Alex Waislitz looks to post-coronavirus trends

Businesses are expected to slash travel budgets and rethink office footprints in the post-COVID-19 world, Alex Waislitz says.

Investor Alex Waislitz. Picture: Aaron Francis

Businesses are expected to slash travel budgets and rethink office footprints as COVID-19’s effect on working is set to stay long after the pandemic passes, ­according to billionaire investor Alex Waislitz.

He said the pandemic, which has seen an exodus in office towers across CBDs as thousands of staff work from home, had accelerated trends that were already emerging in many workplaces.

“Some of the trends that we are seeing we already knew were coming and have been reinforced and fast-tracked,” he said.

“The new normal will include much deeper and impactful tech implications and the workplace will change as a result of this.

“Travel we realise is not as necessary as thought, and corporates will change their budgets accordingly. People will be able to work more flexibly. That allows implications for family life and social life as well as things like real estate requirements and open plans in a much more health-conscious world.”

Some of Australia’s biggest companies are already looking to slash costs by shifting to cheaper offices and moving to sell under-used property as they emerge from the crisis.

Australia Post is weighing a shift from its Bourke Street headquarters and may move to a fringe office building in Melbourne, with Medibank Private and Commonwealth Bank also seeking new digs.

Mr Waislitz has been looking for areas to invest and at which companies will benefit from the post-coronavirus world.

He warned an investor web forum last week that a “day of reckoning” was coming for sharemarket investors as unprecedented levels of liquidity in the financial system and buying by index funds had decoupled ­global markets from the economic reality of a world very ­different to what it was six months ago.

He said while the low interest rate environment and higher price-earnings ratios could be justified for some stocks, “at the end of the day you have to go back to the fundamentals of the businesses”.

“Overall the beneficiaries will be advanced technology companies and new age companies,” he said.

He said other investors had also caught on to trends that his Thorney Investments had foreseen, with fintech companies Zip and Afterpay surging 200 per cent since the sharemarket lows of February and March.

Mr Waislitz also expected cloud-based call recording business Dubber to do well, with its shares up 56 per cent since the market lows earlier this year.

“We really like that. It’s voice recording technology which has been a great beneficiary of people working in more locations such as at home.”

Mr Waislitz has also backed life science companies including Mesoblast, Genetic Signatures and Oventus Medical.