Eight hundred million reasons to check the share price – but the richest are getting poorer
Computershare founder Chris Morris has seen his wealth soar as the company’s shares rise. But among Australia’s richest shareholders, it’s a sea of red | FULL INDEX
Few are about to feel sorry for them, but Australia’s rich have got a whole lot poorer on the stock market this year.
Not Chris Morris though.
It has been almost a year since Morris stepped down from the board of Computershare, the share registry company he founded in 1978, to concentrate on his collection of pubs, hotels, and craft beer assets around Australia, and his tourism holdings such as the Townsville casino.
Computershare had already been a big success for Morris, catapulting him into the billionaire ranks. This year it is a rare stock that has actually gone up in value on the ASX.
No wonder Morris admits to sneaking a regular look at the Computershare share price, which is up about 22 per cent since January 1 to give him a stake worth $800m.
“Yeah I check the price most days,” Morris says. “Of course you do. I’ve still got a big holding in it.”
Computershare benefits from rising interest rates, making a margin on cash held for its registry clients before dividends are paid to shareholders. It has also done well for similar reasons from its acquisition last year of the West Fargo Corporate Trust Services business in the US.
“They’re good managers and I trained them well,” Morris jokes about the Computershare executives and boards running the business post his departure.
The Richest 250 Share Index, compiled by The Australian based on publicly-traded stocks of companies founded by members of The List – Australia’s Richest 250, has a sea of negative numbers on it based on trading from January 1 onwards this year.
Of the 40 stocks on the Index, which include huge names like Harvey Norman, Fortescue Metals Group, Atlassian and Seek, only five have increased in value since January 1.
The Index is led by Computershare, with global commodities giant Glencore, formerly headed by Australian citizen Ivan Glasenberg the next best performer with a 18 per cent rise.
Endeavour Group, which counts pokies and pubs magnate Bruce Mathieson as a large shareholder, is up 17 per cent this year. Mathieson’s 15 per cent stake in Endeavour, which owns pubs and bottle shops, is worth more than $2.1bn.
Megan Wynne and husband Bruce Bellinge are billionaires thanks to the share price performance of her human services provider APM, up 14 per cent this year. It is now back to the value it had when it floated on the ASX last November, a little over 30 years since Wynne established a private occupational therapy practice.
Wynne formed APM in 1994, with husband Dr Bellinge helping to fund the company when Wynne couldn’t get bank financing. It has since grown and now has more than 7000 employees operating across 800 locations in 10 countries around the world. Wynne and Bellinge both own APM shares.
Another husband and wife team, David and Vicky Teoh, have seen their shares increase in TPG Telecom. David Teoh resigned as TPG chairman last year but he and his family remain significant shareholders.
Otherwise, there have been significant amounts of red ink this year for Australia’s billionaires, including Gerry Harvey of retailer Harvey Norman.
Harvey tells The Australian that his business is still a high yielding stock, and while he has other assets such as boats and machinery for Black Bream Point holiday cabins business at Narooma on the NSW south coast, and racehorses, he still finds plenty of time to get his stocks.
“I’d have a look every day. I’ve got about 30 or 40 other ASX stocks besides Harvey Norman and I’ll generally have a look, though it might only take me three minutes or so.
“Stocks go up and down. But generally if you hold them long enough they should increase in value.”
Harvey Norman is down about 18 per cent this year, but that still puts it in the top half of the Richest 250 Index.
The worst performer has been Adam Gilchrist’s F45 Training Holdings fitness centre business that listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the US in a blaze of publicity last July.
But F45 struggled with Covid lockdowns and has lost 83 per cent of its value since January 1. Gilchrist, who owns a string of Sydney properties, stepped down last week after announcing a profit downgrade and big staff cuts.
Other big falls include Atlassian, headed by billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, down 42 per cent, plumbing supplies retailer Reece, which has fallen 45 per cent, and retailer Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments, down 31 per cent.
Dean Mintz, one of Australia’s least known e-commerce leaders, had wealth of $623m from his Cettire Group when The Richest 250 was published in late March.
But his stake is now worth about $140m, with Cettire having fallen 82 per cent this year.
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