AGMs

7 questions lodged at 2024 GDG hybrid AGM


November 19, 2024

Below is the text of the 7 written questions submitted at the 65 minute Generation Development Group (formerly AusDoc) hybrid AGM held on November 19, 2024, plus a summary of the answers and some video grabs via Twitter.

Q1. We are quite a tax driven business. What are the biggest risks in terms of potential changes to the tax system emanating from the upcoming Federal election? Have both sides committed not to change the most important parts of the tax rules for our business?

Answer: CEO Grant Hackett seemed pretty confident it would hold and the chair explained how any moves against super are good for their relative position selling tax-preferred investment bonds.

Q2. At most AGMs, there is an LTI grant proposal for the CEO. Why isn't that happening here today? Also, could CEO Grant Hackett summarise any past incentive grants he has received as to whether they have vested or lapsed. Also, has he ever sold any ordinary shares in the company or bought any on market without relying on an incentive scheme to build his equity position in the company? Please don't say look it up in the annual report and through ASX announcements. It's complicated and the CEO could factually summarise the situation in 60 seconds.

Answer: the chair took most of this one but then Grant Hackett finally piped up with some extra detail at the end. Watch video of exchange via Twitter.

Q3. Congratulations on recently joining the billion dollar club in terms of market capitalisation. None of the big 3 global index funds - Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street - are currently above the 5% disclosure threshold on our register. What has our journey been so far through the ASX indices as the higher you go, the more these big 3 index players tends to buy. Are we confident of another jump up the index ranks before next year's AGM and how high would the shares need to get to achieve that?

Q4. Which of the 5 main proxy advisers - ACSI, Ownership Matters, Glass Lewis, ISS and ASA - issued a report ahead of today's AGM? Did any recommend against any resolutions. Also, thank you for disclosing the proxies with the formal addresses and well done for receiving strong support from investors.

Q5. Frank Zullo appears in our top 20 with a holding of around 4 million shares. As a still unhappy former shareholder in ABC Learning, I'm keen to understand his history with our company. Also, could Bill Bessemer, a former director of ABC Learning, explain his history with Mr Zullo.

Answer: dismissed by the chair as a private matter between two shareholders and when invited to comment, director Bill Bessemer declined to respond.

Q6. Christine Christian is a good addition to the board. Could she please clarify her history with Lonsec and also her business history with Mark Carnegie, who is one of our largest shareholders and at one point partly owned Dun & Bradstreet when Christine was the CEO. In other words, how independent is Christine from our various high net worth individual shareholders?

Q7. Why are we only able to vote on the 2 director election items via the Lumi platform. The rem items don't appear to have been loaded into the system.

Answer: this was read out, surprisingly, and they were looking into it.