5GN acquisition discussion, page-23

I'll weigh in on this, because I've been following IAB since it acquired AYG's assets (and was a previous exec at AYG).

It looks to me as an outsider that IAB were clearing the decks prior to their subsequent acquisition by MNF - I'd think that MNF weren't going to buy them unless they were able to sell the Direct business (the old Anittel business).

I think that means that 5GN got the Anittel assets quite inexpensively, but no doubt it's a business with its fair share of problems. Some of the branches are highly profitable and well run and others.. not so much.

The bigger challenge is that without a cloud play and with customers flocking to public and private clouds enmasse, the support requirements on premise are getting lower and the margins assocated with that are lower again.

5GN could be extremely profitable though if they focused on SMEs with offices in more than one location - e.g a 100 person accounting business with offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Townsville - there's more of these than you would think and those businesses have limited choice for firms that have good expertise and physical presence in their locations. They could also be successful if they doubled down on their regional locations and tried to corner markets in the regional space powered by NBN as a method to sell into new customer bases.

Unfortunately most businesses (as was the case with IAB) seek the sexy metropolitan 'badge' acquisition which is competitive in nature and hard to get/hold - it takes real gumption to litigate a strategy as I've outlined above in a listed organisation where 'big' good news is expected by shareholders.

Ultimately I doubt that 5GN has what it takes to do this, but nothing against them personally, just operating businesses like this in a listed fashion (open kimono) is incredibly challenging with the background of what I've outlined above.

If I was to predict the future, I'd expect they will invest significantly in trying to grow the brand presence in capital cities - which is going to be very hard - and neglect the regionals where the majority of profit comes from and the revenue injection from the IAB direct acquisition will become a burden around their neck rather than a positive. This is sad for me because the assets of AYG - particularly the regionals - I had a soft spot for - but it'll take a lot from here to make it better.