ITC boss hits the road pre-float
Integrated Tree Cropping (ITC) managing director Tony Jack has left the company days prior to its listing and has been temporary replaced by Futuris Corporation chief executive officer Leo Wozniczka.
ITC marketing consultant Mike Hendricks says a national search for a new chief executive has started after Jack left last Friday with Hendricks saying “the company has been left in good hands and Futuris is putting its stamp on the company”.
Futuris is a major shareholder in ITC and after listing on March 31 it will control 50 per cent of the company. ITC is also offering a one-for-one renouncable rights issue at 80 cents a share with Futuris taking $19 million of the issue.
The company is also in the process of buying the 5.86 million preference shares in ITC Timberlands, with approximately 90 per cent of these now acquired.
ITC has also appointed a new chairman, David Gillham to replace Tony Davies who will become a non-executive director, while existing board member Bob Bunning has resigned.
“We are engineering a total change in the ITC business. A board and management team is being put in place which can take ITC from being a $100 million company to becoming a major industrial and we think this is achievable,” Davies says.
ITC is projecting an after-tax profit of $5.5 million for the 2004 financial year and $10.2 million in 2005. Revenues for 2004 are projected at $36.6 million and $42.9 million in 2005.
“We are basing our profit projects on assuming only 30 per cent of revenues coming from managed investment schemes with those sales being at about the same levels as last year,” Davies says.
Adviser Edge Investment Research managing director Shane Kelly says Jack’s departure will have no influence on rating the company’s managed investment schemes.
“We see Futuris as playing a positive role and it doesn’t surprise us that they lift the management team into the Futuris way of running a business,’ he says.
“We are in the process of rating them now and we believe the ITC has improved since Futuris took a stake. It will be a positive for driving growth at ITC.”
Jack toldMoney Managementthat his departure was at the right time and he would focus on developing businesses in the agribusiness managed investments industry.”
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