Chanticleer
Housing correction adds to slowdown, KPMG’s boardroom bin fire & Stefanovic’s shock split from Nine
26 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm James Thompson, Senior Chanticleer Columnist at the AFR. Welcome to our weekly news breakdown of all things business, finance and markets. With me today, as always, it's my Chanticleer colleague. He's Channel 9's biggest star now that Karl Stefanovic is gone. It's Anthony McDonald. How are you, Anthony? Has today's show called yet, James? You'd be great on Breakfast Day.
Oh, thanks, mate, but no. This week, we wonder what all this bad economic news means for the second half of the year. We ask whether KPMG can stem the bleeding by changing its board. And we take a great question on mining strikes and their national interest.
But first to the big news in here, James, and while Iran launched a drone attack on a Singaporean flagged ship to put the Strait of Hormuz reopening in jeopardy, there's a bigger story much closer to home. Karl Stefanovic had dropped his own podcast bomb on Nine, our employer, and he's gone from the Today Show after 20 years.
So we now have no Karl on morning TV, no Karl Sanderlands on morning radio. What is it with the Karls and Karls of the world? James, has societal change caught up with them? Or is this a story about old media versus new?
Well, I think the first question, Anthony, is will we ever be able to go by just our first names? Do you think people will say Anthony and James and they'll immediately know who we're talking about like we can with Carl and Kyle? I mean, it's a silly thing, but it does go to, like, the way these guys have entered the zeitgeist. I mean... These are seismic moves.
To lose to people like this from mainstream media, as you say, does capture something that's happening. I reckon it captures two things that are happening. One, these are legacy media formats, radio and TV, that are not as relevant as they were five years ago, 10 years ago, 25 years ago. These industries have changed.
And I think the notion of what makes a star in these industries and the power of those stars, that's changing as well. And then I think we've got this other societal political change that both Kyle and Carl are parts of, you know. Carl Sanderlanes, he's always been an outrage merchant, absolutely loves it.
But we've seen Carl Stefanovic really move into this area in the last, I don't know, 12 months or so, where he's trying to position himself as a sort of Australia's version of, I don't know, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, somewhere on the right over there. And that mirrors the change in Australian politics. You know, we were talking last week on the podcast about this 30% support for One Nation.
So the society is splintering and moving left and right. And I think Carl has tried to follow that. I mean, about two months ago, Carl published a video on his social media. very weird. It was a sort of AI-generated nostalgia scape mourning the loss of an Australia that Carl said he loves, and he couldn't stop talking about what's destroying it.
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Chapter 2: What does the bad economic news mean for the second half of the year?
I guess he's just trying to capture that zeitgeist.
Well, at the risk of sounding like Australia's youngest boomer, there's something in this podcast YouTube thing, James. There's eyeballs in it. But what we're seeing is, like you said, the successful ones, they sort of either go left or right of the political divide. They need to attract the people who want to hear the message, and they also need to attract the haters.
And you need to be controversial to be talked about. Yeah. You know, what's happened with Carl, I mean, it's great PR for him now and it's great PR for his new podcast. I mean, the setup, as it was, it felt pretty untenable. It was quite unusual. I mean, media's a talent game and, you know, he's a much bigger name than you or I, so he can get away with stuff that we never could.
But could you imagine doing a side podcast, James, getting allowed to do a side podcast where you're interviewing these sorts of people? Like, no one else is getting away with that. So... You know, good luck to him. I mean, I'm sure this martyrs him in some people's eyes. The right people on the right-hand side of the culture wars, they'll be going off.
I could see the tears in Sarah Arbo, his colleague's eyes this morning. James, is it going to be like that when I get the boot?
Yeah.
I'd cry. Oh, thanks. Here's a question for you, Anthony, though. Well, this is a business podcast. Can Carl make this new sort of new branching out career independent podcast thing work financially?
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Chapter 3: How is Karl Stefanovic's departure impacting the media landscape?
Is the economics of that model good enough in Australia yet? I'm not entirely sure. I think that's a really interesting question.
Well, he's apparently on $2 million a year at nine, and I'm sure he doesn't start off that on his podcast. But, I mean, he's building something, James. But, I don't know, it feels to me like there's a fair bit of momentum around that delivery of media. And where eyeballs go, advertisers normally follow. So I'm not ruling it out. Yeah, very interesting.
All right, Anthony, it was your turn to cover the big spill in aisle four this week, shares in Judo Capital, a bank that lends to small and medium-sized businesses, and it's in the ASX 200. It nearly halved in one session on Thursday, halved, after cutting earnings guidance and revealing three troublesome loans in its loan book. Anthony, can you explain to me how just three loans going bad...
and the resulting $20 million in impairments can halve an entire bank's valuation. I mean, Judo's got a $15 billion loan book. Three loans going bad. That's not the end of the world, is it?
