Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Australian's Money Puzzle podcast. I'm James Kirby. Welcome aboard, everybody. Now, look, we really need to take a look at the share market and we need to assess as investors where we are just now. We don't know if this crisis is over because the Iran crisis, it's extending. But we do know for sure that we've had an oil shock, an inflation shock.
So what does that actually mean for you as an investor? And how is it playing out in the market, in reality? Not how you might assume it's playing out, but how is it actually playing out? And also about the AI boom, which was briefly, maybe only marginally interrupted by the crisis. Where's that at? And what's going to happen in our market for Australian investors?
My guest today is Eric Johnson, business columnist on The Australian. He's been on the show before, colleague of mine for a long time. How are you, Eric?
Chapter 2: What impact does the Iran oil crisis have on the share market?
Nice to be with you, James.
Great to have you on board. Now, tell me, the thing that triggered, I suppose, this particular show, you did a piece recently about the oil crisis and the impact of it for investors, but it challenged perhaps assumptions about how that would work. For instance, folks, if you look at the market, you might think,
that the big oil users, and we might talk about them first, the big oil users, right, which are airlines, miners, that they would be knocked around by the oil prices. But it's not quite as simple as that. And you discovered, Eric, that even though, say, a company like Rio uses, and this is worth hearing, folks,
more than a billion, not a million, a billion liters of diesel a year, most of it in the Pilbara. They're actually gaining in this crisis because of economies of scale. Just tell us, take us back to what you were covering on that one, Eric.
Yeah, I called it diesel economics, James. And like all things, there's a lot of moving parts to any story. Nothing is quite as simple as it seems. And that's right. Rio Tinto, like its big rival BHP, Rio quantified the amount of diesel they use in the Pilbara.
So all up annually across its operations around the world, 1.6 billion litres of diesel and two thirds of that comes from, two thirds of that is used in the Pilbara. That's running generators and those big, mighty haul trucks that you see running around the clock, also trains, freight, everything to get that on or out of the ground and onto the ship.
So interestingly, so straight up, like all of us, we're seeing higher prices at the petrol pump. And so too Rio Tinto is seeing high prices. And it's a big user of diesel. So it's straight up, it's starting to fuel these higher prices.
And you would have thought their share prices would, you would have thought they were struggling, right? But it turns out they're not.
So looking through this, so what actually happens is, so sure, that adds to the cost of digging one ton of iron ore out of the ground. All other users are also feeling this cost, but the bigger players are benefiting, James, because they have bigger scale, more scale, so they can spread the cost over more units. And that's a real powerful tool when it comes to business. And So Rio Tinto and BHP.
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Chapter 3: How are major companies like BHP and Rio Tinto benefiting from the oil shock?
If there are winners and losers there, I know Qantas is down about 10%, 15%, isn't it? But who is managing it better, would you think?
Yeah. So look, out of that, in terms of managing it better, again, no simple answer. Depends on how it plays out. Now, in a real binary answer, Virgin for now, Virgin Airlines, a smaller one, is managing it better. Why? Because it's a smaller airline. It's mostly domestic focused. So its planes, they don't have to travel those ultra long distances of getting people overseas.
It has flexible pricing. But before it went to a float last year in an ASX listing, it took in comprehensive information
fuel hedging strategies so it's like taking out insurance so it really doubled down so not only it hedged against the brent crude price but it also hedged against the additional margin of the aviation fuel now that that's the really expensive stuff that's gone up aviation fuel so not only has brent crude we've seen It's now tracking at about $120 a barrel. That's US.
Aviation fuel has actually almost doubled over that same period.
I see. So aviation fuel has gone up more than oil. Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, right. Because the refining process of it is obviously costly. The demand process is quite large. So I would also think about it like diesel has gone up much more than the regular petrol that we put in our cars.
Okay. And this hedging, could you explain to listeners who don't know about the hedging? It's, I mean, it's a game really, isn't it? They're forced to play this game, but they have to bet on the future of the oil price. And if they get it right, they win. And if they get it wrong, it can go horribly wrong, can't it?
That's right. So currently Virgin is winning on the hedging. However, it's paid up big for that. And these hedge contracts, they roll over constantly and they will run out eventually in a couple of months. Some of these really beneficial hedging contracts. If the crisis is over within one or two months, who knows? Absolutely, who knows? Then Virgin comes out a winner on this.
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Chapter 4: What factors are causing the ASX to lag behind Wall Street?
Now, these data centers aren't ordinary ones. They're liquid cooled with the aim of using this technology with the aim of substantially lowering energy costs. Energy is a big factor in running a data center.
Is this their key proposal that they've got something no one else has in data centers?
They've got something that is at the start of, it's at the front end of technology. So it's being trialed and being used a little bit around the world. It hasn't really been rolled out at scale. It's not to say the technology doesn't work, but It's a very complicated technology and it involves a lot of expertise around it.
They've embraced it and they're building, at the moment, the first megadata center, the first hyperscaler providing cloud technology and all things for AI computing down in Tasmania.
And of course, I mean, it would be remiss of us to mention, and I'm sure some listeners, the name rings a bell all over Curtis. He's one of the few people who ever in Australian corporate circles was charged and jailed for insider trading once upon a time. He served 12 months in jail. for conspiring to commit insider trading. That was back in 2016.
You know, life is on and everyone deserves a second act. Here he comes this time around with this group, Firmus.
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Chapter 5: How are airlines like Qantas managing the financial impact of rising oil prices?
One of the things that really is intriguing, Eric, is Who's backing him? Wes Maas, M-A-A-S, is behind him, who, of course, is a major rich lister. And he's put a lot of money in there. We know that already. Admittedly, he has contracts with that same company. So that might explain to some extent why he would go in there. James Packer has gone in there.
As I understand, it's almost a race between the richest in Australia to get in on this IPO. Would that be... Fair to say. Would you say that's fair?
Yes, it is in a way. And we talk about they're in a pre-IPO stage. They've talked about going to the market for an IPO this year. And I'd really encourage your listeners to speak to an advisor before going into this, because there will be a lot of hype around this. There'll be significant hype.
Really do the sums and really put a real tough screen around it and stick to your rules around investing. So there are some big names in it. So yeah, Alliston is the fund behind there. We've got Regal, Archibald Capital. But don't forget the sums that some of these organisations are investing. They're like us buying a lotto ticket on the way home. They're not going to move the dial.
But for some retail investors, and if it does go to market, it will be quite a big ask. And these are going to be big sums.
Okay. So, I mean, as you say, the nature with highly hyped floats is that they can go highly wrong. And we know that. And we all know that. Anyone who's been around will know that. One last thing, Eric, on Firmus. When are they due to float?
Yeah, so they have talked about mid-2026 as a date. Now... We don't have a much more indication beyond that. What they're doing, they're going around at the moment and testing support among big investors in Australia, whether it is viable. It's said that if the valuation would be about $8 billion, if at least, so this company that
that barely existed a few years ago is already sort of traveling around $8 billion mark.
It's an unknown company that went from who knows where to $8 billion. And this is what is coming through and should float on the market. That's the total value of this company as we know it today. Yeah, spectacular.
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