Transcription of Finance News Network Interview with SEEK Limited (ASX:SEK) co-founder and CEO, Andrew Bassat Lelde Smits: Hello I’m Lelde Smits for the Finance News Network Interview and joining me from SEEK Limited
(ASX:SEK) is its co-founder and CEO, Andrew Bassat. Andrew, welcome to FNN.
Andrew Bassat: Thank you.
Lelde Smits: SEEK’s stock has hit record highs this year. What do you believe has catapulted the company to this point?
Andrew Bassat: We’ve grown our earnings a lot and that’s been driven in part by the fact that our Australian business continues to go forward. But particularly by the fact that our international business and education businesses have really grown very well.
Lelde Smits: How do you plan to sustain and grow on the success you’ve enjoyed since you listed almost 10 years ago?
Andrew Bassat: We’re very optimistic about the future, we feel the growth opportunities in front of us are very substantial. We’re in very large markets now like China, like South East Asia like Brazil, like Mexico. They have many, many years of growth in front of them as do our education businesses.
Lelde Smits: The company is focussed on employment, education and international expansion. What opportunities and goals have you identified for each?
Andrew Bassat: I think, even in Australia we think can do a much, much better job of matching people to opportunities. In all of our international markets which are very, very large we are hoping to do as well as we do in Australia in those markets. In education we really want to roll out what we’ve done in Australia into all of our international markets.
Lelde Smits: SEEK originally began with its online job ad board. How has your offering evolved and what is your current market share in Australia?
Andrew Bassat: I’ll start with the second, our current market share is about 70 per cent, but where we’ve really evolved is we want to help people more than we do, we want to do a much better job of matching them to the opportunities, we want to help them communicate better with the advertisers and so on, and, we really think we can be responsible for many more placements if we do that.
Lelde Smits: Many would consider SEEK to have a monopoly on the online jobs market in Australia but have you identified any competitors or new entrants that you need to consider?
Andrew Bassat: In our space there are always new entrants, there’s people like Linkedin, there’s a bunch of aggregators, there’s a range of new competitors. We’ve managed to continue to grow our share of anything as a result of continuing to evolve our product and service.
Lelde Smits: You beat the competition with innovation. Now you’ve grown so large - to what extend to you rely on innovation to keep moving forward or has your ability to innovate diminished now that you are so large?
Andrew Bassat: We take a view that forget about our market share, what we want to do is help people more so, we are well ahead of our competitors, we’re only responsible for 25 per cent of all placements in Australia, we want to be responsible for 100 per cent, so there’s many things we need to do better to increase that number from 25 per cent towards a higher number.
Lelde Smits: And for those watching who may be on the hunt for employment opportunities themselves, what emerging employment sectors have you identified that may be rising in demand?
Andrew Bassat: Clearly in Australia we are in a bit of a movement away from the mining sector - whereas a few years ago the mining sector was really starting employment engineering jobs, mining jobs and so on. And that’s moved a bit, now the eastern seaboards picked up a bit. States like New South Wales, Victoria, have picked up a bit, and some of the other sectors have picked up. But, leaving outside the cyclical trends obviously things like the science areas, technology, maths and a range of areas where there are not enough graduates coming through, are really good opportunities.
Lelde Smits: Looking abroad, SEEK also invests in global online employment marketplaces. Could you outline your exposure offshore and plans to grow your offering?
Andrew Bassat: Sure, we are now in a number of markets with controlling stakes. We’ve got the equal number one player in China, we’ve got the clear number one player throughout South East Asia. We’re in Brazil in a very strong way and in Mexico, as well as smaller presences in Africa and Bangladesh so, substantial presence all in early stage markets and we want to both do a much, much better job in those markets, as well as continue to expand.
Lelde Smits: Your 79 per cent owned Chinese jobs firm Zhaopin Limited (NYSE:ZPIN) listed on the US stock exchange in June this year. What role do you see the company playing in your portfolio in the future?
Andrew Bassat: China should over time be an enormous market so we’re very excited about Zhaopin, we’re very excited about the listing, and we’re hoping in a few years time that Zhaopin can be a bigger business than our Australian business.
Lelde Smits: Which nations do you believe are best placed for rising job demand and where will SEEK target?
Andrew Bassat: The fortunate thing for us is all the markets that I mentioned that we operate in, are really early stage markets where there is a lot more job growth than there has been over the past few years and there will be in the future in the more developed markets, places like China and South East Asia always had very strong growth, have very strong jobs growth.
Lelde Smits: SEEK also provides education offerings. How do they complement your jobs offering and what are your long term expansion plans for both?
Andrew Bassat: Education fits very well with our jobs. In part with our higher purpose if you like to help people with their working lives and in some cases that means finding a better job, in other cases that means getting career related education so if we can play a role in the latter, we’re really helping fulfil our purpose. And our goals are very ambitious, we’re doing a very good job in Australia with education, we think we can do just as well in China, in South East Asia and in our other markets so rolling those same services out is the next step.
Lelde Smits: Finally Andrew, now the 2015 financial year is in full swing what do you believe will be the milestones that define the company over the next 12 months?
Andrew Bassat: I hope to see international continuing to grow, possibly over 50 per cent of our revenue in profit, hopefully education continuing to grow and we’re hoping for cyclical recovery in Australia at some point, we’re starting to see early signs, that means Australia also grows, so if all of our businesses grow we will be very happy.
Lelde Smits: Andrew Bassat, thank you so much for the update from SEEK.
Andrew Bassat: Thank you very much.
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