that had the US market 18% off its peak put a halt to the float, at least for the short term.
-------------------
Mayne Nickless is frustrated by its stake in Optus. Adele Ferguson reveals this week that the company will announce the sale of its transport business in the coming weeks, which shows that the company is becoming a health-care specialist and is not keen to have so much tied up in Australia's second telecommunications company.
Mayne writedown as Optus sale
fades
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 Sep 1998
Mayne Nickless is unlikely to announce the sale of its Optus stake in a public float when it releases its annual results today, but it will announce further one-off losses through a writedown on its Australian express freight operations.
Great Expectations Dashed:
Profit Forecasts To Plunge
Australian Financial Review 09/15/1998
Telecommunications, transport and healthcare stock Mayne Nickless, which has a July 6 balance date, is virtually the last remaining bluechip to detail its earnings to the market.The company has withheld the results until the last possible moment in the hope that managing director Mr Bob Dalziel could simultaneously announce a long-awaited float of Optus Communications, in which it controls a 24.99 per cent stake, to the market.
MayNick-97/98 revenue fall due
to discontinued business
AAP News 09/15/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd said businesses discontinued in 1997/98 was behind a 7.0 per cent decline in total revenue for the year to $2.63 billion. "The impact of discontinued businesses was the major reason for the total revenue decline," it said.
Mayne Nickless moving to health
care sector of All Ords
AAP News 09/15/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd said it would transfer from the transport sector to the health care and biotechnology sector of the Australian Stock Exchange's All Ordinaries Index.It said following the divestment of its 25 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless Optus, health care will represent 70 per cent of funds employed and more than 50 per cent of group profit.
MAYNE NICKLESS SAYS 98/99 TO BE
A CHALLENGING YEAR
AAP News 09/15/1998
Transport, security and health services company Mayne Nickless Ltd said it expected the year ahead would be very challenging, but the company remained optimistic of achieving its business planning targets.Mayne Nickless today reported a fall in net profit for 1997/98 to $44.23 million, down 55.9 per cent from $100.29 million in the prior year.
----------------------
It also announced plans to buy four private hospitals from Medical Benefits Fund of Australia Ltd.
------------------
Mayne Nickless also said that in the short term, margins in its expanding Australian health care sector would continue to be under pressure.
Optus Float Is Mayne Event
The Australian 15 Sep 1998
Abstract:- (Australasian Business Intelligence)
Optus ceo, Chris Anderson, says there are now no "internal impediments" to a float;
That float: forget sinking
feeling
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 Sep 1998
Mayne Nickless will disappoint the market today. A few weeks ago it delayed the release of its profit figures so it could announce the long-awaited float of Optus Communications. Sadly, today we can expect not a word.
-----------------------
If ever a stock was heavily pregnant with news it is Mayne Nickless. The gestation period has been more than two years and there have many internal and external frustrations - but the excitement will return to the stock.
Mayne writedown as Optus sale
fades
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 Sep 1998
Mayne Nickless is unlikely to announce the sale of its Optus stake in a public float when it releases its annual results today, but it will announce further one-off losses through a writedown on its Australian express freight operations.
-------------------
However, Mayne would be in a position today to say that it was at least close to announcing the sale of its loss-making IPEC and Jetsroad businesses, which has a book value of about $90 million, though the sale price is expected to be much lower.Analysts said Mayne would take a $50 million writedown on the IPEC and Jetsroad sale, which would hurt the expected net profit before abnormal items of about $125 million. This would bring one-off losses for the group to about $240 million over the past five years.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
Preliminary Final Report
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
09/15/1998
Mayne Nickless today announced a net profit after tax and before abnormals of $132 million, 14% higher than the previous corresponding period.
---------------------
"The move reflects our development as Australia's largest health care company. Our clear intention, however, is to remain in two industry segments - health care and logistics.
Mayne profits halved
The Age, 16 Sep 1998
Mayne Nickless yesterday softened the blow of a lacklustre 1997-98 profit result with its declaration that it was exiting its Australian Road Express business and - barring ``cataclysmic" events on markets - Optus Communications.- - -
------------------
Investors, delighted by news of an imminent Optus float, set aside disappointment over the size of abnormal losses and lower-than-expected organic growth in health care and logistics, to send Mayne Nickless shares soaring 52 cents to $9.02.
----------------
``It's pretty ordinary,'' one analyst said of the result, adding that the company had reported $580million in pre-tax abnormal losses over the past six years.
-----------------
Meanwhile, Toll Holdings is set to lift its share of Australia's time-sensitive delivery market, with the acquisition of the $50 million Ipec/Jetsroad business from Mayne Nickless Ltd.
Mayne Nickless profits slide
56%
Illawarra Mercury 16 Sep 1998
Multi-million dollar restructuring expenses, brand name write-offs and ongoing funding costs for the loss-making Cable and Wireless Optus forced Mayne Nickless Ltd's net profit to slide 56 per cent to $44.23million in 1997-98.
-------------------------
On the upside, the health care and logistics company announced the acquisition of four hospitals, the pending divestment of its underperforming Australian Road Express businesses and a commitment to float Cable and Wireless Optus.
Mayne now poised for growth
Australian Financial Review, 16 Sep 1998
Transport, health-care and telecommunications group Mayne Nickless Ltd yesterday reported a disappointing 56 per cent decline in bottom-line earnings to $44.2 million, dragged back by a net abnormal loss of $87.5 million primarily on asset sales and restructuring costs.
Optus stake float `this
year'
The Age, 16 Sep 1998
The long-restless Optus shareholder Mayne Nickless yesterday repeated its wish to have the float of its stake in the telecommunications carrier wrapped up before New Year.
------------------------
``It is Mayne Nickless' objective that, subject to market conditions, the listing of Optus will take place as soon as practicable and within this calendar year,'' Mr Dalziel said.
Health Care The Way Of The
Future
The Courier-Mail 16 Sep 1998
Abstract (Australasian Business Intelligence)
Bob Dalziel has turned tired transport company Mayne Nickless into a dominant force in the Australian Health Care Industry. - - - in 1996 health care contributed about 15 per cent of Mayne's revenue, - - - In the 1997-1998 year, health care had doubled its revenue contribution, formed 59 per cent of its assets and profit was almost half of the total earnings. Once Optus disappears from the books, health care will be more than 70 per cent of funds employed;
In the Mayne, prospects
healthy
Sydney Morning Herald, 16 Sep 1998
Shares in Mayne Nickless rebounded strongly on news that the group plans to sell its Optus stake by the end of the year and on Mayne's historic shift into the healthcare sector from its transport origins.
------------------------
"It's up on the Optus float and the increasing focus on healthcare, which is seen as a high-margin business and good growth prospect compared with the transport industry, which operates on much lower margins," one broker said.
----------------------
It has spent about $1 billion in the past seven years building its healthcare business, including the purchase yesterday of four hospitals from health insurance group MBF.
---------------------
Mr Dalziel said the group was considering setting up a property trust, which would own all the hospitals, leaving the company to focus on hospital management.
$6 + A Bob Is Worth Nearly
$10
The Daily Telegraph 16 Sep 1998
Abstract:- (Australasian Business Intelligence)
Bob Dalziel, the chief executive of Mayne Nickless, has had a busy three years. - - - Dalziel has followed the profit trail. With the completion of the Optus deal, 70 per cent of the company's focus will be on healthcare. - - -
What's abnormal about the
losses?
Australian Financial Review, 18 Sep 1998
In a profit season marred by a steady stream of abnormal losses, Mayne Nickless has emerged as a standout with $177 million in abnormals for the last financial year, bringing its six-year total to $580.6 million.
---------------------
The obvious question to ask the likes of all four of the big banks, Lend Lease, Mayne Nickless and others who continually pile on abnormal losses and write down assets to make latter profits look better, is: what is so abnormal about the losses?
-------------------
At the end of the day someone pays for abnormal losses and that someone is the shareholders.
------------------
For the first time since joining the company three years ago, Dalziel was able to declare this year that each of his remaining businesses is both profitable and meets internal performance criteria. Now comes the time to show the fruits of the revolution.Dalziel's reign has accounted for $398 million worth of so-called abnormal losses or 68 per cent of the six-year total, amid his housecleaning.
--------------------
While he is keen to get Optus off his books, it should also be noted that, once gone, Dalziel will have no excuses and will face a shareholder revolt if he even mentions the words abnormal item this time next year.
-------------------
In health care, the recent push into diagnostics through a string of pathology acquisitions and a renewed interest in aged care centres represent an attempt to boost profit margins from the health care group.
Cashed-up Institutions Awaiting
Float
Australian Financial Review 09/25/1998
The whole market is talking about the imminent float of Cable & Wireless Optus Pty Ltd,
----------------------
But his endeavours to take the newly-named C & W Optus to market and free-up Mayne's hamstrung capital have been thwarted before, most recently in September when the offer document was ready to roll but the volatility on global financial markets brought the process to a screaming halt
-----------------------
Part of the strategy in the two-pronged approach will be to progressively offload Mayne's estimated $700 million in property assets.One option, Mr Dalziel said, was to sell the assets into a listed property trust, whose main business would be the ownership of private hospitals.
-------------------
But C & W Optus is Mr Dalziel's short-term priority in the full knowledge that the market may be tiring of his promises of sooner rather than later. Now it's fourth quarter or bust.
C & W Optus Float Set To
Roll
Australian Financial Review 09/28/1998
Details of Cable & Wireless Optus Pty Ltd's long-awaited float are expected to emerge this week with the launch of a prospectus to raise about $1 billion from the equity market.
---------------------------
Indeed, Mr Bob Dalziel, Optus's chairman and the managing director of Mayne Nickless Ltd - a 24.99 per cent shareholder in Optus - recently said only a cataclysmic fall in the equity markets would derail his plan to get the Optus float away by December 31.
Dalziel Gets His Chance To
Unload
Australian Financial Review 09/30/1998
- - - today the shareholders of the number two Australian telecommunications company, Cable &Wireless Optus, will announce a float raising well over $1 billion in new equity.
-------------------
The 25 per cent stake in Optus owned by Dalziel's company since 1991 was only ever intended as a short-term holding, sparked in part by then Mayne chief Ian Webber's belief in supporting a rival phone company on national interest grounds.
Mayne Nick expects $1.083 bln
net
AAP News 09/30/1998
A total 1.03 billion shares will be offered for sale, with 375 million to be issued by Cable & Wireless Optus and 556.9 million to be sold by Mayne Nick.
---------------------
Mayne Nick managing director Bob Dalziel said the Optus float will position Mayne Nick to continue to grow its core health care and logistics businesses.
Mayne Nick to focus on health
care post Optus sale
AAP News 09/30/1998
"It allows us to focus on our core business and we think the next 6 to 12 months are very exciting for us at Mayne." Mr Dalziel did not specify acquisition targets. But he said the company would continue its strategy of holding 70-80 per cent of its new capital investments in the health care industry.
---------------------
Mayne Nickless today announced the sale of its 24.99 per cent C&W Optus shareholding through a pro-rata non-renouncable entitlement offer.
Mayne Nick to focus on
health
AAP News09/30/1998
"It mainly affects the balance sheet...it affects how we gear the business and therefore affects our ability to borrow, to grow the earnings-based business," Mr Dalziel said.
MAYNE NICKLESS SHAREHOLDERS BIG
WINNERS IN OPTUS FLOAT
AAP News 09/30/1998
Buoyant Optus ready to float
Australian Financial Review, Sep 1998
Optus Communications declared yesterday that it was ready for a float after delivering a better than expected full-year net loss of $95 million and showing signs that it will at least break even in the current financial year.
