Thursday, April 30, 2009

Why has NZX bought CPL?

I vaguely registered from this post at Home Paddock that some outfit called NZX had bought Feilding-based Countrywide Publications, which puts out seven titles aimed at farmers. They’re quite good and when my wife and I briefly considered moving to Feilding, CPL seemed a possible source of income for me. I did wonder who NZX were, and thought it odd that they had the same corporate initials as the NZ Stock Exchange.

Now all is revealed – it is the same NZX. Why on earth would Mark Weldon want to buy a rural publishing business? Cactus Kate has a very plausible theory, and it is a bit disturbing:
See now NZX own the editorial content of every publication that FOC (Father of Cactus) wades through and trusts as the primary trusted source of rural information. Watch for these publications to cement a firm pro-listing editorial view for Fonterra. The Fonterra Chairman is already on the NZX Board and a Fonterra listing is the NZX's wettest dream. The key to the future. And cashing out those share options that they all seem to have a hand in the pie with respect to as listed in great detail in the accounts.
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 1, 2009 at 9:43 AM

    I can't find any evidence of shares options in any annual reports, NZX has a share scheme, but no share options program.

    Also NZXs main source of revenues is selling market data, the australasian agriculture sector is a very fragmented data arena, seems the NZX is just slowly consolidating a lot of data vendors in this space, seems to be consistent with what they already do.

    Graeme Hart did the a similar thing with Print comoanies in the 1990's.

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  2. AnonymousMay 1, 2009 at 3:05 PM

    Weldon's got his own stock option scheme

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/21784

    Looks like Weldon has another 2 years to get the price to $10.31 then he's in the money.

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  3. Cactus KateMay 2, 2009 at 12:48 AM

    Anonymous

    You didn't look very hard did you?

    Report 2008

    page 53 even terms it an option plan if you had missed earlier mention of the Black Scholes method (which incidentally is an options pricing model, not a brand of dark shoe cleaner).

    "As there is no bonus related to this scheme for IFRS purposes it is treated as an OPTION plan".

    Similarly with Weldon's OPLTI plan which is treated as an option explicitly in the text at pg 52.

    There is a mixture of employee loans to buy the shares based on EPS. These are all detailed for your reading pleasure in the accounts.

    Read before you talk to your keyboard next time to criticise my work.

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