Sushi Hub sold $200m of sushi last year. Now it wants a $1b valuation
That bullish target is based on ambitions that the Australian sushi chain can become the next Guzman Y Gomez, which hit the ASX in June last year and has been worth as much as $3.75 billion at its peak. Sushi Hub has gone from strength to strength, opening almost 70 stores during the pandemic due to its owners being flush with cash – unlike most traditional hospitality businesses – and it's on track to open its 200th store by year's end.
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AU Financial Review
14 minutes ago
- AU Financial Review
Crypto goes mainstream as SWIFT infrastructure shifts
For Australian investors, the shift is more than technical. It changes the context in which digital assets are discussed, understood and used. And it raises a more pressing question: how prepared are everyday Australians? Mario Stanic, founder and chief executive of home-grown investment insights firm Crypto Research Australia, says the latest move by SWIFT signals a shift in how digital assets are being integrated into the financial system. 'SWIFT's digital asset trials are a turning point – they're turning on the tap to global liquidity in ways we've never seen before,' says Stanic. 'For Australian investors and institutions, this means faster trades, borderless access, and a new era of interoperability. The question is no longer if digital assets will go mainstream, it's how fast you're ready to move.' The trials aren't about coins or speculation – they're about the infrastructure itself. 'SWIFT doing this is kind of like the post office switching to email,' Stanic says. 'It's a big deal because it shows how money is changing behind the scenes. For Aussies, it's important to know that this isn't just 'crypto stuff' – it's about the tech our banks and super funds might soon be using. 'The better we understand it now, the better prepared we'll be when it becomes the new normal.' That urgency is colliding with low levels of public confidence and widespread misunderstanding. Crypto scams remain common, regulations continue to evolve, and the explosion of hype-driven commentary on social media makes it difficult for newcomers to find credible information. 'Most investors aren't prepared,' Stanic says. 'They're still thinking in silos – stocks over here, crypto over there, cash in the middle. But with infrastructure like this going live, those lines blur fast. The investors who win will be the ones who understand how to position digital assets as part of a broader, informed strategy, not just a gamble on the next coin.' His firm, one of several offering subscription-based research services to Australian retail and self-managed investors, says its core audience is looking for clarity, not hype. 'Social media is flooded with opinions. We deal in evidence,' Stanic says. 'Our platform is built to help investors block out the noise and focus on what actually matters – well-researched, practical insights that support long-term success.' In recent years, institutional interest in crypto has surged. Major asset managers, including BlackRock and Fidelity, have launched or backed crypto funds, and central banks in countries including China, Singapore and Sweden are testing digital currencies. Stanic says many Australians still hold misconceptions about crypto. 'The big one? That it's all high risk and hype. The reality is, behind the noise, crypto is evolving into serious infrastructure – from programmable money to digital securities,' he says. But that doesn't mean every investor is expected to jump in. Regulators continue to warn about volatility, scams and speculative behaviour in the market. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has issued guidance urging people to understand the risks before engaging with digital assets. That gap between mainstream headlines and practical understanding is what services like Stanic's aim to address. They offer reports, strategy sessions and portfolio reviews, but stop short of making recommendations or offering financial product advice. 'Informed users zoom out,' Stanic says. 'They educate themselves, they look for trends, not just price, and they think in years, not days. They use research to guide conviction. Speculators? They scroll, they follow noise, and they panic. One group builds wealth, the other burns it chasing quick wins.' So what should investors do to get a better handle on the changing landscape? 'Focus on frameworks, not just forecasts,' says Stanic. 'Look into use cases, adoption curves, and regulatory updates. Read research from independent sources like CRA or similar platforms that prioritise risk-adjusted perspectives. Remember: the best investments often emerge when the noise dies down and fundamentals shine through.' For some investors, the shift came after painful lessons. Dean Mellisinos, a property developer and investor based in Melbourne's southwest, says he turned to research services after a run of losses trying to ride crypto trends on his own. 'Honestly, I subscribed after losing money chasing coins,' Mellisinos says. 'I needed a way to reset and do things properly. It wasn't just about making more money – it was about avoiding losses.' One of the biggest shifts, he says, came from learning how to manage his own behaviour. 'FOMO, panic selling, chasing pumps – I've done it all,' he says. 'CRA's research helped me step back and assess the market objectively. I learned how to think in probabilities, not predictions, and that made a huge difference in how I handled my portfolio.' With new crypto trends appearing constantly – from meme coins to artificial intelligence tokens – Mellisinos says structured guidance helped him separate hype from substance. 'For example, when AI tokens started gaining traction, CRA was ahead of the curve. They not only identified the trend early, but also highlighted which projects had real tech and traction versus the pretenders.' Whether crypto becomes as central to finance as email is to communication remains to be seen. But with SWIFT testing tokenised settlement, institutional adoption accelerating, and public infrastructure slowly catching up, the rails of finance are being quietly rewritten. For Australians, that may not mean rushing to act. But it might mean taking the time to understand what's coming – and deciding who to listen to along the way.