The Mayne event: Optus float by
year's end
Australian Financial Review, Sep 1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd wants to push ahead with a sharemarket listing of Cable & Wireless Optus Pty Ltd this calendar year, despite the global market uncertainty that has already caused a third delay to the long- awaited float
TNT pulls out of race for
carrier
Australian Financial Review, Sep 1998
TNT has withdrawn from the race to buy Mayne Nickless Ltd's express freight operations, leaving fellow transport group Toll Holdings as the last prospective buyer for the loss-making IPEC and Jetsroad businesses.
Dalziel Unveils Mayne
Strategy
Australian Financial Review 10/01/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, has big plans for the healthcare and logistics business now that he has finally been able to deliver on his promise of floating its 24.99 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless Optus.
--------------------
Mr Dalziel flagged that about 40 per cent of the C&W Optus proceeds would be used for acquisitions, with the bulk of those likely in the healthcare sector."We've done our research and we know where we want to grow," he said. "The opportunities are there over the next 12 months to two years to do it.
Mayne Nickless intends to use some of the proceeds to continue its expansion into the $1 billion-a-year diagnostics business, which covers the pathology and radiology services sector, and is looking at opportunities in aged care.
Float Is Bound To Be A
Winner
The Age 10/01/1998
It is, nevertheless, an intriguing time to take any company to market, because if Optus's chief executive is bullish about the sharemarket, he is probably in the minority.
-----------------
Despite that, Optus's float is almost certain to succeed - because it offers shares in a fashionable growth business, because it is priced conservatively, and because it is very much an in-house affair.
Mayne To Raise $1bn From Sale Of
Optus
Sydney Morning Herald 10/01/1998
Analysts said the on and off again C & W Optus float over the past two years has held Mayne back from its objective to grow its health care operations, where Mayne is investing about 70 per cent of its funds and where it sees a lot of its profit growth.
Optus finally to issue.
Asiamoney, Oct 98, Vol. 9 Issue 8, p4
Australia's second largest telecommunications company, C&W Optus, will be hoping history repeats itself with its long-awaited float on November 17, exactly a year after Telstra's USS 10 billion debut. Optus's issue has been thrice postponed and the fourth attempt is unfortunately timed, clashing as it does with several telecommunications offers from Europe and Asia.
----------------------------
Mayne Nickless's stake translates to an offer of 556.9 million shares, mainly to its shareholders, with 1.6 Optus shares for every one Mayne Nickless share owned. National Mutual Holdings and AMP will also float 95 million shares from their combined holdings in the company. Another 375 million new shares will also be offered.
Foreign holders dump Mayne.
Sydney Morning Herald - 07 Oct 1998 p.29
Fall in Mayne Nickless a `boost'
for Optus price
Sydney Morning Herald 09 Oct 1998
Shares in Cable & Wireless Optus are expected to make a solid debut if the fall in Mayne Nickless's share price is anything to go by. Shares in the hospital and logistics operator fell $1.23 or 13.9 per cent to $7.62, a level not seen since January.
Mayne's Healthcare Focus A
Headache For Investors
Sydney Morning Herald 10/12/1998
Mayne has spent about $1 billion over the past eight years building Health Care of Australia from scratch.Mayne managing director Mr Bob Dalziel wants it to be the major healthcare services group in the country managing hospitals and healthcare centres and providing diagnostic services.
-----------------------
Mr Goldberg, however, said: "I think it is going to be a very tough 12-24 months because private healthcare cover is still low and it will take a while for that to turn around."Industry margins have come under pressure and the market values of healthcare operators have slumped in the past six months. Shares in Ramsey Health Care, Australian Hospital Care and Healthscope have fallen by more than 40 per cent and Alpha Healthcare's have lost a third.
------------------
"We are capable of making a large acquisition but we have no acquisition plans at the moment, it all depends on where the opportunities arise," Mr Dalziel said.
-------------------
Analysts estimate $15 billion of investment is needed over the next 15 years to build new hospitals or upgrade run-down public hospitals, with much of this expected to come from the private sector.
STRICTLY PRIVATE -- THE CHANGING
FACE OF MAYNE OPTIONS PLAN
The Age 10/20/1998
Robert Dalziel, managing director of Mayne Nickless, and fellow director Barry Catchlove have run into an odd problem or two with the swag of options they were issued two years ago.Dalziel lined up for one million options under the company's executive incentive plan while Catchlove, then the group's healthcare heavy, had 400,000 options pencilled in against his name.
---------------------
Meanwhile, Dalziel is lining up for the grant of a further 600,000 options.
ANALYSTS WELCOME MOVES BY MAYNE
TO SPIN OFF PROPERTY ASSETS
AAP News 10/22/1998
Analysts today welcomed moves by logistics and healthcare group Mayne Nickless Ltd to spin off its property assets into a publicly traded trust.
-------------------
In New York, Mr Dalziel suggested that the trust would initially hold about $550 million (US$350 million) worth of hospital property and grow over time, Bloomberg reported.
Trading still tough: Mayne
Sydney Morning Herald - 22 Oct 1998 p.27
Trading conditions were expected to remain tough in all of Mayne Nickless's markets - health care, express freight, logistics and security - the company said in its annual report, released yesterday.
--------------------
"Continuing pressure on margins is expected due to the falling number of people taking out private health-care membership, the growing costs of imported medical supplies due to a weaker Australian dollar and increasing salary and wage costs," the report says.
------------------------
- - - the Asian economic crisis had already slowed further development of the group's health and logistics operations.
--------------------
The report shows Mr Dalziel's salary rose to more than $1.16 million in 1997-98 from about $1 million a year ago.
Mayne Flagging Property
Spin-off
The Age 10/23/1998
He said the company had more than $700 million worth of property on its balance sheet that it did not need to own, adding that it was exploring the option of a listed property trust.
---------------------
It would focus on diagnostic services, the capital-intensive government privatisations and hospital co-locations - building private hospitals next to existing public hospitals. Mayne, with its listed rivals Australian Hospital Care and Ramsay Healthcare, had been conscious of investment-community concerns about the amount of capital tied up in health-care property that could be better used elsewhere.
--------------------
Mayne Nickless, the largest private hospital operator outside the US, planned to double its hospital business to $2 billion in five years.It would then control 10per cent of the acute beds in the Australian hospital system.
Mayne Trust For Hospital
Property
Sydney Morning Herald 10/23/1998
"We will retain the management control of the hospitals, but we are not property developers, so it makes sense to keep the property in a separate trust."
Health The Mayne-stay Beyond
2000
The Age 10/24/1998
Whatever it takes,'' Mayne Nickless says on the cover of its 1998 annual report.No, it's not an oblique reference to the group's radical three-year corporate makeover or a joke about its traumatic 26-month bid to extricate itself from telecom group Cable & Wireless Optus.
It's a take on Mayne Nickless's hot-off-the-press vision statement, fostered by its dynamic managing director, Bob Dalziel. The new-look Mayne Nickless has pledged to encourage innovation and cross-pollination and to underscore its commitment to ``creating unique ... possibilities for our customer''.
---------------------
It's come a long way since an express-freight price-rigging scandal claimed the scalp of the then managing director, Bill Bytheway, in mid-1995
--------------------
But this think-outside-the-square approach smacks of the mindset of Mr Dalziel, who has had to contend with the market's reservations about his retailing background and his visionary flair since he left Coles Myer for Mayne in late 1995.
----------------------
In annointing HCoA's former managing director, Barry Catchlove, executive director with responsibility for strategy, growth of business opportunities in Australia and offshore and future product streams, Mr Dalziel has clearly spelt out where the group's priorities lie.
GST: A Healthy Profit
Outlook
Shares Magazine 11/01/1998
At the same time the election was a watershed for Australia's private hospital companies. Had Labor won, Kim Beazley's policy was to invest in public hospitals. The coalition plan is to offer a 30 per cent rebate on private health insurance, which will mean that a great many more Australians will insure their health and use the private hospital system.This transforms the long term outlook of Australia's private hospital providers and vindicates the bold decision of Mayne Nickless managing director, Bob Dalziel, to quit Optus in favor of healthcare (see page 52). As explained below, long term investors should include private hospital providers in their portfolios.
------------------------
But the biggest fundamental change comes in the private hospital sphere -assuming the coalition proposals get through the Senate. Most private hospitals stocks have been battered because as the health funds suffered declining numbers they put more and more pressure on the private hospitals, effectively using bulk buying to cut margins. Yet, the cost to the public purse of private sector health care is less than that of public facilities, so there will be savings to the government as it boosts the attraction of private health coverage and switches demand to private hospitals. Australia's population is ageing, so private hospitals are excellent long-term infrastructure investments, providing satisfactory margins are available.Mayne Nickless is covered, but I have selected four other private health operators, all of them good buying in the longer term, given that they have been hit hard in the tough times. However, investors should be warned that it will take some time for this change in outlook to be converted into substantial share price rises.
Mayne Nickless Life After
Optus
Shares Magazine 11/01/1998
* Health Care of Australia (HCoA). Operates private hospitals, pathology and radiology services and joint ventures. There are 42 hospitals in Australia and two in Indonesia (a third Indonesian hospital will be commissioned this month). In September Mayne announced it had bought four private hospitals formerly owned by the Medical Benefits Fund, taking the number of Australian hospitals to 46.
-----------------------
Mayne is Australia's largest private hospital operator, with 4700 beds -three times the number managed by the second-largest operator, Ramsay Health Care. It is also the largest participant in the Australian pathology business, with 22 per cent of the market.
-----------------------
"The healthcare division is in pretty good shape, with good margins and returns well above the cost of capital," says one analyst who follows Mayne. "They have moved into radiology and aged care, and have a strong, integrated business.
Old truckie gets a new health
kick.
Business Review Weekly 02 Nov 1998
Mayne Nickless, after selling its Optus stake, may go one step further and split its logistics and health-care businesses For the first time since he took the chief executive job at Mayne Nickless, Bob Dalziel can concentrate on the company's strategic direction instead of playing politics at Opus. "It's fantastic. I have waited nearly three years for this," he says. "Now we can get on with the job in hand, which is adding value to shareholder wealth and expanding the health-care business."
----------------------
In its post-Optus form, the company will also seem a much juicier takeover target to foreign health-care companies seeking a presence in the growing Australian market.
------------------------
For this reason, the heat is on Dalziel and his team to get the share price above $9. To this end Dalziel and executive director Barry Catchlove have just completed a three-week tour of world financial markets, talking to institutional investors and making presentations at a business conference in Edinburgh and at the Merrill Lynch investment conference in New York.
-----------------------
Clifford Smith, assistant vice-president of the US asset management group The Boston Company, concurs. "I look at individual stocks in Australia, but they would be more attractive if they were more focused and less diversified."Dalziel understands this and acknowledges that splitting the businesses is a possibility at some stage. "A lot of corporate advisors have knocked on our doors about splitting the company, but right now we are not interested. We need to get critical mass in both businesses before we could consider anything like that."
------------------------
"This is a dramatic shift for us," Dalziel says. "It is a philosophical shift. What we are saying to investors is, growth is going to come from health; that will be the real driver of the company."
-------------------------
Dalziel says that in the next couple of years the health-care contribution will overtake that of logistics.
-------------------------
In the next decade, debt-ridden state governments will have to spend at least $10 billion on hospital upgrades. The underlying message is that the health-care sector is one that institutions can no longer ignore. An ageing population means that annual spending on health-care is increasing; it has almost doubled on a per capita basis since 1974, from $983 to $1837.
