This is what the Flux.
I'm Bradan justin.
It's Friday, the seventh to February.
Juzzy boy. The venture capital market in Australia has seen signs of returning to normal, but this is still well below its peak.
Get this.
Last year there was just over four billion dollars raise by tech companies in Australia according to cut Through Ventures, but that is still tiny compared to twenty twenty one, when there was nearly ten billion dollars raise.
Is wildly man, tell you what else is world? Last week we gave away fifty bucks to Allison for winning quick six. She knew all the three answers and she got them faster than any other member of the Flex family. So fluxam, if you want to win fifty bucks this Friday, make sure have your notications turned on and be the fastest person to answer the three business on news questions in quick stix today.
Three lucrative stories today, Juzzy boy, Let's do it for our first. Ria Group has seen that profits jump over twenty six percent for the last six months, and straight after this announcement, the CEO dropped the mic with some big news.
Always good to CEO drop the mic to spice up the rnings reports. So tell me more well.
Aria Group began in nineteen ninety five with the goal to create a digital property listing platform, back when the Internet was basically unknown and newspapers were pretty much the only way to announce homes for sale, and jusibait real Estate dot com dot Au has become the biggest property listings platform in Australia, ahead of its bitter green rival Domain. We're talking eleven point nine million people visit real Estate dot com dot Au every month.
That's nearly half the Australia's whole population.
And now ARIA has reported a twenty percent jump in revenue for the past six months to eight hundred and seventy three million dollars and.
A twenty six percent rise in its profits as well.
But Juzi boit. Just as the confetti was about to fall, Aria Group CEO Owen Wilson, who is not the famous actor, he sadly threw in an unexpected plot twist.
Yeah, he's hanging up the corporate suit and retiring from the CEO role and be man even though the property market has been playing hard to get lately. Owen Wilson not the actor predicts twenty twenty five is is it can get spicy again? Wow?
So what is the key learning here? The property market, like any financial market, moves in cycle. Broadly speaking, real estate follows four key phases hit them.
There's the expansion phase.
That's where prices rise, supply struggles to keep up and competition drives the market higher. And there's the boom phase that is where the market peaks, affordability drops, and FOMO leads a rapid price growth.
Then there's the correction phase.
This one is where interest rates rise, ye demand slows down and prices level out or decline.
Which is what we've seen recently with the property market in Melbourne dropping two percent in twenty twenty four.
Hobart dropped zero point four percent.
And Sydney slow to just two point three percent growth.
And finally, there is the recovery phase.
And this is where demand starts to pick up, prices stabilize, and investors begin to enter the market again.
And RIA Groups CEO reckons we're about to lean into the recovery, which is good for RIA listings.
For our second story, Stay Lauder, the global cosmetics behemoth, will lay up nearly eleven percent of its workforce after its earnings did a full one eight in the second quarter.
Jauzie boy, what's the opposite of a glow up? Because that is exactly what's going on at esday Loorder right here, right now.
Go on. Esday Loorder is the cosmetics company that was founded by you guess, the b Man, Esday Loader and your hubby back in nineteen forty six.
And the estay Lader Companies has grown to become the second largest cosmetics company in the world behind a Lorial.
Yeah, doesn't just own estay Loader, but other big names in cosmetics as well.
We'd be talking Clinique, Le Labo, Joe Malone of the London Variety, tom Ford Beauty Mac, Bobby Brown, just to name a few.
Oh yeah, faceb Man.
Yeah.
But Esday Loader's new CEO has faced investors for the very first time with a very stern warning yep.
In the second quarter, revenue dropped six percent. That's bad, but juzzy boy. It also saw its second quarter operating margin dropped from thirteen point four percent to negative fourteen point five percent.
That's real ugly, But arguably the.
Worst part beauty retail sales are growing across the industry.
Who's to blame, b Man, Not the economy now, not the industry, No, just.
The people at the top, which in this case happens to be a boardroom full of the lord of family descendants.
So what is the key learning here?
Nothing derails a company strategy faster than a battle at the top.
Be Man. When founding families retain a majority voting right of the public company, you can often face pretty unique challenges, especially when internal disputes arise. Since Esday Lord's founding, there's always been a family member on the board and in executive position.
Until more recently.
Yeah, and it makes sense because Estay Lord's family still owns thirty five percent of the shares but eighty four percent of the voting rights.
The problem is when there is a strategic dispute between family members. Yep.
One group wants to see Estay Loader push to appeal to younger shoppers.
And the other wanted to push harder in China and the prestige market and be Man. This isn't the first time we've seen family controlled public companies struggle with internal disputes.
Sink.
The battle between the Murdocks and the succession plan of NewsCorp.
Very true, but be Man given esday Lorder has lost one hundred billion US dollars in value over the past three years alone, kind of feels time to wipe off the smudges and give the company a bit of a face.
Link for our third and final story, Apple has just crashed Facebook's party after releasing a new app called Invites that helps users create and send calendar events.
I feel like people have been talking about this for years. Be Man, Apple sweep, so tell me more so.
Juzzy boy, Apple, aka the world's most valuable company, started in nineteen seventy six and is now worth over three trillion US dollars.
Well, Apple's known for its iPhones, It's max, It's iPads. They've been expanding their ecosystem with paid software services as well.
That would be things like Apple Pay, iCloud, Apple TV Plus.
And now b Man.
Apples announced the launch are a brand new spanking app called Invites. You can create and send an invitation to your friends, your family, your colleagues, your enemies.
It helps you monitor rsaps send updates.
Sounding awfully similar to another feature I've heard of called Facebook Events.
That's true, and while Facebook used to have a monopoly on social invites, its events feature has become less and less popular lately yep. So Apple is trying to herd all those scattered invitations and keep everyone within its own ecosystem.
So what is the key learning here?
The more services a company offers that work together, the harder it is for users to leave.
As we know, Jasey Boy, tech companies don't want to build individual products anymore.
They want to build the worlds that you never want or need to leave.
And Jessie Boy, we know that gen Z and millennials have been moving away from Facebook for a good amount of years now yep.
In fact, b Man, only forty four percent of gen Z users engage with Facebook at all, compared to seventy nine percent of the broader population, and.
As a result, event invitations are scattered across text messages and WhatsApp groups and calendar invites.
So the timing of apples invites is aimed at capitalizing on these scattered events by bringing it all into its juicy equy system. Bloxpan between ten am and eleven am is when you'll receive a notification for our weekly quiz quick Sticks. You could win fifty Bucks just by being the first to answer the three business or finance questions correctly. To make sure to download the app and turn your notifications on to win.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you on Monday.