This podcast is a very interesting reflection by a former fulltime football player, Wes Maas, who is the CEO of the recently listed diversified construction business, Maas Group Ltd (ASX:MGH). Wes began his career by getting up at 6:00am for footy training, finishing at 12pm, then going straight to work. During this period Wes learnt about return on assets, return on invested capital and everything to do with hire-contracts. Beginning to form a very junior career in the construction industry, success was measured on ROTA (return on total assets), measured daily.
Moving back to Dubbo in his 20s, Wes bought his first bobcat for $14,000 and borrowed $25,000 to buy a tipper. Over 19 years the company has gradually grown to now have market cap of ~ $1.5bn. Maas talks not only about return on capital analysis, but the simple power of compounding. “The business is 19 years old .. but we started off with one Bobcat. After 8/10 weeks we bought a second bobcat. By 2007 we had about 30 or 40 machines. We then took on debt to get to 300 to 400 pieces of equipment though 2007/8. By 2014 we were working on multi-billion dollar projects”.
Finally, Wes discusses how his contracts are based on the power of incentives, “if you win, I win”, which he believes is an intelligent way to generate alignment.
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