Forget One-tel, James Packer is on quite a roll when it comes to his investments in other listed Australian companies.
Shares in online jobs site Seek.com have leapt 38c to a record $6.51 this morning after another better than expected profit result. Seek lifted revenue 48% to $70 million and net profit after tax soared 63% to $23.9 million.
The PBL stake in Seek is now worth $470 million – more than $400 million of which is pure paper profit. Sure, Fairfax is doing well out of auction site TradeMe in New Zealand but they are still completely having their lunch cut by Seek in the online classified space.
The same applies in the real estate space where News Ltd’s stake in realestate.com.au has now more than tripled to $423 million. Compare than with Fairfax yesterday declaring a modest $13 million abnormal profit from the sale of its small stake in carsales.com.au.
James Packer is also enjoyed a paper profit of almost $50 million on last year’s investment in Energy World Corporation which trades power in emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia.
After trading below 10c for most of last year, the stock is up 10c to 63c this morning, valuing the ConsPress stake at a healthy $61 million.
The other bonanza which James Packer has produced is Gold Coast-based property developer Sunland.
Packer joined the board after committing to invest more than $70 million – an initial 13.3% at $1.87 a share and then options to go to 19.9% at $2.50 a share.
This deal was only done last March, yet Sunland has since rocketed to $3.87 and James is enjoying another paper profit of more than $100 million.
Sure, it’s a booming market, but even James’ hard-to-please father would be impressed with the lads investment record since taking over.
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