Seems like more belated corporate announcements from AMA. The...

Seems like more belated corporate announcements from AMA.

The first two businesses in Victoria mentioned in the announcement were transacted back in June 2016 - it is likely that settlement only recently occurred.

http://www.paintandpanel.com.au/news/news/ama-acquires-two-more-melbourne-shops

The need to start building out greenfield sites, as mentioned in the announcement, is not really a surprise to me.  It seems that options for acquiring established businesses of scale may not be available in some regions (e.g. the SA site) but building one in Victoria might be a concern if it seeking to consolidate existing businesses at one site rather than gaining new business.

This might be marking the start of a shift in business model from industry consolidator to one which seeks to extract greater synergies from acquired businesses by operating from larger repair sites and passing part of those savings on to insurers and pushing the remaining smaller scale businesses out of the industry.  If this is the case then the potential for growth in the top line, which some may have linearly extrapolated from the Gemini transaction, is not going to be as great as it was in the recent past.

Some independent repairers are starting to get concerned about Suncorp's push for quotes before examining damaged cars in order to win work.  While Alan Jones railed against IAG doing something similar to this via NRMA more than a decade ago there are far fewer independent people in the industry to complain about it now.

http://www.paintandpanel.com.au/news/news/suncorp-clarifies-quote-only-requests

Maybe some players will simply close their doors and sell off the land they operate from (or lease it out to someone else for a different purpose).