It's a bit silly, isn't it? I mean, like you say, $15 billion loan book at Judo and about $80 million in loans to three companies. combined, so that's $80 million combined, and they haven't gone completely bad, just a $20 million impairment, the company nearly halves. I mean, it's a drastic overreaction, but that's the market telling you it's worried about bigger things here, James.
First of all, it's worried about the economy. So three loans that went bad or are looking a bit doubtful, one's a curtain and blind maker, one's a financial planner, one's a construction service companies, and they're in different states. These three loans were apparently all fine when Judo went in the third quarter, so just a month or two ago, and went through and reviewed all of its exposures.
Apparently, they were fine. But very quickly, they've all gone off the boil. Now, there are three different businesses in three different states going off the boil at a time when business and consumer confidence has crashed. We've had three rate rises. We've got the fuel price problems. We've had the budget, and things are looking a bit shaky out there.
So there's concerns that what's happened with these three little loans, they're just the sort of leading indicator about what could be coming in Judo's loan book more broadly.
The second thing though, and this is probably the bigger one, is whenever you get a company so quickly suffer a decline in its business that only a couple of weeks ago when it's out talking to investors about it knew nothing about, that calls into question trust. Yes.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the housing correction on the economy?
Juno got a bit unlucky too. It landed on a day when there wasn't a whole lot of other corporate news around. So like every eye in the market was focusing on this and thinking, have these guys really got this under control? You know, it's a pretty brutal call. Those banking analysts, they don't muck around. They're all veterans, very good at asking tough questions.
And, you know, I think, as you say, it's a long way back for Judo, not just because the shares are now 40% less than they were at the start of the week, but there is this sense that it will have to rebuild credibility with the market. And, you know, what's that saying? Credibility goes up the stairs and down the escalator. So it's going to be a long road back.
Yeah, James, and the big story in capital markets globally this week is the chipwreck. The red-hot chip makers whose shares are mostly up 200%, 300% or more thanks to AI demand, they wobbled midweek and it looked for a while like the AI boom's boomiest trade was all over. Now, a few days on, where are we up to? Is it a chipwreck or is the AI trade just going to roll on?
Well, I think the chip guys are okay again, Anthony. We saw a company called Micron Technology, which is America's biggest chip maker. It released a stonking result on Wednesday night. Now, profits, you know, if we get profit growth year on year, Anthony, here of 10%, that's not bad. Good year. 15%, very good year. 20%, excellent year. What about 1,400%?
That's what Micron did in the quarter ended May. And basically it's because this AI demand is pushing up the prices of the memory chips that it makes. It hasn't got enough supply to meet demand. It can basically charge whatever it wants. And so it is, and it's making stonking profits, going to keep doing that for the rest of this calendar year. But, Anthony, there's a problem with that.
We saw that on Thursday night. Apple announced that you'll be paying 20% more for your MacBook and your iPad. Why? Because memory prices have gone through the roof. So that's one problem.
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Chapter 5: Can KPMG recover from its boardroom scandal?
AI is starting to feed through inflation in that real economy, not just the AI economy. Then there's another problem. Everybody's looking at how much money Micron and other chip makers are making, and they're thinking, hang on, who are Micron's customers? Oh, they're the hyperscalers. Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Oracle. And they're thinking, so...
All those hyperscalers, they're pouring a trillion dollars, a US, into AI infrastructure this year. And the memory makers and chip makers, they're absolutely loving life because of that. But are the hyperscalers actually getting any return on the money they're investing? Or is it all just going to these chip and memory stocks? So I reckon something's changed this week, Anthony.
Everybody's now thinking about it's coming to sharp focus again. Is this money that's being poured into AI infrastructure actually going to get a return? Or is it just going to mean a big profit boom for chip makers and memory makers that lasts for one or two years and it's all done? And I think, you know, look at a company like Microsoft. It was the one that teamed up with OpenAI first.
It was seen as the leader, the big tech company that was going to lead the way in AI deployment, was going to actually turn this AI spending into something real. Its shares are down 30% since last August. Wow. Oracle's shares, another company that's supposed to be going to make the AI boom come alive, its shares are down 40% this month. This month alone.
So what the market is telling you is they don't believe that these hyperscalers are going to make a great return on these trillions of dollars they're investing in AI. They're quite happy to keep backing these chip makers who are coining it at the moment. But I think these longer-term questions about the viability of the AI boom are really coming into focus now.
And I think it's going to be, as it sets up for the second half of the year, it's going to be really interesting to see where this goes.
Yeah, the market's got a lot more selective about anything that needs capital to roll out these AI plans. So something like the chip makers, they don't, right? They just need to keep doing what they're doing and they're collecting super profits. Good luck to them. But something like Oracle, that's going to be very capital hungry and it's going to need to raise lots of capital.
There's just a moment in markets now where people are like, hang on, there's a lot of capital hungry companies out there. Is Oracle really the one I want to be backing? Or would I prefer to be saving my dollars for SpaceX or Anthropic or Google just did a US $80 billion raising. So people are getting more circumspect.
There's only so much capital to go around and they're looking for their actual winners, not just spraying it everywhere.
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