---------------------------
Catchlove believes that diagnostics and co-locations (building private hospitals next to public hospitals, to achieve synergies) are future growth areas. In the past couple of years Mayne Nickless has built its pathology revenue from zero to almost $200 million (22% of its total health-care revenue), and it expects to double this within two years. Catchlove says the health-care division is cashflow positive for the first time. This means it can fund its own expansion without relying on cash from the logistics business.He says the company is pursuing a strategy of diversification in health, and vertical integration of health products, to reduce the dependence on its free-standing private hospitals as a source of revenue and profit growth. The company has close to $100 million tied up in work in progress - projects that will not produce revenue for two or three years. Increasing its exposure to diagnostics will reduce reliance on revenue from health funds and will spread risk.
Ken Cadell, the recently appointed chief executive of Health Care of Australia, says: "If you want to maximise profit in the short term, you would stop your developments. Your return would go up, but after two or three years it would go flat. Your business must grow; it must grow organically and by acquisition. We have got to balance organic and acquisition growth. Our target organic growth is 10% per annum."
Mayne has also moved into aged-care services with the purchase of Lilydale Community Hospital in Victoria. Catchlove says the acquisition will allow the company to assess the long-term viability of the aged-care sector. Like pathology and radiology, aged care is a "cottage industry" with many participants.
Mayne Nickless and Sonic Healthcare have rationalised the pathology industry, and Mayne is turning to other potential opportunities. It recently bought its first radiology business and it plans to open radiology operations in each of its hospitals. "But you've got to be very careful that you don't blow a lot of money on these businesses and dig yourself a hole," Catchlove says. "Pathology has worked out well for us, but that doesn't mean that aged-care services or other forays will be good. We have to be very careful where we expand and where we put our money."
--------------------------------
The next five years will be crucial for positioning the company in health care. "After that the major opportunities for health will be gone in Australia," Dalziel says. "Therefore, we have to be aggressive if we are to stay ahead." If the company is too slow or too careful in its bidding, it will have missed one-off opportunities in privatisation and industry rationalisation. For these reasons it needs cash. The $300 million left over from Optus and the flow of funds from logistics will not be enough to finance big acquisitions in health and sustain the logistics business.
------------------------
Analysts question why the company is continuing with logistics. It faces more competition as the price of computer technology falls, lowering entry barriers.
Executive Pay Issues On Mayne
Agenda
The Age 11/16/1998
The Australian Shareholders Association is expected to continue waging its campaign for full disclosure of chief executives' remuneration as well as raising questions about the workload of Mayne Nickless's chairman, Mr Mark Rayner, at the Mayne Nickless annual meeting in Melbourne tomorrow.
------------------------
Mr Rayner, 60, was chief executive of Comalco and an executive director of CRA before it merged with RTZ plc and changed its name to Rio Tinto. Aside from his role at Mayne Nickless, Mr Rayner is chairman of National Australia Bank, Pasminco, the Australia Japan Business Forum, a director of Boral and a member of the executive committee of the Australia Japan Business Cooperation Committee.
------------------------
As well, the shareholders association is expected to express its reservations about the issue of 600,000 options to the Mayne Nickless managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel.
--------------------
``One of the other things we are interested to hear, given abnormals have featured in the accounts, is some clear assurance they are behind us, and that we can get on without writing off huge amounts of shareholders' funds.''
-----------------
Analysts say that took pre-tax abnormal losses reported by the company over the past six years to $580 million.
Mayne Nick sees $200 mln gain
from sale of Optus stake
AAP News 11/17/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd chief executive Bob Dalziel said the company expects to book a $200 million after tax abnormal gain from the sale of its 25 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless Optus Pty Ltd.
-----------------
"I don't foresee any major restructuring abnormals at this time," Mr Dalziel told reports after the company's annual general meeting.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
Chairman's Address To Shareholders
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
11/17/1998
In total, Mayne Nickless will receive a net aggregate amount of some $1.1Billion, being the proceeds of divestment of its interest plus repayment of its remaining subordinated shareholders loans by C&W Optus, less the final call on a previous partly-paid issue of C&W Optus shares.
--------------------------------
We have withdrawn completely from Continental Europe and the USA and scaled back our other overseas activities. In the UK and Ireland we now have only the two very successful and profitable express freight businesses, Parceline and Interlink. In Canada, again, our principal activity is the Loomis express freight business, complemented by the small Loomis cash logistics operation. Thus, our offshore activities in the Northern Hemisphere are now substantially limited to the express freight sector.In Australia, we have virtually completed our withdrawal from the general transport sector and are no longer involved in the security business. Our activities fall into two broad industry streams: health care and logistics. Within logistics, we encompass express freight, contract logistics and distribution and cash logistics through Armaguard.
------------------------
This has allowed us to concentrate on the development of our contract logistics operations in Australia and to cautiously establish a beach-head in Asia. Our objective is to establish a platform for strong growth when the Asian economies recover - acknowledging that that may be some years into the future.
---------------------------
The Company's health care activities have continued to expand rapidly and to diversify in their scope. This has been undoubtedly the outstanding feature of recent years and particularly of the year just past. When Mr Dalziel reviews the Company's operations for you shortly, I know that he will be concentrating on the health care segment, to ensure that you are fully aware of its rapid evolution.
-----------------------
However, we must recognise that the very high growth rates which have characterised recent years reflected a low starting base and will not be prudently sustainable in the future, at least in percentage terms. None-the-less, we do plan that the health care sector will take the largest share of out new capital investment over the next few years, in dollar terms.
-----------------------
There is no doubt that our operations, particularly in Australia and in Asia, face increasingly difficult times and intense competition, Operating profits in the first quarter have fallen short of plans, which were quite aggressive, and are generally below the prior year.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED: Results
Of Meeting (Part A)
Australian Stock Exchange Company
Announcements11/17/1998
* variation of terms of option grants to Mr R R Dalziel and Dr B R Catchlove;
* grant of share options to Mr R R Dalziel.
Aust's Mayne Nick warns of tough
first half in 98/99
AAP News 11/17/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd warned shareholders today its 1998/99 performance was unlikely to show any improvement on last financial year, with first quarter operating profits falling below expectations.
-------------------------
"But at this stage, the results for the first half seems unlikely to exceed that of the previous corresponding period and unless conditions stabilise the full year is likely to be in line with that just past."Operating profits in the first quarter have fallen short of plans, which were quite aggressive, and are generally below the prior year," he said.
-------------------
Mr Rayner said Mayne Nickless' Australian and Asian operations would face increasingly difficult times and intense competition going forward.
----------------
However Mr Rayner noted HCA's robust growth of the last three years reflected a low starting base and would not be "prudently sustainable" in the future.
Mayne slides on profit
warning
Sydney Morning Herald - 18 Nov 1998
Mayne Nickless shares slumped for the second day in a row yesterday after the group warned that its first-half profit would be no more than last year's interim.
`Profit warning fuels Mayne
share slump
Courier Mail 18 Nov. 1998
Market Shows No Mercy After
Mayne Forecast
Australian Financial Review 11/18/1998
Healthcare and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd was yesterday liberated from its 24.9 per cent stake in Optus Communications, but has continued to disappoint the market with its expectation of flat to declining operating earnings to the year's end.
-----------------------
Mayne Nickless chairman Mr Mark Rayner told shareholders at the group's annual meeting in Melbourne that operating profit in the first quarter had failed to meet budget and had fallen below that seen in the same period last year.Interim earnings are expected to fall below the $205.8 million seen last year, with little optimism held for the full financial year.
------------------------
Mr Dalziel was confident each of the problems were short-term and remained committed to his two-pronged strategy to evolve into an integrated healthcare and logistics service provider.But the market savaged Mayne Nickless shares, stripping off 20cents to a new year-low of $6.65 on the dire forecast,
---------------------------
The division is now successfully signing two-in-five healthcare deals, compared with two-in-three this time last year, reflecting a "deliberate attempt to be prudent" in investments.
Mayne Shares Battered On Profit
Forecast
The Age 11/18/1998
Mayne Nickless's 1998-99 profit downgrade and its subsequent battering at the hands of investors yesterday took the gloss off a much-anticipated exit from its 25 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless Optus. Mayne Nickless shares were savaged for a second day in a row, - - - in stark contrast to the dizzying market performance of Optus shares
--------------------------
Later, the managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, said the ``disappointing'' profit forecasts were triggered by ``just a couple of problems'' in the group's New South Wales hospitals,``It wasn't so much a shock,'' Mr Dalziel said of the profit downgrade, which has seen some analysts trim forecast profits by 12 per cent. ``We don't want to overstate things. We see this half as being quite tough for us given where we are, but our other expectation is that improvement in the second half will get us back on track.''
-----------------------
When asked about the possibility of selling Mayne's express freight assets, Mr Rayner said: ``We would sell our grandmother if someone would offer the right price
Brokers Wind Back Mayne
Forecasts
Australian Financial Review 11/20/1998
Analysts have begun winding back their full-year earnings forecasts for transport and health care group Mayne Nickless Ltd following warnings this week of operational difficulties across a range of the company's divisions.
-----------------------
Macquarie Bank is understood to have downgraded its short-term view of the stock from "outperform" to "underperform", while continuing to believe it will outperform the market in the long term.
------------------
Since Monday, Mayne Nickless shares have fallen almost 10 per cent to strip $235 million from the group's market capitalisation,
---------------
Mr Bob Dalziel, said the operational difficulties, including those in the NSW health-care business and Armaguard operation, were short-term
Coles And Mayne Need To Be Wise
On Questions Of Health And Wealth
Sydney Morning Herald 11/21/1998
Since listing, on Tuesday, those shareholders have made paper gains of almost $500 million.
--------------------
So Mayne shareholders will, as a result of the listing success, be about $850 million in front, delivered to them in a highly tax-efficient combination of untaxed and unrealised gains.
------------------
The profit warning represented a poor start to Mayne's post-Optus future; a future dominated by its immature healthcare operations.
-----------------
He (Dalziel) might, however, have preferred - and probably deserved - at least a momentary pause for self-congratulation for the Optus task fulfilled, before being reminded so forcibly and unpleasantly of the challenges ahead.
Colonial in talks on Fiji
private hospital joint venture
AAP News 11/24/1998
Financial services group Colonial Ltd is in talks with health care and logistics company Mayne Nickless Ltd to establish a joint venture private hospital in Fiji.The multi-million dollar project would be Fiji's first private hospital and would fit with Colonial's health care business.
Colonial currently evacuates on average one patient a day to preferred hospitals in Australia and New Zealand under its managed health care business.
Two of those preferred hospitals in Australia are operated by Mayne Nickless.
----------------
Colonial, which has been operating in Fiji since 1876, currently holds 70 per cent of the country's life insurance market and 60 per cent of health care
Mayne Nickless shareholders vote
for $350 mln windfall
AAP News 12/18/1998
Mayne Nickless Ltd shareholders will finally share in the company's recent divestment of Cable & Wireless Optus Ltd after today voting in favour of a $350 million capital return.
-------------------
"We had a bad first quarter and that was what we were commenting on and I wouldn't want to comment at this stage on current trading."
--------------------
On Wednesday Mayne Nickless announced it would acquire the business of Melbourne Diagnostic Imaging Group for an undisclosed amount.
Mayne Shareholders Take Optus
Bonus
The Age 12/19/1998
After the meeting, the managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, declined to elaborate on last month's profit forecasts, other than to say that trading conditions, poor in the first quarter, were the same.
