Angus Aitken visits high-end Dan Murphy’s and finds too much champagne
Angus Aitken took a short trip from the Aitken Mount Capital Partners offices to Dan Murphy’s high-end Sydney CBD store on Martin Place – and he appears to be unimpressed about what he saw.
In a note to his clients on Thursday morning, the outspoken stockbroker wrote: “My god there is some expensive booze in there … the only thing missing was people actually buying the expensive booze.”
“I have no idea how a business model based on selling $1k buck bottles of Super Tuscans to Senior Counsel was thought up,” he added.
Angus Aitken says he is unsure about the strategy behind Dan Murphy’s high-end Martin Place store. Eamon Gallagher
It is not the first time Aitken has waded into an increasingly acrimonious stoush between Dan Murphy’s owner, Endeavour, and the company’s largest shareholder, the billionaire publican Bruce Mathieson. In October, he said the company, which also owns pubs and the BWS chain, was under-earning.
“When we first wrote about it a week or so ago, we said [Endeavour] needs to change the board and CEO or the stock is going nowhere, and the stock continues to drift lower and the stock price is so underwhelming … you can see why people think it could be taken private,” Aitken wrote in a new note this week, in which he calls for management and the board to change.
“When a sporting team is doing badly, coming bottom of the ladder, there are calls for new players, coaches and the like and usually new team members and coaches improve the performance of that club. Listed companies are no different,” his note reads.
“I cannot think of more dominant assets that are under earning vs their market dominance in the Australian industrial sector, but the current people are clearly not the team to deliver that
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