Carsales lifts ad revenue
ONLINE classifieds business Carsales. com says tyre sales and vehicle inspections have been the main drivers of its revenue growth.
The company’s revenue rose 8 per cent to $ 372 million in the year to June 30, while net profit was steady due to one- off charges related to investments in its international business.
Revenue from private clients, which includes used car advertisements, rose 27 per cent, while income from dealers grew 8 per cent, recently installed chief executive Cameron McIntyre said.
Mr McIntyre, who replaced co- founder Greg Roebuck as chief executive in March, said Carsales lost some ad volume as a result but revenue benefited from an increase in clients choosing costlier premium ads. EXCITEMENT over the global battery market is fuelling a scramble in Australia to invest in projects to mine minerals essential to the sector.
That excitement has been on show this week at the annual Diggers and Dealers mining conference in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, where minerals such as lithium, graphite and cobalt — essential for electric vehicles and batteries being developed by the likes of Tesla — enjoyed plenty of attention.
While a huge potential demand- supply gap is leading to development of large projects based on solid fundamentals, it is also supporting ventures that some worry could lead to headaches.
The upbeat sentiment is based on forecasts of a massive shortage of raw materials. COMMONWEALTH Bank chief executive Ian Narev admits the bank has “made mistakes” related to alleged breaches of anti- money laundering and counter- terrorism financing laws.
Mr Narev is among the bank’s executives to have their 2017 bonuses slashed in response to allegations by regulator AUSTRAC — the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre — that CBA failed to provide the necessary on- time reports for more than 53,500 transactions.
“It’s been a tough time at the Commonwealth Bank since the AUSTRAC proceedings were filed and we’re taking them very seriously,” Mr Narev said yesterday. “We know that we’ve made mistakes; we have fixed a lot of those mistakes and we will continue to look to make our business better and better.” AUSTRAC alleges CBA failed to provide on- time reports for more than 53,506 cash transactions of $ 10,000 or more through its Intelligent Deposit Machines between November 2012 and September 2015.
CBA, which has already blamed a coding error, yesterday said a subcommittee of four directors will oversee the bank’s response to the civil proceedings launched by AUSTRAC in Federal Court.
The bank’s chairman, Catherine Livingstone, said any errors would have been unintentional.
“The board notes that it has no reason to believe that the allegations arose from deliberate or unethical behaviour, or any commercial motive,” she said. CBA said that, since it discovered and fixed the error in 2015, it has changed oversight of financial crimes compliance and upgraded monitoring.
“Commonwealth Bank takes its legal and regulatory obligations very seriously, including its role in working with AUSTRAC, other agencies and law enforcement bodies,” Ms Livingstone said.
“It is committed to maintaining a strong, co- operative working relationship with AUSTRAC.”
CBA on Tuesday slashed to zero short- term bonuses for Mr Narev and his executives in response to the allegations.