CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 19 July 2019 By NAOS Asset Management

Disruptive Technology

"Nothing will be more important [than self-driving technology] in our future when it's ready." Jim Hackett, CEO, Ford Motor Company

"The use cases for self-driving technology and the benefits are numerous across industry and beyond" Herbert Diess, CEO, Volkswagen AG

"Our same-store sales performance for the quarter came in toward the lower end of our three-year to five-year outlook, as we continue to navigate through headwinds related to aggressive activity from third-party delivery aggregator’s. I do not expect this activity to ease in the near-term." Ritch Allison, CEO, Domino's Pizza Inc [global parent company]

Health

"If health insurers in the next three years are not very close to 2 per cent [annual premium rise], then I think we will feel the wrath of the public." John Van Der Wielen, CEO, HBF Health Insurance

Telecommunications

"5G is rapidly gaining momentum around the world and 5G is now launched in four continents." Borje Ekholm, CEO, Ericsson

Domestic Economy

“Customers have voted with their feet and they’re not coming in [to bank branches]. It does mean that jobs will go." Shayne Elliott, CEO, ANZ Bank Ltd

Domestic Retail

“Retail conditions in Australia remaining challenging.” Company Announcement, Woolworths Holdings Ltd (South African retail multinational and owner of David Jones and Country Road)

Travel

“Proportionally fewer Australians are taking holidays. Now 61.2 per cent of Australians have taken a domestic holiday in the last year compared to 66.3 per cent two decades ago — a fall of 5.1 percentage points. However, overseas holidays are booming and over a quarter of Australians (26.5 per cent) have taken an overseas holiday in the last year, up from only 13.1 per cent in 2000-01 — more than doubling." Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan Research Institute

Media

“I think everybody gets that people will subscribe to multiple [streaming platforms]." Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix Inc

“The advantage of having something be catchy like ‘the streaming wars’ is that it draws more attention, and because of that, consumers shift more quickly from linear TV to streaming TV." Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix Inc

"They [the large IT consultants/big 4 accounting firms] can put in enterprise systems and do fancy things and pretend like they’re in our business, but in fact they don’t have any creative assets, and creating a global network of creative assets is not a simple matter." John Wren, CEO, Omnicom Media Group [global medial conglomerate]

US Economy

“The relationship between the slack in the economy or unemployment and inflation was a strong one 50 years ago ... and has now gone away. [The relationship] has become weaker and weaker and weaker.” Jerome Powell, Chairman, US Federal Reserve

"I think right now the challenges - and maybe it's the opportunity - in that we're clearly pivoting from an environment where we had predicted or thought or had been built-in rising rates to at this point rates going lower. And I think from our perspective, we don't believe that the market has made that full adjustment." Mike Corbat, CEO, Citigroup Inc

"We continue to see positive momentum with the US consumer — healthy confidence levels, solid job creation and rising wages." Jamie Dimon, CEO JP Morgan Chase

"We see solid consumer activity across the board." Brian Moynihan, CEO, Bank of America Inc

"In speaking to many of our clients, each industry has particular concerns; but if I had to sum it up, everybody - most people believe that the U.S. economy continues to perform well. At the same time, they recognize that the U.S. economy has never performed this well for this long at any point in the past, and so at some point you can expect some dips or some changes." John Wren, CEO, Omnicom Media Group [global media conglomerate]

Agriculture

“Like any market, people work out how to bend the rules to take advantage of a system that was never meant to be like that, and certainly we're seeing that in this [water] market in Victoria." Rob McGavin, Co-founder, Boundary Bend Ltd [Australia’s largest olive farmer/producer]

Construction

"Construction [markets globally are] good. Not fantastic, but good." Kai Warn, CEO, Husqvarna Group [Swedish machinery conglomerate]