Telstra Saturn blitzes field in growth survey

Friday 26th October 2001

Big spending Aussie telco Telstra Saturn finally has some reward for its multibillion-dollar spending spree.

The Wellington-based merger of telco, pay-tv and internet companies is the runaway winner in the first formal measure of New Zealand company revenue growth, the Deloitte/Unlimited Fast 50.

Telstra Saturn increased its revenues over three years to 2001 by 4200%, way ahead of second and third place-getters, marketing company Atlantis Group (415%) and software developer Alchemy Group (377%).

Telstra Saturn chief executive Jack Matthews said latest figures suggested the company had about 35% of the Wellington telephony business. The revenues had also been greatly boosted by the merger of three companies with their own significant revenue growth Telstra, Saturn and Wellington ISPs Paradise and Netlink.

Deloitte partner and Fast50 organiser Brent Chambers said Telstra Saturn's growth would qualify it to compete with Deloitte's other Fast programmes around the world. It runs the Fast100 in Australia and Fast500 in the US, where the top companies are growing in the thousands of percentage points. The inaugural New Zealand survey is a joint venture between Deloitte and business magazine Unlimited.

Mr Chambers said fast-growing companies seemed to share some common traits.

Their main barriers were finding staff, having the infrastructure to manage growth and the usual bug-bear, cashflow. Their future growth depended on finding new markets (especially offshore) and attracting quality staff.

As for success factors, the companies specified innovation first and marketing second, third, fourth and fifth.

Notable by its absence in the list is the software sector, hit hard by the tech wreck or, in many cases, by inconsistent in growth.

The final winners' list was chosen by measuring revenue growth over three financial years to 2001, finishing with revenues in excess of $250,000. Of the 400-plus entries from private companies the Deloitte-Unlimited team also examined the revenues of publicly listed companies.

Of those, Genesis (26th), Ryman Healthcare, (28th), Port of Tauranga (39th), The Warehouse (42nd), Freightways Express (46th), and Baycorp Holdings (50th) were the only to qualify. Unlimited publisher Vincent Heeringa said the awards, while a celebration of business success, revealed some concerns about New Zealand business.

"The growth rates are low by comparison with the winners of Deloitte surveys in other countries. And often the growth, especially in the smaller companies, seems to have been haphazard and fairly non-strategic. There's still a question mark over the quality of New Zealand management."

ON THE WEB: www.unlimited.co.nz/fast50

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