S&P Flags Mayne
Downgrade
Australian Financial Review 01/06/1999
Ratings agency Standard & Poor's Corp has revised the outlook for healthcare and logistics company Mayne Nickless Ltd from stable to negative as the future of the nation's health insurance sector remains uncertain.
---------------
- - - continued reliance on the nation's private health insurance funds to drive turnover in Mayne's Health Care of Australia subsidiary made the group's revenue vulnerable to decline.
---------------------
HCoA is Australia's biggest private healthcare operator and is still rapidly acquiring assets to boost its market share and to take up strategic positions in an increasingly crowded sector of the market.
------------------
But it said these were offset by continuing competitive pressures across most of the company's businesses, a lack of proven margin improvement and the failure of management to extract synergies from recently completed assets and acquisitions.
`Margin Call:: Mayne's the
game
The Australian 19 Feb. 1999
Mayne Nickless is being stalked. Margin Call understands a large foreign hospital group is running the ruler over the presently unfashionable health care and logistics company.
----------------------
Your diarists money is on US hospital operator Columbia/HCA - - -
The Mayne Man Departs With Runs
On Board
The Age 02/24/1999
Mayne Nickless is to lose its longest-serving director, Mr Lindsay Bytheway, at the end of next month. Mr Bytheway, who was Mayne Nickless's chief financial officer for 19 years until October 1994, was an executive director from 1981 to 1994 and has been a non-executive director since 1994.
Mayne Nickless' interim profit
flat on lower margins
AAP News 02/24/1999
Mr Dalziel said despite HCoA's flat half year result, the company's commitment to health care was unaltered and further benefits would come from diversification, synergies and economies of scale.
----------------
In tandem with today's interim profit announcement, Mayne Nickless revealed it had formed a 50/50 joint venture with Ramsay Health Care to bid for the contract to build, own and operate the Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre in Melbourne.
------------------
Dr Barry Catchlove said the company experienced a "roller coaster" interim period in Indonesia, opening two more hospitals in a time of political and economic upheaval.The company continued to negotiate entry into India's health care sector, while opportunities in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and South Pacific were also being considered.
Mayne Nick says buyback a
day-to-day proposition
AAP News 02/24/1999
Mayne Nickless announced it would embark on a share buyback at some point following the sale of its 25 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless Optus Ltd.
Mayne Records Drop All Round
Australian Financial Review 02/25/1999
Mayne cited reduced margins in its health-care business during the half -particularly in its stand-alone private hospitals in NSW - and in its Australian armoured-car operations after the entry of Brinks to compete with Mayne Nickless and Brambles.
----------------------
Analysts said it was becoming harder to recommend Mayne to institutional investors because the company was now in its chosen fields of operation and yet was still making excuses for a flat result.
It's Back To Basics After Flat
Year
The Advertiser 25 Feb 1999
Mayne Punished
The Daily Telegraph 25 Feb 1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence
- - - Mayne is working on reducing costs and increasing revenue. Mayne shares dropped $A00.30 to $A5.56. A $A00.15 dividend was declared;
Impatience hits Mayne
Nickless
Sydney Morning Herald 25 Feb 1999
Investors yesterday lost patience with Mayne Nickless, wiping 5 per cent from the group's share price, after the company reported reduced first-half earnings and flagged continued difficulties for the second.
--------------------
Analysts, however, were less sanguine about the result, saying assurances about positive future performance were starting to wear a little thin.
Mayne Nickless reveals flat
profit on lower margins
Illawarra Mercury 25 Feb 1999
Mayne Share Price Slashed After
Posting $60m Interim
The Courier-Mail 25 Feb 1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence
- - - - yet disappointed with Mayne Nickless's core business of healthcare, although he cited the pathology and radiology division, which had performed strongly;
`Margin squeezed at Mayne
Nickless
The Australian 25 Feb. 1999
Mayne Nickless has turned in a lacklustre first half profit of $60.2 million and warned of a further squeeze on margins during the next six months - - -
Market Takes Knife To Ailing
Mayne
The Age 02/26/1999
Shares in the health-care and logistics group Mayne Nickless were savaged for a second day yesterday as investors vented their spleen over disappointing returns in the private-hospital sector
--------------------
On Wednesday, Mayne Nickless disappointed investors with the revelation that its core business of choice, health care, had reported lower earnings and that margins were unlikely to recover in the second half.
-------------------
With Mayne Nickless shares languishing at their lowest levels for several years and rapidly heading down, some analysts are speculating that a share buyback is looking more likely.
Moody's may cut Mayne.
Sydney Morning Herald - 09 Mar 1999 p.25
Hospitals Can't Stand Alone:
Ramsay
The Age 03/15/1999
There's no future for hospital operators, according to Ramsay Health Care's chief executive, Mr Pat Grier. No, the future is for total health care managers, for groups with the capacity to grapple with the complexity of hospitals, integrated care, community care and diagnostics.It has just set aside its rivalry with the country's largest private hospital operator, Mayne Nickless's Health Care of Australia, to bid for the $400 million Austin privatisation project.
It has continued to diversify, making a concerted effort to lessen its dependence on the cash-strapped private health insurance funds, and it has made a deliberate decision to invest only in hospitals with future growth.
----------------------
Mayne Nickless's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, has made no secret of his desire to see HCoA's $550 million hospital property portfolio spun off into a separately listed property trust, but has yet to come up with a solution that does not impose hardships on the company and its shareholders.Ramsay's chief financial officer, Mr Bruce Soden, says Ramsay will continue to shift hospital projects off balance sheet on a case-by-case basis.
``If the quality of the revenue of these projects is high enough, then it's bankable on an off-balance-sheet basis. We are certainly planning to do Mildura, (in Victoria), and Princess Alexandra (in Brisbane) and Berwick - if we win it - off balance sheet,'' Mr Soden says.
`Moody's puts Mayne on
notice
The Australian 16 March 1999
Mayne Nickless poor financial outlook was yesterday compounded by Moody's Investor Service putting the company on credit review for a possible downgrade.
Moody's May Cut Mayne
Sydney Morning Herald 03/16/1999
Moody's said yesterday the review was driven by pressure on the inherent profitability of Mayne's operations, particularly in its healthcare businesses."Healthcare margins have been affected by falling numbers of privately insured Australians, the lack of tariff increases from the private health funds and increased competition, particularly more recently from the public health sector," Moody's said.
-------------------
But the company's stocks have been savaged since the beginning of the year following disappointing returns in the private hospital sector.
Mayne muddle (and other
articles)
Sydney Morning Herald - 26 Mar 1999 p.28
This is enough for some brokers to suggest Mayne is undervalued, though concerns over management continue to hamper its shares.
-----------------------
Aside from healthcare, the company has been sending mixed signals about its continuing interest in transport.
Wheels turn in Mayne's
journey
The Age 01 Apr 1999
Mayne Nickless is expected to announce a series of joint ventures and alliances to pave the way for its exit from transport and logistics, completing its metamorphosis from transport to a pure health-care company.
-----------------------
The moves, expected to be rolled out over several months, are pitched at bolstering the value of the group's logistics businesses, which include express freight, warehousing and container handling, for an eventual sale.
-----------------------
- - - - has told analysts and institutional investors it is implementing strategies to enhance the value of its non-health-care assets, improve earnings and shore up its exit from transport and logistics.
----------------------
The market, which has been steadily downgrading the stock since August and hanging on promises of improved earnings for years, turned nasty.Mayne Nickless shares, which touched the giddy heights of $9.47 on 4 August, hit a low of $4.96 on 3 March, and closed on Friday 1.5 cents lower at $5.245.
----------------
It took almost two-and-a-half years for Mayne Nickless's dynamic chief, Mr Bob Dalziel, to realise his goal of offloading Optus.In the interim, Mayne Nickless bowed to institutional pressure to dump its line about having two integrally related businesses (health care and logistics/transport), substituting it for the more palatable mantra about being in two distinct businesses.
Throughout the distracting and protracted Optus saga, investors and analysts have consistently complained about Mayne Nickless's ``bizarre'' accounts, which included $580 million in abnormal losses in the six years to 1997-98.
Adding to the company's woes, analysts cite eight years of ``material earnings disappointment'' and the fact that future earnings expectations have ``gone south''.
---------------------
In the meantime, those who applied pressure on Mayne Nickless to focus solely on health care are faced with the uncomfortable reality that health-care companies are doing it tough.
-------------------
Mayne Nickless now earns 20 per cent less per share than it earned a decade ago, and its core business of choice, health care, is a capital-intensive business, heavily exposed to the malaise in private health insurance and government regulation.
Mayne Nick moves to spin off
logistics operations
AAP News 04/23/1999
Mayne Nickless Ltd today signalled a shift towards becoming solely a health care concern with the news it would merge its contract logistics business in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and southern China with PGA Logistics.The merged entity was expected to eventually list on the Australian Stock Exchange but not before the initial benefits of the union had been realised, Mayne Nick and PGA said.
Mayne Nickless & PGA to
merge logistics -
AAP News 04/23/1999
The Mayne Game
The Advertiser 24 Apr 1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence
Mayne Nickless Limited plans to merge its contract logistics business in Australia and Asia with Melbourne company PGA (Logistics) Pty Ltd
Mayne $70m Tie With PGA To Bring
$450m Revenues
Australian Financial Review 04/24/1999
Mayne Nickless said it would invest $70 million and take a 75 per cent stake in the tie-up with private logistics operator PGA Logistics to create the biggest provider of outsourced logistics in Australia.
-------------------
Mayne Nickless has said that its primary growth vehicle would be the health-care industry while the logistic businesses would continue to be a valued operation.
Mayne Gears Up For Corporate
Shift
The Age 04/24/1999
Mayne Nickless has made an estimated $120million investment in its warehouse and distribution business in an effort to boost the division's value before spinning it off into a separately listed company.In a move disclosed in The Age earlier this month, Mayne Nickless will shift its primary corporate focus to health care industries.
--------------------
Analysts reacted cautiously yesterday. The investment community, which had been calling on Mayne Nickless to exit its non-health care businesses, has expressed frustration at the group's recent lacklustre performance, particularly in health care.
-----------------
Another said Mayne Nickless, which had consistently performed below market expectations over the past decade, would see its share price ``slaughtered'' if it botched the PGA merger.
Comment:- Note below that National Mutual is controlled by AXA, the French multinational. Mayne, National Mutual and Wooldridge had already made a concerted effort to get doctors to enter into arrangements with these corporations - ostensibly to get rid of gap payments but most certainly to undermine the determination of the profession to prevent commercial interests dictating the care which they should provide to their patients.
A Shot In The Arm For Health
Australian Financial Review 05/12/1999
In a Budget with little in the way of new initiatives, the big corporate winners are Bob Dalziel at Mayne Nickless and Tony Killen at National Mutual.
-------------------
Slowly but surely Health Minister Dr Michael Wooldridge is making the changes necessary to make private health funds more competitive.Dalziel and Killen's predecessors at National Mutual have been knocking hard on Canberra's doors, pleading for someone to bite the bullet on health policy.
--------------------
The major benefits for private hospitals such as those run by Mayne and Paul Ramsay and efficient health funds, like HBA run by National Mutual, include the scrapping of the community health rating, - - - -
STRUCTURED FINANCE: NEWS IN
BRIEF
Euroweek, 06/25/99 Issue 608, p19, 3/5p.
Healthcare company Mayne Nickless Ltd last week completed Australia's first securitisation of revenues from operating a hospital.The A$92m deal marks a significant expansion in the scope of Australia's asset backed market. In Europe securitisation has been applied to an ever growing range of operating assets, many of them emerging from privatisation schemes like the UK's private finance initiative, but Australian ABS have almost exclusively parcelled loans and leases of various kinds, mostly to private individuals.
