How difficult is it to continue to run things out of Australia? I guess you’d be on the plane a lot to different places?
We’ve got two businesses within the Mint group. We’ve got a technology distribution business that’s doing really well and we’re working with all the major retailers here, so that’s busy. I’ve got a CEO that’s taking charge of our payment solutions business and he’s based out of the UK.
I noticed in your address to the AGM last year that when you looked at the highs and lows of Mint Wireless, one of the “lows” was the share price performance. It’s still low, but you are also still a very young business. How do you balance share price performance with the need to grow faster, which does cost money?
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? I mean you’re right – especially with early stage companies like ours, people always expect a home run every single time no matter what we do, although inevitably things don’t always turn out the way it is. I think we’ve done well in terms of being able to navigate through the GFC and also being able to outgrow our technology subscription business to become profitable. Now we’ve got a payment system that is really where we want to focus on and add true value for the medium- to long-term, and that’s what we’re looking for. Once you find something that works, you keep on doing it and you get some sort of entrenchment in your industry and I think the share price will reflect well once we do that.
Is your sense with the Motorola deal and these other partnerships that you’ve started to figure out the right things?
Yes, I believe so, we’re on the right track. We’re speaking to the end customers and if they didn’t want our solution then I’d be a little bit concerned, but at Motorola Australia, and at Motorola in Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore, these guys are saying that their customers want it. And that’s why Motorola’s invested millions of dollars in developing a hardware terminal to process payments and we’re the software in the back end to be able to connect it to the bank. Once we get a couple of good customers on board after we go live in the UK next month, then it will I think that will provide a great stepping stone to further growth as well.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
