Gullivers hits share snag

Gullivers Travel Group has celebrated its first annual shareholders meeting as a listed company, with profits higher than forecast, a dividend, but a stagnant share price.

Since floating in December last year, shares have fallen from their float price of $1.60 and are now trading around $1.40.

Chairman Jeff Todd said the board would like to have seen the market "correlate more closely the share price with the initial float price".

The travel industry was not widely understood and he hoped that improving knowledge of the company would help its share price.

"We have, of course, looked at the share price, we'd like it to better reflect where the company is, but we think it is a matter of information and knowledge about the company and the company's potential. We believe that over time that will come right."

Yesterday, he spent some time explaining the board's corporate governance structures and its codes of conduct, internal systems and performance monitoring.

Company founder, 28 per cent shareholder and managing director Andrew Bagnall said becoming a listed company had imposed a new level of discipline, but this had also allowed a lot more freedom to do new things.

"Everyone in the company has grown up," he said. "There is a heightened sense of responsibility and with the heightened sense of responsibility comes a heightened sense of excitement about doing things right and a sense of freedom."

Now governance was no longer subject to the "whims of one person", strategies were laid out and more transparent to everyone working for the company.

He said he had spent more time than originally expected explaining how the industry worked.

Some of this explaining had taken place in Australia, where a growing number of shareholders were based.

If there was an economic downturn, Gullivers, which was "vertically and horizontally integrated", was well-placed.

"Gullivers Travel Group has positioned itself to focus on the most profitable sectors of the market, leaving the low margin, cheap, airfare only business to others," said Bagnall.

Due in part to its Zuji online travel business, Gullivers was snaring an increasing amount of the inbound tourism market.