Stan Beer
Friday, 27 February 2009 12:09
IT Industry -
Market
Page 2 of 5
"Part of that (lower growth) is because market conditions
have had some impact but part of it is also just the cycle that
businesses have generally," Di Marco told iTWire.
"We look back and see that we've grown 30-40% one
year and then the next year we've grown 15-20% and the year after that
we're back to 30-40%. The economic environment does have some impact to
some extent but not as much potentially as a lot of other companies
because the sectors we target are reasonably resilient such as federal,
state and local governments and utilities."
Di Marco, a stalwart for keeping the ownership of TechOne in Australian
hands, admits that the recent foreign takeover of fiercely Australian
accounting software company MYOB took him by surprise.
"We want to stay Australian but as a public company after what happened
to MYOB you start to realise that there are other shareholders
involved," said Di Marco.
"The trick really I think is to continue to deliver the results and
continue to keep the shareholders happy. If you do that, I think you're
safe. the challenge for us is to continue to deliver the results and
stay close to our shareholders and convince them of the value of
staying involved with the company."
Part of that strategy to keep shareholders happy, says Di Marco, is to pay healthy dividends.
"We've always paid great dividends; we've always been a strong dividend paying company," he says.
"Analysts have told us that we're a very unusual company because we pay
very good dividends but at the same time we grow very fast. Our return
on equity is exceptionally high at around 45 (actually about 36 at time
of writing).
"So because of that I think we've got our shareholders on side."
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