Health Care Trust No I is backed by revenues Mayne Nickless earns from the Joondalup Health Campus in Wanneroo -- a facility it built and now operates for the Western Australia government.
Mayne Nickless unveils executive
reshuffle ahead of profit
AAP News 08/24/1999
Healthcare and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd today unveiled a senior management reshuffle ahead of what is expected to be a disappointing full year profit result next week.
-----------------------
Mayne Nickless' current CFO Shane Tanner would be elevated to chief executive officer of the newly created Mayne Nickless Diagnostic Services business.Mr Tanner would have responsibility for managing and developing the rapidly expanding pathology and diagnostic imaging services, which now boasts annual revenues of more than $300 million.
Rejig A Clue To Mayne's Game
Plan
Australian Financial Review 08/25/1999
Speculation that Mayne Nickless Ltd is a leading contender to buy Swiss group Socie{AAC}te{AAC} Ge{AAC}ne{AAC}rale de Surveillance's Australasian pathology business has been fuelled by a senior management rejig by the health-care and logistics group.
-----------------
The former chief financial officer of National Mutual, Mr Steve Somogyi, will take over as Mayne's chief financial officer from his present role as director of financial services at Trowbridge Consulting.Mr Somogyi played a key role in developing NatMut's health arm.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
Preliminary Final Report (Part A : Section 01 Of 07)
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
09/01/1999
Mayne Nickless today announced its results for the full year ending 4 July 1999:
------------------
"In addition, the diagnostic services division, now operating under a separate management structure and comprising pathology and diagnostic imaging, continued to enjoy growth in revenue and earnings, which was complemented during the year with further acquisitions."Our strong balance sheet continues to support growth in health care and logistics. We completed more than $250 million of acquisitions during the year to extend our service offerings in diagnostic services, hospitals and logistics."
--------------------
In conjunction with major private health funds and medical specialists, HCoA has pioneered and introduced new simplified billing schemes wherever possible. These schemes eliminate out-of-pocket payments and make private health cover more attractive to patients. We expect these initiatives to be positive for HCoA's earnings in the future."
---------------------
"The Company's commitment to health care remains strong. The benefits of diversification, synergies and economies of scale are yet to be fully realised. The long-term dynamics of the health care industry remain attractive and it will continue to be the major area of investment," Mr Dalziel said.
----------------
The Company is determined to improve its financial performance in 1999/00. Earnings growth is expected from:
Prognosis poor as Mayne slumps
16pc.
Sydney Morning Herald- 02 Sep 1999 p.29
However, analysts are sceptical of any immediate turnaround with two-thirds of its hospitals ranked as either under-performing or still in the development stage, and where costs seemed to increase faster than revenues.
----------------
Mr Dalziel said the group could rightly be criticised for growing too fast.
Mayne Slides To $110m
The Mercury 2 Sep 1999
Abstract --- Australasian Business Intelligence
Mayne Nickless has announced a 16.1% drop in operating profits, to $A110.5m, for the 1998-99 financial year. - - - Managing director Bob Dalziel said he was disappointed with the result and promised an improvement in 1999-2000. - - - - Health Care Australia saw its profits fall by 30% to $A59m, whilst Diagnostic Services lifted its bottom line by 28% to $A28.7m.
Mayne Nickless Down 22% Despite
Sales Rise
The Courier-Mail 2 Sep 1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence
Troubled hospital and armoured car divisions performances affected Mayne Nickless's earnings in the June year. The figures released on 1 September 1999 showed a fall in operating profit before abnormals and tax by 22.3% to $A162.2 million.
In Low Gear And On The Prowl
Australian Financial Review 09/02/1999
Mayne Nickless is trawling South-East Asia in search of acquisitions and opportunities to bolster growth in both logistics and health care.Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel said yesterday the group was in discussions in India, the Philippines and Fiji.
---------------
Domestically, the group has been named as a contender to buy Societe Generale de Surveillance's Australasian pathology businesses, as has Sonic Healthcare.The business, which would deliver the buyer market share in Queensland, Melbourne and New Zealand, has been estimated to be worth about $400 million.
Mayne Seeks Remedy For Its
Ills
Australian Financial Review 09/02/1999
Its managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, yesterday outlined a range of measures aimed at lifting returns, including a $50million, three-year IT program, increased collaboration with private health insurers on new funding arrangements, and further acquisitions.
-----------------
Earnings before interest and tax for the hospitals division, Health Care of Australia, slumped 30.4 per cent to $59million, following a deterioration in the second half after growth in labour costs surged above increases in revenue from health insurers.
------------------
Mayne shares, which have fallen 30 per cent in the past 12 months, closed steady at $5.09 yesterday.
Mayne Pledges Operation
Cost-cut
The Age 09/02/1999
The health-care, transport and logistics giant Mayne Nickless has conceded it is now paying the price for its rapid growth, with tightening hospital and cash logistics margins crimping net operating profit by 16.1 per cent to $110.5 million.The managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, said yesterday the worse-than-expected margin pressures had bottomed and he announced an "aggressive'' cost-cutting and productivity drive.
-------------------
However, analysts were sceptical about any immediate turnaround, with two-thirds of the group's hospitals ranked as either underperforming or still in the development stage, and with costs apparently increasing faster than revenues.
Mayne Nickless is paying the
price of unhealthy haste
The Age 02 Sep 1999
This financial year is shaping as one of the most critical in Mayne Nickless's recent history. It should be the year that demonstrates the success or failure of the group's ambitious attempts to remake itself.
Market Scorns Mayne Over $111m
Net Profit
Australian Financial Review 09/03/1999
Investors have lost patience with Mayne Nickless Ltd's turnaround, yesterday selling the stock down as much as 5 per cent amid some earnings downgrades after this week's proft result.The shares shed as much as 26cents before closing down 19cents to $4.90.
---------------
It intends to keep acquiring in logistics and health care but this has failed to strike a chord with some analysts.
---------------
Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's also entered the fray yesterday, putting the group's A/A-1 rating on a negative watch.
Double Trouble For Mayne
The Age 09/03/1999
Investors punished Mayne Nickless yesterday, sending its shares down 19 cents, or 3.7 per cent, to a near four-year low as analysts downgraded earnings forecasts for the transport-to-hospitals giant.Mayne has also been put on notice by Standard & Poor's, which has placed it on creditwatch with negative implications.
----------------
In particular, the extent of the fall in the hospital earnings before interest and tax from $84.7 million to $59million took analysts by surprise.
Troubled Mayne Nickless placed
on credit watch
Sydney Morning Herald 03 Sep 1999
Investors punished Mayne Nickless yesterday, sending its shares down 19c or 3.7 per cent to a near four-year low, as analysts downgraded earnings forecasts for the group following the poor year-to-June earnings disclosed earlier in the week.The company also has been put on notice by Standard & Poor's, which has placed it on credit watch with negative implications.
----------------
They (analysts) have since revised net profit and earnings forecasts for Mayne, and have warned not to expect any quick-fix solutions.
Mayne goes to the doctor.
BRW, 09/10/99, Vol. 21 Issue 35, p18, 3/4p, 1c
Abstract: Business Source Premier
Reports on cost-cutting measures set for implementation at the Australian hospital chain Mayne Nickless Ltd. Includes centralization of the company's finance functions; Adoption of a uniform platform for the company's information technology systems; - - - - -
Funds back away from ailing
Mayne Nickless. Business
Sydney Morning Herald - 28 Sep 1999
Shares in Mayne Nickless slumped to a new nine-year low yesterday, with the company's credibility in the eyes of institutional investors eroding rapidly
-------------------
Now, after the company's decision to quit the telecom sector with the sale of its stake in Cable & Wireless Optus and its move into the private hospital sector, large shareholders are getting restless.
--------------------
``The structural pressures in the healthcare industry have shown up the flaws in its health-care strategy, which is now looking a little misguided,'' he said.Few analysts expect Mayne Nickless to produce an acceptable return from health care for at least the next few years, as the company struggles against oversupply, escalating staff costs and price pressures.
------------------
``The share price fall is telling you that the market has lost all confidence in Mayne Nickless,'' one analyst said. ``Certainly, management has lost credibility because they don't seem to be able to work out how best to direct the company's capital.''
Mayne Tips Better Results For
All Sectors
The Courier-Mail 30 Sep 1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence
Mayne Nickless managing director Bob Dalziel took home total remuneration for the year of $A1.47 million, including $A861,261 before performance bonuses and other benefits. Mayne Nickless shares fell $A0.09 on 29 September 1999 to close at $A4.04;
Mayne rejects hope of a
short-term recovery.
Sydney Morning Herald - 30 Sep 1999
Mayne Nickless yesterday dampened any faint hopes of a near-term recovery in earnings, saying that operational improvements under way won't feed through fully until 2000-01.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
Chairman's Address To Shareholders (Part A : Section 01 Of 03)
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
11/09/1999
I am painfully aware that from the perspective of our shareholders, the fall in the Company's share price - from around $9.00 in the run-up to the record date for the C&W Optus share issue entitlement to around $4.30 in recent months - is even more disappointing.
------------------
However, at the same time the Group continues to diversify its health care operations to reduce dependence on free-standing private hospitals. That strategic direction is reflected in its medical centres, in the development of collocated private hospitals on major public hospital campuses and in other public sector involvements. More recently, a new operational division, Mayne Nickless Diagnostic Services, has been established encompassing pathology and diagnostic imaging.
------------------
It takes several years to bring a new facility up to planned earnings levels, with major impacts on margins and returns in the interim period.
-----------------
Australia enjoys arguably the best health care system in the world with its balance between public and private sectors, but further improvement and refinement is required to ensure its viability and its capacity for high quality service delivery into the future. Mayne Nickless is working with government and other major industry participants to define appropriate solutions.
---------------------
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, your Board is quietly confident that, in the absence of economic or regulatory shocks, improvements in margins and thus in business unit operating profits will become progressively evident commencing in the current half year.
Mayne Nick predicts solid
platform for future growth
AAP News 11/09/1999
"We are optimistic that the steps that are either in place or being implemented will provide a solid for future growth and that the second half of the 1998/99 year will be seen as the low point in our cycle," he (chairman) told shareholders at the company's annual general meeting.
Mayne Nickless has the right
balance on business
Australian Financial Review 10 Nov 1999
Healthcare and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd said yesterday it had turned the corner, and was ``quietly confident" margins and profits would improve in the current half, following signs of an upturn in the private hospital sector.The group remains on the prowl for acquisitions to build its diagnostics division, mainly in radiology. Mr Dalziel yesterday flagged possible investments in radiology in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia, and pathology in Victoria.
MayneNick sees profit lift
The Courier-Mail 11/10/1999
Abstract - - Australasian Business Intelligence:
The company now believes that profits throughout its businesses are on the rise. MayneNick director Bob Dalziel said performance and profitability in the health care division was improving.
`Mayne makes hospital
recovery
The Australian 10 November 1999
Mayne Nickless says the performance of its troublesome hospitals division has improved and it believes the worst trading conditions are now behind it.
-------------
Mr Rainer said Mayne was now experiencing healthy growth in logistics revenues and the demand for its hospital services.
Mayne Nickless seeks to sell
Canadian armoured car business
AAP News 12/01/1999
Healthcare and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd hung up a `for sale' sign at its underperforming Canadian armoured car business today as part of its efforts to return the company to growth after last year's dip in profits.
