can serve up better results than the incumbent leadership. The company’s board is encouraging shareholders to re-elect current directors, Bruce Mathieson Jr and Rod van Onselen, and to reject the nomination of Wavish. It is expected the board will prevail and institutional shareholders will not support the Wavish bid. Indeed, it is rather odd that the billionaire Bruce Mathieson Snr would have backed Wavish to shake up the Endeavour Group board and rejig its business strategies. He and a former Woolworths CEO, Roger Corbett, have been spruiking Wavish’s candidature in what seems more like an old boys’ last hurrah than anything else. A successful team There is no doubting the successful careers of Mathieson and Corbett but the Wavish record is another matter. Wavish had as number of executive roles at Woolworths between 1999 and 2006, including chief financial officer, finance director and head of supermarkets. That timeframe coincided with Corbett’s tenure as CEO and they were a successful team, leveraging the Dan Murphy’s liquor chain acquired by Woolworths in 1998 to national market leader. The expansion of the Woolworths liquor business was substantially boosted through a business partnership with Mathieson Snr and the acquisition of his hotels and gaming venture, Australian Leisure and Hospitality. Corbett, Mathieson and Wavish can all take credit for the development of the Woolworths liquor and gaming operations that were renamed Endeavour Group, and later demerged and floated on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2021. Mathieson Snr currently holds a 15.1 per cent shareholding in Endeavour Group while Woolworths has a 9.1 per cent stake after offloading a 5.5 per cent parcel for $685 million last December. While Mathieson, Corbett and Wavish have all been critical of Endeavour Group’s performance and particularly its share price, Woolworths’ current CEO was apparently not so concerned last December. Commenting on the sale of 5.5 percent share parcel, Brad Banducci noted there had been a “successful transition of ownership to partnership” between Woolworths and Endeavour Group. Questionable track record Back to why Wavish as Mathieson Snr’s captain’s pick for the board? That 1999 to 2006 period was an exciting and heady period of growth, but those days are gone. Wavish went on to become executive chair of the then-privately held Myer, the share price of which tanked when it returned to the Australian Securities Exchange and has never come close to the issue price in the public float. Wavish was also appointed by private equity owners as a director of the electronics chain Dick Smith that they had acquired from Woolworths. Dick Smith collapsed and Wavish admitted in a Supreme Court hearing that he had urged an increase in inventory levels that were part of the debt that forced the retailer into receivership. Mathieson and Corbett would argue that Wavish knows the Endeavour business better than he did Myer or Dick Smith. However, he may not know it as well as they believe, given significant changes in the market. To start with the gaming business, the regulatory environment, consumer behaviour and wagering competition is dramatically different to the glory days between 1999 and 2006. Indeed, the changing market conditions for the gaming industry were a factor in Woolworths’ 2019 plan to demerge Endeavour Group. Interestingly, the continuing political and public unease about gaming following the Crown and Star casino transgressions probably goes some way to explaining Endeavour Group’s lagging share price. The liquor industry has also changed markedly with the proliferation of boutique beers and distilleries and the expansion of mail-order vendors that include Qantas, Virgin and even The Australian newspaper. The increased cost of living has reshaped consumer spending, while Covid-impacted hospitality and on-premise sales have only just resumed normalised trade patterns in the second half of the 2023 financial year. Numbers don’t add up Mathieson, Corbett and Wavish’s contention that Endeavour Group is underperforming relies on financial data from the Covid pandemic period and ignores ownership transition and investment initiatives, including winery acquisitions. As the current Endeavour Group chairman, Peter Hearl argues in response to the underperformance claims, a comparison between the 2019 financial year and FY23 provides a fairer comparison. Endeavour Group’s sales for the latest financial year were up 2.5 per cent to $11.9 billion with earnings before interest and tax up 10.7 per cent to $1.02 billion. Sales have increased by around $1.5 billion since 2019. Granted there were slight falls in retail sales and earnings of 1.8 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively but the hotels division was up on revenue and profits by more than 30 per cent. Endeavour Group’s result is consistent with the on-premise revenue boost posted by Metcash which, in turn, bolstered its liquor pillar sales for the latest full financial year. Coles Liquor posted a 0.1 per cent fall in retail sales to $3.61 billion and a 3.7 per cent drop in earnings before interest and tax. Endeavour Group’s performance is hardly bad enough to have you crying in your beer, and change at the top hardly seems justified at this point.