My Food Bag - The IPO

Cecilia Robinson is her name and My Food Bag is her game.

Launching in 2013 and taking her husband on, Teresa Gattung, Nadia Lim as ambassadors and investors MFB claims to have thousands of customers throughout New Zealand and delivering approx $140 m in revenue with no mention anywhere of any profit being delivered.

MFB had a go at the Aussie market but withdrew last year because it found its competition too tough - my emphasis.

Now lets get down to the nitty gritty. This story/press release out yesterday in stuff fails to mention that they have already tried OZ and retreated.

"My Food Bag would continue to focus on its New Zealand customers, and there were no plans to branch into Australia or any other overseas markets, Robinson said".

That really has Teresa Gattung fingers all over it. 

In her previous life as CEO of Telecom such pearls of wisdom were regularly up on the NZX as press releases.

With Nadia shes cool but she apparently sold a share of the business to Waterman Capital for approx $6m.

So at the moment ownership is unclear but you can bet that all 3 of the main holders have remained so to some extent.

Not much is known about the founder Cecilia Robinson except to say that everything looks sweet and lovely. In case your wondering i am suspicious because there is a lot of positive stuff written about her on the net/Newspapers and magazines.

Not a lot of negative.

Still that maybe cause I have a natural skepticism when it comes to me putting down money on something like this.

With that in mind I will leave it to the IPO managers at Waterman Capital to come out before the IPO with facts and figures. 

So far sadly lacking from anything out so far about My Food Bag.

I am not participating in the IPO.



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c Share Investor 2018

Telecom NZ: Saint Gattung gets her Ya Ya's out

I nearly choked on my Vegemite on toast this morning when I read what former CEO of Telecom New Zealand Ltd [TEL.NZ] Teressa Gattung said of current executive pay at the company.

"Now that I'm long gone I, with the rest of the country, wonder about the propriety of a company making half the annual profits it did a few years ago but paying its executives considerably higher salaries."

Come on, lets have some facts here instead of the marketing spin that we are getting from Ms Gattung, so she can sell more copies of her book Bird on a Wire. This woman has an overinflated sense of her own competence. As she did as Telecom CEO she is blaming everyone else for problems she helped cause; its politicians, its competitors, its circumstance, its "being a woman" - yes she said that.

"Mr Reynolds, as a male, has faced less scrutiny than she, despite the furore surrounding his $7m salary and incentive package..."

Sure, executive pay is too high given the profit levels and mess the company is currently in over the failing XT network and other problems related to underinvestment over the last 20 years but given that Ms Gattung was CEO when Telecom bought AAPT, the billion dollar plus loser Australian Telecom business and she was at the genesis of Telecom's current problems, shows not only a lack of class coming out now she is putting a book out but also indicates a lack of self awareness.

As bad as Paul Reynolds and the board at Telecom - some of which were on the board when Ms Gattung was at the helm - are currently performing Ms Gattung was the architect, not only of the current woes but also of that awful, the "customer is the problem culture" that is still alive and well.

In fact Ms Gattung admitted she had been deliberately confusing her customers (audio) to keep revenues up.

Ms Gattung under invested as CEO in Telecom from October 1999 to June 2007 and while shareholders received handsome dividends, very little of that moola made its way back into the business. She made the decision to go with the CDMA technology behind the 027 network when advised that she should have gone with GSM, the technology used by most of the rest of the world. As a direct result of that Telecom customers couldn't roam on their mobiles and Vodafone, at that time multiple times smaller than Telecom, ended up taking the bulk of the mobile market with 5 years or so.

The reactionary way the business was run under Gattung meant that she protected its monopoly status in the face of the treat of regulation from Government and years latter they were struck with separating the business from Government because they wouldn't move sooner to open competition. This stance also meant that New Zealanders were stuck with slow internet services, and the slowest uptake of broadband in the world because it was so expensive. This still lingers today with slow, expensive internet connections.

Teresa's marketing background has come to the fore this week and the spin she is putting on her place in Telecom's downfall should be taken with a healthy dose of salt because it simply is more garbage coming from an individual who doesn't have a sense of her own self and her part in the destruction of a company that could have done much better than it has if it was managed in a competent manner and in the hands of an individual who knew something about running a business with a long-term view, focus on customer service and the ability to be understood without having an interpreter explain her gobbledygook.

Ironically Ms Gattung left Telecom in 2007 with the highest payout ever made in this country of $5.4 million when the share price was seriously dropping and profits were falling.



Telecom NZ @ Share Investor

Telecom NZ: Bye Bye Paul Reynolds
Long Term View: Telecom NZ Ltd
Stock of the Week: Telecom Ltd
Revisiting Telecom
Getting cute and fluffy with Teresa Gattung
Telecom NZ Hangs up
Business Gobbledygook puts up barriers to communication
A Rare Breed
Telecom NZ facing a watershed period
Biology a major key in "glass ceiling" for women
Telecom rewards Gattung for mediocrity

Download every available TEL Annual Report Free


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The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) by Benjamin Graham
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Buy Bird on a Wire & more @ Fishpond.co.nz




c Share Investor 2010

Getting fluffy and cute with Teresa Gattung

Come back Teresa, all is forgiven, we love you!