Mayne May Sell Cash Movers
Australian Financial Review 12/02/1999
Mayne Nickless Ltd may sell its Canadian cash logistics business, signalling it will concentrate on its time-critical express business, Loomis Courier Service.
Mayne sheds armoured car
firm
Sydney Morning Herald - 02 Dec 1999 p.31
Mayne to sell Canadian arm
Courier Mail 2 Dec. 1999
- - - Mayne Nickless has hung a For sale sign on its Canadian armoured car business - - - Loomis Armoured Car Service
---------------------------------
Mayne was looking at internal efficiencies at its hospitals, expanding its diagnostic operations and working with private health funds to correct the slide.
Loomis On The Market
The Age 12/02/1999
Mayne to buy Sunshine Coast
radiology chain
The Courier-Mail 12/03/1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence
The healthcare and logistics group announced in December 1999 that Mayne Nickless Diagnostic Services had signed contracts to buy North Coast X-Ray and Imaging for an amount not disclosed
Mayne downgraded again.
Sydney Morning Herald - 03 Dec 1999 p.25
`Mayne to buy Sunshine Coast
radiology chain
Courier Mail 3 Dec. 1999
- - the acquisition of its first Queensland diagnostic imaging practice - - - - had signed to buy North Coast X-ray and Imaging for an undisclosed sum.
`Fee row a blow to Mayne
The Australian 7 Dec. 1999
Mayne Nickless shares hit their lowest level in more than 11.5 years as Australia's competition regulator moved to ban private hospitals from collectively negotiating fees with health funds.
Mayne Nickless plumbs 11-year
low
Australian Financial Review 07 Dec 1999
Shares in health-care and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd sank to their lowest level in more than 11 years yesterday, with investors continuing to shun the stock and private hospital margins still under pressure.
S&P:Health Care Trust Bnds
Lowered to BBB+, Off Watch
Business Wire, 12/12/1999
The rating downgrade on the Health Care bond issue follows similar action on Mayne Nickless Ltd. (MNL), whose single-'A'/Watch Neg/'A-1' corporate credit ratings were downgraded to triple-'B'-plus/Negative/'A-2' on Dec. 2, 1999.
Private Hospitals Looking
Healthy
Australian Financial Review 12/14/1999
If you are Bob Dalziel at Mayne Nickless or some of the other private-hospital operators, no bad news is good news, and with the big private health funds now back in profits, there are even signs of upside ahead.The latest government figures show that after clocking up $215.8 million in losses in the three years ended June 1998, the industry reported a profit of $101.2 million last year.
----------------------
Now the trick for Mayne and Ramsay is to try to divert more of the money into their own pockets.
Mayne Nick loses in the sex
appeal stakes
The Australian Financial Review12/30/1999
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence:
As investors are leaving in droves from the private hospital market, the company's June half saw a 30 per cent decline in hospital earnings for the year with the cost of wages rising above the revenue from health funds.
Health stocks on the mend
Shares 01 Jan 2000
For most of the past two years, Australia's listed hospital stocks have looked like the patients in their wards - sick. But Tim Treadgold reports that the prognosis is that the patients are recovering
----------------------
But there is some good news. A period of recuperation is slowly taking effect, and investors with a two-to-three year view should profit handsomely.
------------------
Mayne Nickless has plunged from a 12-month high of $6.50 to a low of $3.99, before recovering to around $4.10.
----------------
Critical to the long term recovery is whether Australians can be encouraged to take out private health insurance.
---------------
There is a direct link between health fund membership and the use of private hospitals. It is estimated that 80 per cent of private hospital revenue is sourced from health funds through contractual agreements. If the funds are not trading profitably they cannot pay what the hospitals require, especially new hospitals. Despite a range of inducements (and threats) from the Federal Government, Australians are still proving to be reluctant buyers of health insurance. The insured population remains stuck around the 30 per cent mark, or just 5.7 million people.This is a long way from the 50 per cent insured level achieved in 1984, or even the 39 per cent of five years ago.
------------------
While all hospital stocks have been hit by problems of the health insurance industry, they have also all been equally guilty of building too many new hospitals.
------------------
Dalziel's view is that Mayne Nickless can grow in four key healthcare sectors: Private hospitals; diagnostic services (pathology and radiology); after care (such as physiotherapy); and "wellness" programs (keep fit programs).
----------------
"We believe that we bottomed in the first half of this calendar year," he says. "We have clear economic reasons for saying that."
----------------
Hardest hit, certainly when it comes to corporate pride, was Mayne Nickless. Not only did its profit dip but Moody's Investor Services added insult to injury by downgrading the company's credit rating.
-----------------
An estimated $1 billion in capital investment over the past eight years gives an idea of how hard Mayne Nickless has driven into the health care industry -an investment built up from zero and all in pursuit of the growth that must (eventually) come from the ageing of Australia.
-----------------
One of the critical first steps to re-building the flow of money into the funds and then out to the private hospital sector is the creation of a genuine "no gaps" insurance product. Quite simply, fund members hate the way in which they keep their end of the bargain (pay their fees) and then make a claim, only to be slugged with additional charges for hospital, doctor and ancillary services. It makes a nonsense of the word insurance - because it is really only partial insurance.
-----------------
Dalziel agrees that conditions are getting better. "The improvement in the health funds is a critical element," he says. "We need a very strong, efficient insurance industry, which there hasn't been." In turn, he says, the funds need a high quality service delivery mechanism - the private hospital sector.
Star Power
Shares Magazine 01/01/2000
Talent, rather than technology, is becoming increasingly significant in assessing the value of shares, reports Robert Gottliebsen
-------------------------
Mayne Nickless's Bob Dalziel was initially well regarded by the institutions for his plans in health but when he didn't deliver they marked him back. It will be a long haul for Mayne Nickless to restore its intellectual capital base rating.
The walls have teeth
The Australian 1/3/00
HERE'S one which makes the shark tank down at the aquarium look like a kiddie's play pool. We are talking about a consortium bid for Mayne Nickless.
----------------------------
Salomons has been hatching a plan to break up Mayne. We have, according to Sources, an offshore healthcare player lined up to take the hospitals.. Pathology group up Revesco is eyeing the pathoIogy operations.
The Prognosis For Health-care
Stocks
Australian Financial Review 01/05/2000
The health-care sector has polarised over the past year, with investors chasing growth among pharmaceutical and medical service companies, while private hospital stocks went into freefall and continue to languish.An investment in Sonic Healthcare Ltd nearly trebled in the past 12 months, with the stock now trading on a price-earnings ratio of 50 times.
By contrast, shares in health-care and transport group Mayne Nickless have shed almost a third over the same period, with the stock trading on about 12 times earnings.
Sonic's recent $503 million cash and scrip acquisition of Societe Generale de Surveillance's pathology business has propelled it into the top 100 companies.
------------------
Macquarie's Mr Ian Myles maintains a hold on Mayne Nickless. ``It's got value, but it's not going to go anywhere in the short term,'' he said.
------------------
Mayne's conglomerate structure is a bugbear for many analysts who are unconvinced of managing director Mr Bob Dalziel's assertions of significant synergies between the group's health care and logistics arms.
-----------------
As with out-of-favour diversified industrial Pacific Dunlop, many an investment banker has crunched the numbers on Mayne,and there's a persistent view that if the board and management do not move to break it up, someone else will.
Mayne meanders
Sydney Morning Herald January 28, 2000
ABSTRACT: Australasian Business Intelligence
US investment group Franklin-Templeton Group has trimmed its stake in Australia's Mayne Nickless Limited from 14.3% to 13.3%. Mayne at $A3.68 a share (as at 27 January 2000) is hovering around decade lows and feeling the pain of the private health insurance squeeze of private hospital operators. One analyst said there was always the risk that Mayne would write down the value of its hospital assets, but ultimately the company would be reluctant to do so because it is confident that the book values would be recovered at some point. Year 2000 profits are expected to be flat or marginally higher than last year's pre-abnormal $A110.5 million
Mayne's diagnosis still poor
Sydney Morning Herald 07 Feb 2000
The pressure is building for radical surgery at hospital and logistics group Mayne Nickless after the stock slumped to new lows amid earnings concerns and as speculation surfaces of a restructure of the company's diagnostics division.
Scalpels out as Mayne Nickless
shares tumble
The Age 7 February 2000
The pressure is building for radical surgery at hospital and logistics group Mayne Nickless after the stock slumped to new lows on Friday.The drop happened amid earnings concerns and as speculation surfaced of a restructure of the company's diagnostics division.
--------------------------------
Mayne's share price has also come under pressure from moves in recent weeks by major shareholders Tyndall/Royal and Sun Alliance and Franklin Templeton to cut their stakes.
------------------------------
Mayne has long held ambitions to spin off its hospital assets into a property float, but the hospitals' poor returns of recent years have made this prospect unlikely in the short term.
------------------------------
There is also talk that Mayne is keen to sell some underperforming hospitals, with about 20per cent of the company's 48 hospitals said to fall clearly into this category.Like others in the industry, the company's radiology business has been clouded by the scandal surrounding the purchase of magnetic resonance imaging () equipment.
logistics groups Mayne Nickless'
shares fell by 10 cents to $3.35 on Friday, their lowest level since
1987.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 7/2/2000
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED: Company
Administration - Other (Part A : Section 01 Of 01)
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
02/09/2000
Mayne Nickless Limited Managing Director, Mr Bob Dalziel, today announced that Dr Barry Catchlove had advised he will be leaving the Group in March 2000 to pursue other roles including an exciting new role with a global consulting firm.
-----------------
Dr Catchlove (57) joined Mayne Nickless in 1991 and was responsible for the development of health care as a core activity. He has also played a wider role in health care reform nationally
-----------------
Since that time Dr Catchlove's role has been involved providing strategy and policy advice at an executive level across the Mayne Nickless Group with particular interest in the development and operation of the Group's international health care business.
-------------------
Dr Catchlove will remain, in a non-executive capacity, on the board of Mayne Nickles' joint venture health care operations in the Asia Pacific Region.
Mayne in pain as Catchlove
departs / Catchlove quits Mayne.
Sydney Morning Herald - 10 Feb 2000
The architect of Mayne Nickless's push into health care and a political casualty of last year's ``scan'' scandal, Dr Barry Catchlove, will leave Mayne next month as its shares limp along at their lowest level since 1987.
-------------------
Dr Catchlove was behind Mayne's push into private hospitals as a core business in 1991 after the company identified private health care as a growth industry. But the strategy has come undone in the past year as falling private health fund membership has seen medical insurance funds squeeze payments to private hospitals.
----------------------
``He was one of the people that was well respected in Mayne, having had a reasonably good performance whilst he was head of the health care division, but he was tainted by the scandal,'' the analyst said.
----------------------
One of Mayne's subsidiaries had ordered six of the machines, but Dr Catchlove said he had no involvement in the decision.
--------------------
``We are in a bit of a struggle at the moment ... We have had to consolidate our growth, get the efficiencies and drive down costs, and I think we are in the process of turning a corner.''
Rumours, Resignation Hit
Mayne
Australian Financial Review 02/10/2000
Mayne Nickless Ltd's share price slump continued yesterday as the company moved to quell speculation of an imminent spin-off of its diagnostics division or divest underperforming hospitals.The health-care and transport group was also hit by the resignation of executive director and former head of its health-care arm Dr Barry Catchlove.
Mayne Nickless managing director Mr Bob Dalziel and Dr Catchlove both said the resignation, effective from next month, was not related to the controversy over Mayne's involvement in the MRI Medicare scam involving up to 250 radiologists.
