Light & Wonder’s Jamie Odell and Toni Korsanos on friendship, success and a possible dual listing
Light & Wonder has had a meteoric rise under the stewardship of Jamie Odell and Toni Korsanos, which they attribute to their long friendship and mutual support in times of personal crisis.
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Jamie Odell and Toni Korsanos are a remarkable duo in Australian business, especially the gaming sector.
For nearly a decade they worked to turn around Aristocrat Leisure’s operations and make it one of the best performing stocks on the ASX.
For the past three years, they – along with CEO Matt Wilson – have been driving the revival of the Nasdaq-listed, Caledonia Investments-backed gaming group called Light & Wonder.
The company is now in ongoing dialogue with the ASX about securing a dual primary listing in America and Australia, or even ditching the US market altogether.
Investors will hear more about those plans at the investor day this week, as well as details about its new three-year strategy, including updated earnings-per-share targets.
Despite their 11-year age gap, Odell and Korsanos are good friends.
They first met at Aristocrat in February 2009 when Odell was CEO and Korsanos was a senior executive.
In addition to their time there and at Light & Wonder, they co-founded the Ashok Jacob-chaired Ellerston Capital’s top performing JAADE private assets fund and remain on its investment committee as well as some of its investee company boards.
Odell stood by Korsanos’s side during her private and painful breast cancer battle eight years ago – which she won – and again when last month she lost her father, John.
He died four days short of his 87th birthday.
“Dad had a heart attack earlier this year, and we went through some pretty risky procedures and he rehabilitated five weeks in. He was ready to come out of hospital but unfortunately he got an infection and that is what ended up killing him,” Korsanos reveals.
“To watch that happen to him was really hard, especially after he was ready to come home. Literally overnight, he presented with one of those multi-resistant antibiotic infections.”
John Korsanos had long been his daughter’s hero.
Lessons in life
John and wife Athina, Toni’s mother, immigrated to Sydney by boat from their home town in the south of Greece in the 1960s.
He came with just a suitcase and £20 before building a happy family home at Croydon in Sydney’s inner west.
Korsanos says her father taught her the important traits of resilience and courage, which she had to call on in spades during her cancer battle.
“He taught me to not be afraid and to be as courageous as him. To not accept defeat, to give it a go,” she says proudly.
“Because he did everything with nothing and I did everything with his support; even as a female, he was my biggest supporter. Then the last thing I learned from him was to be a good person. Leave a legacy as a good person.”
Her pain was acutely felt by Odell, also because it was close to home for the 66 year old.
He lost his own my father, who was 93 years old and had fought in World War II, to Parkinson’s disease in the UK a decade ago.
“So I think people have to go through this cycle,” he says. Odell reflects when asked about his good friend’s most recent trials.
He knows her family well. Korsanos has a daughter and son who both attended the wedding of Odell’s son a few months back.
“So I think I was trying to show that firstly, people care for her,” he says. “This cycle she is still going through is a natural one. In my case a year after my father passed away, on the anniversary of his death, I looked at my diary and thought, ‘Wow, this is the first I’ve really stopped and thought’.
“Because you just get on with the doing of stuff and things. That day I actually really thought about the man, his life and the legacy. So those things do eventually turn into happier moments of reflection.”
He says his first priority in recent weeks has been to be a support for Korsanos as she farewelled the giant figure in her life that inspired her to blaze a trail in business through executive roles at Kellogg’s, Goodman Fielder and Aristocrat, as well as in the nation’s boardrooms at Webjet, Ardent Leisure, Crown Resorts and most recently, Treasury Wine Estates and Light & Wonder.
“But secondly, I guess, I have wanted to help her realise that what she is going through is natural, and to help her deal with her family. Because Toni happens to be a quite dominant family member. But in this situation, it is not about problem solving. Unfortunately, it is about learning to grieve,” Odell adds softly.
Learning from each other
Korsanos has previously said that the most important thing Odell has taught her in business and life is to stay calm and focus on what you can control. She believes she has taught him the power of prioritisation.
Invited to reflect on her comments, Odell agrees he has a calmer and more reflective personality, which he hopes has rubbed off.
“Toni’s approach is ‘Let’s get all the information first and then let’s sort it out as a group and company’,” he says.
“So I think as Toni continues to grow in her career, and she’s still got huge potential going forward, I think that is an area where I see her realising that you don’t actually have to be the first one out there with the information. It is the last word that matters more than the first.”
Light & Wonder – where Odell is executive chairman and Korsanos vice-chairman – is in the final year of a three-year strategy outlined at its strategy day in May 2022 to drive sustainable double-digit growth and to deliver long-term shareholder value.
This included a financial target of $US1.4bn (adjusted EBITDA) in the 2025 calendar year, a 15 per cent a year increase on the 2021 number of $US793m.
The target was most recently affirmed at the group’s first quarter earnings result, where it reported its fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in adjusted net profit after tax.
All three of its businesses are recording growth and a fourth, charitable gaming, has now been added following the completion of the $1.05bn acquisition of US firm Grover Gaming.
Grover provides electronic pull tabs to charitable organisations in five US states and is expected to soon apply for a licence in Indiana, which last month approved charitable gaming.
“You think of our $US1.4bn target EBITDA number. Grover, in a full year, is going to be over $100m (in EBITDA). It is highly accretive because we are buying it on about 7.1 times future earnings. It’s a really good deal and a great team,” Odell says.
At this week’s strategy day, Light & Wonder will again release precise financial targets, bucking the ongoing trend of companies – especially in Australia – avoiding putting earnings guidance into the market.
“How many other companies in the ASX top 50 can give you a clear line of sight of multiple years of double digit growth in NPAT? We can actually show you the progress and the opportunity there. So I think that is what makes us unique,” Odell says.
Dual listing on horizon
Light & Wonder listed on the ASX as a foreign exempt company in May 2023 and is now engaging with stakeholders to review its current listing structure to determine if it is right for generating sustainable shareholder value or if changes are required.
That change could involve a dual US-Australia primary listing or even a sole primary Australian listing.
The Australian-domiciled share ownership of the firm has risen from 9 per cent in early 2023 to 38 per cent currently. It has been completely organic, with no additional shares issued.
“So we are going full steam ahead as fast as we can for a primary listing in Australia, and that will depend on how quickly we can get local ownership up to 50 per cent,” Odell says, noting that could take at least 18 months.
Korsanos stresses a primary listing would not be a new IPO on the ASX and says the option has been welcomed by the firm’s big investors, including Caledonia.
“We are offering a gaming company that is a growth stock that is well established, with global exposure,” she says.
“There are investors in this market who want the growth, the global exposure, the gaming, or want all three. So it is an established company with strong governance, much better governance than where we started.
“If you look at the first three years, it was about restructuring. We are now at that point where we have built momentum and, going forward, we are going to just continue to compound growth. So I think the timing is important from an ASX perspective.”
When Odell and Korsanos go to New York to meet investors this week, they plan to visit Ellis Island, – once home to the busiest immigrant processing station in the US.
It will be in memory of Korsanos’s great grandmother, who immigrated from Greece to America in the early 1900s. Her dad’s spirit is sure to be with her on the visit.
She is still overwhelmed by the wide group of friends who came to pay their respects to him in his final days and the displays of his trademark good humour right until the end.
“He always used to tease my brother and I, and he was still teasing us,” she says with a solemn smile.
“At the end I said to him one day, ‘I love you dad, to the moon and back’.”
Through his pain, John Korsanos replied with a slight, cheeky grin: “Is that all?”
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