That is what I would be saying if I wasn't being realistic about the disastrous job that Teresa Gattung did at the helm of Telecom New Zealand [TEL] .

Teresa, whose expertise is apparently in marketing, milked Telecom of dividends, failed to invest for the future and cost long term Telecom shareholders billions , as the company share price recently plumbed the depths of sub NZ$3.20 .

After all that she has been resurrected like one of those genetically enhanced sheep from the 2007 film "Black Sheep", the girl just wont die.

Appropriate that I make an early sheep joke because now someone has shepherded her back to New Zealand to become chairwoman of The Wool Company, which is undergoing a complete re-branding under the guidance of PGG Wrightson [PGW] chairman Craig Norgate.

Now you might think this post is about sticking it to Gattung again. Well that is where you would be wrong.

While Ms Gattung was the worst possible person to head a communications company, principally because she doesn't communicate well, as a marketer, she is perfect for resurrecting the tired image and fortunes of the New Zealand wool industry.

Wool isn't sexy, it is still being used mainly in lower margin products like carpet and bulk wool, whereas it could be marketed for use in higher margin goods like quality clothing, specialist outdoor gear and other high end product.

Now I could be wrong, she maybe an awful marketer, however, at Telecom, under her wing, she developed some of the best marketing in business at the time.

The high end wool business could be a high value export business if managed and marketed well and you have to give Gattung a couple of years before you can right her off completely.

Lets hope she doesn't try to pull the wool over her customers eyes, as she did at Telecom.

Related Share Investor reading

Share Investor Forum-Discuss this topic
Telecom NZ Hangs up
Business Gobbledygook puts up barriers to communication
A Rare Breed
Telecom NZ facing a watershed period
Biology a major key in "glass ceiling" for women
Telecom rewards Gattung for mediocrity

c Share Investor 2008

Telecom NZ rewards ex Chief for Mediocrity

The smack in the face to investors that is the Teresa Gattung payout brings more questions than answers. Gattung was paid $5.4 million during her final year with the company, which has just been released in the 2007 Annual report.

Gattung ran Telecom New Zealand [TEL.NZ] for almost ten years and in that time was responsible for more destruction of wealth for New Zealand public shareholders in any one single listed company in this countries history.

When she took the helm in the late 90s the TEL share price had reached almost $10 and profit peaked at NZ$820 Million dollars in 1998 . Since then profit has struggled to grow and has remained basically flat until 2007 profit of just north of $900 million. Next year the company will struggle to make $650 million because of the sale of one of the companies core assets, the Yellow Pages, a decision arrived at while Gattung was at the helm.

When Gattung left the share price was barely over $4 and the company has been left with problems surrounding decaying infrastructure and obsolete technology like their 027 mobile network ,which was redundant technology even before it was introduced not so long ago.

I cant work out whether Gattung didn't get much criticism for her truly awful reign at the top of Telecom because she is a woman or because brokers and large institutions had so much money invested in the company that there wasn't that much critical opinion to be written about by our mainstream business media writers. It was probably a little of both.

Teresa Gattung was a short term thinker in business and wasn't able to grasp where the company would be in 10 years. Under-investing in the business, reactive rather than proactive, marketing spin and poor service were the hallmarks of her time at the top and the position she had the company in when she left has the company directionless, treading water and fearful of competition.

Clearly she left the company in a worse state than when she started and the $5.4 million she was paid out before she left, including over $2 million in "incentives," was a kick in the collective teeth of Telecom shareholders who had to suffer through what was one of the biggest losses in New Zealand corporate history last year.

The news that Ms Gattung has had "several job offers" from companies should leave those that have offered shaking in their boots were they to read the last 9 years of Telecom balance sheets.


Telecom NZ @ Share Investor

Telecom NZ: TV3 60 Minutes Segment more like Corporporate spin
Telecom Share Price Limbos but has it jumped the Shark?
Telecom NZ: Saint Gattung gets her Ya Ya's out
Telecom NZ: Bye Bye Paul Reynolds
Long Term View: Telecom NZ Ltd
Stock of the Week: Telecom Ltd
Revisiting Telecom
Getting cute and fluffy with Teresa Gattung
Telecom NZ Hangs up
Business Gobbledygook puts up barriers to communication
A Rare Breed
Telecom NZ facing a watershed period
Biology a major key in "glass ceiling" for women
Telecom rewards Gattung for mediocrity

Download every available TEL Annual Report Free


Discuss this stock at Share Investor Forum - Register free

Recommended Amazon Reading


The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) by Benjamin Graham
Buy new: $14.95 / Used from: $7.50
Usually ships in 24 hours

Buy Bird on a Wire & more @ Fishpond.co.nz




c Share Investor 2007 & 2010