----------------------
Pressure is building on Mr Dalziel to arrest the fall in the group's share price, which has shed 14 per cent in the last month, closing 9.3c lower yesterday at $3.307.
-------------------
The share price has been undermined by moves by key institutional shareholders including Tyndall/Royal & Sun Alliance and Franklin Templeton to reduce their stakes,
Mayne left on critical list
The Age 02/10/2000
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence:
- - - Mayne's shares fell another $A0.09.3 to close at $A3.307 amid suggestions that selling by institutions, including disposals by Tyndall Investment, had kept the share price under pressure.
Australia's Mayne Nickless 1H
Profit, Dividend Under Pressure
Dow Jones Australia and New Zealand Report 02/28/2000
The market has already resigned itself to a fall in earnings in the first six months of 1999-2000, according to analysts.
-------------------
This has been reflected in Mayne Nickless' languishing share price. The stock hit a 12-month low of A$2.95 Feb. 11.
----------------------
Goldberg said the market is looking for signs that at least "the momentum is heading in the right way" for a reasonable profit improvement in fiscal year 2000-01.
Mayne on the wane
The Bulletin 02/29/2000
Abstract - Australasian Business Intelligence:
In just over a year under chief executive officer, Bob Dalziel, the group's shares have fallen by almost 70%, wiping out about $A2.2bn in shareholder value. Despite rumours of a major corporate restructure, analysts cannot recommend the stock and most are very critical about the management. - - - In 1999, Mayne's sales, net profit, total assets, shareholders' equity and dividend payout were all lower than in 1995. The company's sale of its 25% stake in Cable and Wireless Optus Limited is widely seen as a big mistake..
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED: Asset
Disposal (Part A : Section 01 Of 01)
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
03/01/2000
Mayne Nickless Limited announced today that it has agreed to sell its Canadian cash logistics business, Loomis Armored Car Service Ltd, to the UK services group, Securicor plc, for CAD 16 million.
Acquisition of PGA Interest in
MPG Logistics
Australian Stock Exchange Announcements 03/01/2000
Abstract - Australasian Business Intelligence:
The firm (Mayne Nickless) reports it has acquired a 25% stake in MPG Logistics from PGA Group - - -. Following the acquisition MPG Logistics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mayne Nickless, -
Mayne Value Rests On
Logistics
Australian Financial Review 03/02/2000
Mayne Nickless Ltd will seek to unlock greater value from its domestic logistics operations through e-commerce and other initiatives after buying out the 25 per cent stake of Mr Peter Gunn's PGA Group in MPG Logistics for $62 million.
-------------------
The deal came as Mayne revealed a worse than expected 22 per cent fall in interim net profit before abnormals to $46.9 million, which saw some analysts begin to downgrade full-year numbers by as much as 10 per cent to around $100 million.
----------------
As speculation swirls of possible hostile consortium bids for the group while its share price languishes at historic lows, Mr Dalziel has hosed down speculation of an imminent spin-off of key divisions, such as diagnostics or logistics.
Result Shows Light At The End Of
Mayne's Tunnel
The Age 03/02/2000
There were encouraging signs in the Mayne Nickless results. Whether they are encouraging enough to save the group's management and its own independence is, however, the issue.
----------------
At face value the result looked anything but encouraging, with pre-abnormal earnings down a thumping 22 per cent.
------------------------
While Mayne closed only 5 cents up on the day, the initial reaction to the result wasn't one of disappointment.
------------------
While it wasn't properly reflected in the conventional after-tax numbers, there was a significant improvement in underlying profits
-------------------------
Perhaps of greatest significance was that Mayne's key hospitals business is starting to do what Mayne's Bob Dalziel said it would do six months ago.
------------------------
For Dalziel and the company to survive, however, Mayne needs to convince the market that the rebound is fast enough, and substantial enough, for expectations of the group's future performance to be radically revised.If Dalziel and his team can't do that, and do so quite quickly, they and the company may be doomed.
Mayne's Profit Slide Pulls Down
Payout
The Age 03/02/2000
Market watchers said the price moves might have had more to do with speculation that Mayne was vulnerable to takeover - with rumors of a $3.80-a-share offer in the wind - than the results.
--------------------
The MPG business produced the best performance of any of Mayne's divisions in the half, earnings before interest and tax rising 61 per cent to $14.3 million in the period.
Mayne Waits For Health To
Recover
The Age 03/02/2000
Midway through last year, as margins were squeezed by labor costs and minimal price increases from health funds, Mayne Nickless began questioning its strategy of being a hospital owner.It took seven months of review and a report commissioned from the boutique consultancy Port Jackson Partners to convince Mayne's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, that Mayne was in the right parts of the $43 billion-a-year health-care industry.
-------------------
``The conclusion we've come to is ... we are in the ideal position,'' Mr Dalziel said
-----------------
What Mayne wants to achieve is to accelerate usage of diagnostic medical services, where it is also heavily invested, so more money is spent in the preventative rather than treatment end of health care.
----------------
- - - its shares peaked at $9.15 at the time of the C&W Optus float and bottomed at $2.95 early in February this year - -
-----------------
Its earnings performance has not been good, and the market continues to question the wisdom of the health-care focus.
-----------------
Mr Dalziel believes health care and the logistics business are two of the four big growth sectors for business.
-------------------
``But the major problem before us has been the hospitals. If we hadn't experienced the major downturn in hospitals, we'd be having a much better run than we are at the moment.
Hospitals, Security Depress
Mayne
Sydney Morning Herald 03/02/2000
Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel claimed, however, that the figures suggested the company hit its low point in the second half of last financial year and had begun turning around.
Mayne predicts better days
ahead
Courier Mail 2/3/00
MAYNE Nickless has reassured its long-suffering shareholders that the worst is over.This is despite the group reporting a slide in December 31 interim net profit to $46.9 million.
The Mayne Nickless share price has been hammered since September last year, hitting alltime lows of $2.95 compared with $5.75 in May last year.
Mayne Nickless believes the
worst is over
The Canberra Times 03/02/2000
Profit cut, but Mayne pain
over
The Herald-Sun 03/02/2000
MayneNick's Dalziel Feels The
Pressure
Australian Financial Review 03/03/2000
Mayne Nickless Ltd managing director Mr Bob Dalziel is under mounting pressure to outline new strategies to lift earnings and the languishing share price after Wednesday's worse-than-expected interim result.
-----------------
It (Merrill Lynch) also expressed concern that the group's radiology business ``has now emerged as a new under-performer'', just as Mayne has put in place measures to improve lagging margins in its NSW pathology businesses.
Mayne rejects poor diagnosis
The West Australian 03/03/2000
Sickly plan
Sydney Morning Herald 03/04/2000
Abstract. - Australasian Business Intelligence:
Earnings per share is at its lowest point for 10 years, and the optimism of Mayne managing director Bob Dalziel is becoming difficult to accept.
Tussle Over Campaign To Promote
Private Health
Australian Financial Review03/04/2000
A skirmish has broken out in the private health industry on the eve of a major campaign to promote the benefits of private health care.Entitled ``Private Health Care: Always There With Extra Care'', the campaign is due to kick off on Sunday night with a series of slick television advertisements.
-----------------
At a meeting last month, Mayne Nickless executives offered to virtually take over the campaign and contribute as much as $1 million. In return, the television advertisements would be ``topped and tailed'' with the brand name of Mayne Nickless's hospital group, Health Care of Australia.
Dalziel's Mayne Game Through
Scale And Synergies
Australian Financial Review 03/06/2000
As Mayne Nickless Ltd's languishing share price sparks new break-up speculation, managing director Mr Bob Dalziel has argued that building scale, efficiency and synergies are the key to restoring value from the group's healthcare and logistics portfolio.
--------------
Investors are becoming increasingly agitated by the slide in Mayne's share price to historic lows, as shares in pure-play rivals - - - - continue to climb
----------------
This week, Mayne's senior management will meet for a two-day workshop planning strategies to restore earnings growth.
-----------------
Some observers believe a spin-off of diagnostics would help Mayne attract new radiologists by enabling it to offer direct equity, a strategy used successfully by Sonic in pathology.
---------------
He sees value in having an ``integrated health offer'', underpinned by an integrated IT infrastructure, that enables the hospitals and diagnostics divisions to leverage off the relationships with GPs.
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED: Letter
To Shareholders (Part A :
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
03/07/2000
SHAREHOLDER BRIEFINGS
On behalf of your Board, I extend to you an invitation to attend one of the Shareholder briefing meetings which will be held during March.
-----------------------
"Our two business streams - healthcare and logistics - are market leaders in two industry sectors with substantial growth potential in the Australian economy. Our strong position in these businesses provides us with a sound basis to capitalise on this growth into the future.
Mayne Talks Aimed At Calming
Holders
Australian Financial Review 03/08/2000
Out-of-favour health care and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd is to conduct a round of briefing sessions with small shareholders this month as pressure mounts on the managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, to arrest the slide in the group's share price.
------------------
The group is examining alternative funding mechanisms for at least two-thirds of its $800 million in hospital properties in an attempt to free its balance sheet.
Price Fall Puts Focus On The
Mayne Game
Australian Financial Review 03/11/2000
Speculation of a corporate play for healthcare and logistics group Mayne Nickless Ltd intensified as the shares plumbed a new low on Friday.It is understood Salomon Smith Barney has approached potential buyers of the group's businesses in recent months in an apparent attempt to put together a consortium to push for a break-up.
-------------------------
Mayne is among a slate of blue-chip industrials considered to be potential takeover targets following sharp declines in their share prices as fund managers and small investors dump companies in old-economy sectors to chase fast capital growth among technology stocks.
--------------------
Meanwhile, sources said a United States healthcare company might be interested in Mayne Nickless's Health Care of Australia hospitals division
Mayne Nick rules out splitting
into two listed companies for now
AAP News 03/20/2000
Logistics and healthcare company Mayne Nickless Ltd today ruled out splitting the group into two listed companies for the time being, saying it would not unlock significant value for shareholders.
-----------------
Managing director Bob Dalziel said 20 of the group's 47 hospitals were underperforming as a result of "negotiations with the health funds and the cost pressures we're under".
MAYNE NICKLESS LIMITED:
CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS TO SHAREHOLDER BRIEFINGS (MARCH 2000)
Australian Stock Exchange Company Announcements
03/20/2000
We have shown in recent years that we are active managers of our portfolio. That resulted in a process of extensive divestments and rationalisation of businesses and the tightened focus on health care and logistics. We believe we are in a strong position to capitalise on the high growth potential in those segments and are moving rapidly to take full advantage of that to create shareholder value.
-----------------------
Before throwing the meeting open to questions, I would like to conclude these formal comments by saying that the Company is optimistic that the steps that are now in place or being introduced will provide a solid platform for future growth and profitability and enhanced returns on equity. The recent results have confirmed our earlier assessment that the second half of last year was the low point in our cycle. We expect to see progressive, but sustainable improvements in margins and returns on capital.
Mayne Sees No Need For A
Break-up Yet
Australian Financial Review 03/21/2000
Mayne Nickless Ltd chairman Mr Mark Rayner affirmed yesterday the group would focus on consolidating and expanding its health care and logistics businesses, despite pressure from some analysts and investors for a break-up.
-----------------------
Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel flagged announcements in coming months about initiatives to extract greater value from the group's extensive store of patient information gathered through its pathology and radiology operations. He said that through its diagnostics network, the group performed more than 20,000 pathology episodes and 2,500 radiology examinations a day.He said that information was a valuable asset that the group was looking to leverage off through relationships with Mayne's own hospital group, Health Care of Australia, ``as well as with other hospitals''.
