{"id":721,"date":"2015-07-27T04:49:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T04:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=721"},"modified":"2015-07-28T14:54:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T14:54:12","slug":"seeks-andrew-bassat-charts-course-for-aggressive-asian-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=721","title":{"rendered":"SEEK\u2019s Andrew Bassat charts course for aggressive Asian expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Andrew\"<\/a>SEEK chief executive Andrew Bassat is hoping to grow the company\u2019s China and south-east Asia ventures to individually grow bigger than its Australian operations, as the company prepares to launch its learning business in parts of Asia over the next six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cFast forward three-to-five years, China alone should be bigger than Australia, south-east Asia should be bigger than Australia,\u201d Mr Bassat told Fairfax Media.<\/p>\n

The employment and education portal, which will report its full-year results on August 19, saw its international business account for 56 per cent of revenue, or $222.2 million, in the first half – up 20 per cent on the previous corresponding period.<\/p>\n

Since listing in 2005, SEEK has been a market darling, with shares up more than 600 per cent over the decade. But now, as a more mature business it is looking for new ways to drive revenue growth. This year, shares are down 15 per cent after closing down 6\u00a2 at $14.70 on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll see some activity there in the next six months. There\u2019s a lot of work in the background, particularly now that we\u2019ve become number one in China, and that we\u2019ve brought together JobsDB, we\u2019ve got a much more powerful base on which to put our education businesses,\u201d Mr Bassat said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say SEEK isn\u2019t investing heavily locally. Mr Bassat said there were three or four things SEEK had invested in, which he wouldn\u2019t reveal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re interested in the technology … Being aggressive around the fringes of what we do is very much on our agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Bassat also brushed off concerns about listed US competitor LinkedIn. \u201cLinkedIn is clearly a competitor, a disruptor, but we feel like we\u2019ve got a really good answer to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

SEEK quietly launched a competitor to LinkedIn 12 months ago, called Premium Talent Search, with a hard launch around six months ago.<\/p>\n

Mr Bassat said the results had been encouraging. \u201cThe take up from hirers has been really positive. I think it has been close to 100 per cent move from the free trial to the fully paid product. It\u2019s really given us confidence we\u2019ve got a good competitive product out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Bassat, the co-founder of SEEK and a member of the BRW Rich 200, said he still liked to keep a start-up mentality, despite SEEK\u2019s $5 billion market capitalisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re facing the fact that we still see ourselves as disruptors but there\u2019s plenty of people coming up trying to take from us what we\u2019re trying to take from others,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur view is that we\u2019ve got enough of an asset base and enough of the capability base that if we\u2019re sprinting fast enough, the people coming from behind us won\u2019t catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hyperion portfolio manager Joel Gray agreed that China and south-east Asia could be bigger than Australia over the longer term.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose markets are less developed in the switch from print to online classified advertising. They\u2019ve developed the market leader, which is very important in these businesses. They\u2019re leveraging the know how, management systems and processes that they\u2019ve developed in Australia,\u201d Mr Gray said.<\/p>\n

Hyperion holds a 8.1 per cent stake in SEEK.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like businesses where their growth options relate to things that are within their circle of competence, which we think these types of business are,\u201d added Mr Gray.<\/p>\n

However, he noted there were risks associated with the expansion, such as the markets not being as mature as Australia, and there was a chance that a rival could displace them.
\nSource: BRW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SEEK chief executive Andrew Bassat is hoping to grow the company\u2019s China and south-east Asia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,9],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",646,363,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",640,360,false],"large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",640,360,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",646,363,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",646,363,false],"enternews-featured":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",646,363,false],"enternews-medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",646,363,false],"enternews-thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Andrew.jpg",480,270,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Uncategorized","tag_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}