Mayne Nickless defends
progress
Sydney Morning Herald 21 Mar 2000
Mayne Nickless yesterday defended its falling share price and 1998 decision to quit its 25 per cent stake in Cable & Wireless Optus. Before about 200 Mayne investors at the Melbourne Convention Centre, the chairman, Mr Mark Rayner, and the managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, tried to soothe anxiety about the company's prospects and direction
---------------------
The meetings come with Mayne rumoured as vulnerable to takeover, although Mr Rayner dismissed the chances of a single bidder.
Mayne Dismisses Talk Of
Demerger
The West Australian 04/01/2000
MAYNE Nickless says its diagnostics business is not for sale, quashing market speculation of an imminent demerger of the health care and logistics group.But Mayne Nickless has left the door open for a takeover of Perth-based Revesco's pathology business, saying it was looking for opportunities to expand its interests in what it claims is one of the biggest growth sectors.
---------------------
- - - - chairman Mark Rayner, - - - said the struggling group was confident of improving profitability and saw tremendous growth prospects for its health care business.
---------------------
Revesco yesterday reiterated a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange this month, denying it was involved in corporate talks with Mayne Nickless.Market speculation, which has driven Revesco's share price to its 46 cents close yesterday, has revolved around the companies combining their pathology businesses, either through a Mayne Nickless demerger which would see Revesco acquire its pathology businesses, or a takeover of Revesco.
---------------------
Mayne Nickless' share price has fallen from $5.20 a year ago to $3.36 yesterday and placed enormous pressure on chief executive Bob Dalziel and his team to restore profitability and shareholder value.
Sharks circle Mayne Nickless
Australian Financial Review 14 Apr 2000
The heat is intensifying around Mayne Nickless chief executive, Bob Dalziel, with the talk about town that a consortium is being formed to sink its teeth into the conglomerate's separate morsels. Not that such talk is new. A takeover of the Melbourne industrial is something of a feature of the sharemarket landscape with few denying the parts (transport, hospitals and pathology) are worth less together than as separate businesses.
---------------------
Not that Toll managing director Paul Little has been napping his new consortium is said to include pathology group Gribbles and Singaporean group Parkway Holdings (who are interested in the hospital operations).
Mayne directors buy low
The Age 04/22/2000
Absract -- Australasian Business Intelligence:
Dalziel bought 10,000 shares for between $A3.24 and $A3.30, while Sloan bought into the stock when it fell under $A3.
Mayne Nickless Fact File
The West Australian 05/22/2000
New Call For Major Overhaul At
Mayne
Australian Financial Review 05/30/2000
Calls for a break-up of Mayne Nickless Ltd have intensified, with Salomon Smith Barney arguing the group's businesses need to be freed from the conglomerate structure to compete effectively against more focused rivals.
----------------
The report comes as Mayne managing director Mr Bob Dalziel is under increasing pressure to find a way to restore shareholder value quickly as potential predators circle the stock.
---------------
Singapore's Parkway Holdings, Toll Holdings, Revesco and Linfox, with Australian Air Express, are among the parties rumoured to have looked at the group.
-----------------
``It is evident to us that nothing short of a major overhaul will be sufficient to effect real change,'' Mr Goldberg said.He said Toll Holdings, Sonic Healthcare, Gribbles (owned by the listed Revesco), Primary Healthcare, the soon-to-be-floated Medical Imaging Australia and Ramsay Healthcare ``are all arguably outperforming Mayne Nickless in their respective businesses''.
Mayne May Sell UK Operations
Australian Financial Review 06/01/2000
Besieged healthcare and transport conglomerate Mayne Nickless Ltd is looking at the sale or joint venture of its $400million-plus United Kingdom transport businesses in an attempt to lift its languishing share price and restore shareholder value.
--------------------
It comes as the stock plunged 6 per cent or 19cents to $3.01 yesterday after the group warned that profit after tax and before abnormals this year would fall by up to 27 per cent due to once-off restructuring and other costs and disappointing performances from some businesses.
----------------------
With Pacific Dunlop, Mayne Nickless is the second Melbourne-based conglomerate desperate to appease fund managers, which have become increasingly frustrated with deteriorating earnings and poor sharemarket performance.
----------------------
Meanwhile, KPMG is handling the sale of the Australian ports business, which is thought to be worth more than $50million, and an information memorandum is being circulated to potential buyers.
---------------------
Yesterday's profit downgrade intensifies the pressure on Mayne's managing director, Mr Bob Dalziel, to find a way to quickly lift shareholder value.
Mayne faces 27 pc slide in
earnings.
Sydney Morning Herald - 01 Jun 2000
S&P downgrades Mayne
Nickless
Australian Financial Review 08 Jun 2000
Health-care and transport conglomerate Mayne Nickless Ltd suffered another blow yesterday when credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's lowered its long-term credit rating a notch to BBB following last week's warning that net profit before abnormals this year would fall by up to 27 per cent.The downgrade comes as Mayne is looking at a possible sale or joint venture of its $400 million-plus UK logistics businesses Interlink and Parceline, and a sale or joint venture of its Australian ports businesses, as part of a major review of its operations to restore shareholder value.
-------------------
The agency said: ``To date, the anticipated improvement in operational performance has not been achieved.
-----------------------
Meanwhile, there is market speculation about a significant management reorganisation.Managing director Mr Bob Dalziel is under increasing pressure to restore shareholder value in the face of institutional holders' growing dissatisfaction with the company's performance.
Dalziel on the edge
The Australian 06/08/2000
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence:
The public seems to have lost faith in Mayne Nickless Limited. - - Bob Dalziel - - - , as the market queries his suitability to do so. His four years in charge of Mayne have been marked by falling fortunes. - - - Dalziel has a reputation for having exhausted his supply of ideas. Operating out of the cloistered Melbourne environment does little for the firm's chances.
Smedley Wants To Be Boss,
Again
Australian Financial Review 06/15/2000
The talk around boardrooms yesterday was dominated by two topics: what former Colonial chief Mr Peter Smedley will do next and why he isn't joining the Commonwealth Bank board.Mr Smedley has said he rejected the invitation from Mr David Murray because it was inappropriate given his aspirations to accept another executive position.
--------------------
But this abrasive style and his huge success at Colonial has made Mr Smedley a much sought-after candidate by troubled companies that needed a tough, hands-on chief executive to turn them around. And it is believed he has already accepted a high-profile position with a Melbourne-based company.
------------------
The predictions on where Smedley will resurface ranged from AMP, Axa and even Telstra through to turnaround stories such as Pacific Dunlop and Mayne Nickless. - - - a management shake-up was imminent at Mayne Nickless, where chief executive Mr Bob Dalziel is under enormous pressure because of the group's underperformance
------------------
Mr Smedley known as ``Pacman'' for his voracious appetite for takeovers is also highly regarded outside the financial services arena.
Smedley Loose: CEOs Are Feeling
The Heat
Australian Financial Review 06/17/2000
Some of Australia's top chief executives are under increasing pressure to perform.
-------------------
The common denominator amongst these struggling CEOs is the weight of expectation being brought to bear by institutional shareholders.
------------------
``The institutions want to get their 15 per cent return on capital no matter what, even if the economy is tracking along at only 3 to 4 per cent,'' said one director. ``It's forcing chief executives to abandon strategies or compromise them to save their jobs.''
------------------
Institutional shareholders now expect to be consulted on the choice of chief executive and their views on strategy must now be heeded as share price had become the measure of success, said Mr Anderson.
-------------------
Against this backdrop it's easy to see why executive search companies are courting Colonial boss Peter Smedley as though he were the last chief executive in Australia.
--------------------
Today, many of Smedley's contemporaries have left executive life prematurely for the comfort of non-executive board posts some have gone to jail and some have just gone to ground. Very few seem willing to take the plunge of leading another public company.
Dalziel Ready To Take His Mayne
Chance
Australian Financial Review 06/19/2000
Mayne Nickless is high on the corporate betting sheet for those speculating on where former Colonial chief executive Peter Smedley will resurface.But Mayne Nickless managing director Bob Dalziel is unfazed that ``Pacman'' Smedley is for hire and is restructuring his management team as pressure on him to produce a plan to address the ailing healthcare and logistics conglomerate's deteriorating performance mounts.
------------------------
Following yet another profit downgrade, institutional shareholders and analysts have grown increasingly impatient with a lack of clear strategic direction and are questioning whether Dalziel is the chief executive to turn the group around.
-------------------
In tandem with its asset reviews, Mayne has brought in consultants to review e-commerce opportunities which, it is believed, could deliver tens of millions of dollars of cost savings and create new markets.
----------------
While Mayne is the subject of continual number crunching by investment banks and competitors, an often-speculated takeover bid has failed to emerge, partly due to the difficulty of getting consortium partners to agree on valuations.Such difficulties deterred Singapore's Parkway Holdings, Toll Holdings and Revesco, which looked at a consortium bid last year.
------------------
But for now, it is up to Dalziel to come up with a clear rategy to restore value or else his board of directors will look elsewhere.
Mayne Nickless Smedley to the
rescue
Sydney Morning Herald 27 Jun 2000
Mayne Nickless has hired Colonial's ``dynamic duo", Mr Peter Smedley and Mr Stuart James, in a package deal to shore up the health-care and logistics company's flagging fortunes. Mr Smedley will replace Mr Bob Dalziel from the end of next month as managing director at Mayne, - - - -
Smedley Takes On Ailing Mayne
Nickless
Australian Financial Review 06/27/2000
Former Colonial Group chief executive Mr Peter Smedley is expected to make widespread changes to Mayne Nickless' management and structure after being installed to turn around the ailing health-care and logistics conglomerate.
Agent Of Change' Bows Out
Australian Financial Review 06/27/2000
Mr Bob Dalziel's boundless optimism made him widely liked in the investment community, but ultimately was part of the reason the market lost confidence in his ability to turn around Mayne Nickless.In his own words, Mr Dalziel was poached from Coles Myer in 1996 by then chairman and former managing director Mr Ian Webber as a ``change agent'' .
-----------------
Mr Dalziel had promised the group's $48.5 million profit after tax in the second half of fiscal 1999 would be the earnings low point.For the current half it will be well below $40 million.
Dalziel Delighted To Make An
Early Exit
The Age 06/27/2000
Mayne Nickless chairman Mark Rayner told Bob Dalziel to stop smiling yesterday, but he was finding it hard.From the outside, Mr Dalziel's premature departure, six months before his contract expires, is perceived as a measure of his failure to get the company performing to expectations.
--------------------
Mr Dalziel appeared unworried. Instead, he had the air of a man with the monkey off his back - or at least one who was counting his options in more ways than one.
------------------------
The big step in that regard is Mr Dalziel's long-held ambition for the company to capitalise on its strengths in healthcare by exploiting its huge database of information to enable general practitioners to intervene earlier in patients' medical conditions rather than waiting until hospitalisation was necessary.That works in Mayne's favor because it means greater use of diagnostic tools, such as pathology and scanning, where it has a major investment.
Why the big boss comes a
cropper
The Mercury (Australia) 07/04/2000
Abstract -- Australasian Business Intelligence:
A growing number of Australia's chief executive officers are baling out early from their contracts as they face increasing public scrutiny. - - - - - Bob Dalziel resigned in late June 2000 - - It remains unclear how boards of directors are managing to make such inappropriate appointments.
Brief Warburg berth for Bob
The Australian Financial Review 08/02/2000
Web Page
History
This page created November 2001 by
Michael
Wynne
Format changed Nov 2005