News.com.au
34 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Top 10 at 11: ASX continues energetic climb to new highs
Morning, and welcome to Stockhead's Top 10 (at 11… ish), highlighting the movers and shakers on the ASX in early-doors trading. With the market opening at 10am sharp eastern time, the data is taken at 10.15am in the east, once trading kicks off in earnest. In brief, this is what the market has been up to this morning. Building to new heights The market has kicked off Friday morning trade with plenty of pep in its step. The ASX 200 has already blown past yesterday's intraday record high, rising 0.3% or 26 points in the first half hour of trade to set a new record at 8900.6 points. It's been a broad market effort so far with 9 of 11 sectors higher. The Banks (+0.59%) and Resources (+0.53%) indices are also on the up. The utilities sector is once again making a strong showing, adding 1.16%, but energy is also moving higher (+0.87%) after oil prices rose 2% overnight. US President Trump threatened 'severe consequences' if his upcoming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin fail to produce results. Analysts predict that this, plus expectations of an interest rate cut in the US next month, will increase oil demand. Brent lifted to US$66.84 a barrel overnight. Gold futures also slid 0.7% as higher-than-expected US inflation data lifted the US dollar and bond yields, settling around US$3383.20 an ounce. Spot gold is trading at US$3335.85 an ounce. SMALL CAP WINNERS Code Name Last % Change Volume Market Cap MGTRG Magnetite Mines 0.004 100% 126422 $81,705 C7A Clara Resources 0.004 33% 2027954 $1,764,813 JAY Jayride Group 0.004 33% 2504969 $4,283,667 MEM Memphasys Ltd 0.004 33% 275000 $5,950,794 PRM Prominence Energy 0.004 33% 127500 $1,459,411 SRN Surefire Rescs NL 0.002 33% 1000000 $5,635,289 GTE Great Western Exp. 0.015 25% 2371915 $6,813,095 ARV Artemis Resources 0.005 25% 377966 $11,462,689 MRD Mount Ridley Mines 0.005 25% 3640335 $3,113,956 EDE Eden Inv Ltd 0.05 24% 25769 $13,269,699 In the news... Great Western Exploration (ASX:GTE) has defined what it believes is a large volcanic hosted massive sulphide copper-gold system at Yerrida North project. GTE used a close-spaced ground gravity survey to vector in on the core of the system, which Great Western reckons is similar to the nearby Degrussa copper mine. Degrussa produced up to 300k tonnes of copper concentrate per year during its operation, which ran from 2012 to 2022. Mount Ridley Mines (ASX:MRD) has locked in binding commitments to raise a total of $830,388 in a share placement and rights issue at $0.002 per share, a 50% discount to the company's last trading price. MRD will put the funds toward a review of new mining opportunities and ongoing work programs on its Mount Ridley rare earths project and Weld Range iron ore project. SMALL CAP LAGGARDS Code Name Last % Change Volume Market Cap PET Phoslock Env Tec Ltd 0.015 -40% 5462815 $15,609,763 BIT Biotron Limited 0.003 -25% 700000 $5,308,983 1AD Adalta Limited 0.002 -20% 97826 $2,886,625 TZL TZ Limited 0.048 -17% 11673 $16,275,618 PIL Peppermint Inv Ltd 0.0025 -17% 1007370 $6,994,230 BEL Bentley Capital Ltd 0.011 -15% 190000 $989,663 CHM Chimeric Therapeutic 0.003 -14% 1100000 $11,390,956 MMR Mec Resources 0.006 -14% 4851150 $12,948,361 TYX Tyranna Res Ltd 0.003 -14% 100000 $11,697,542
Sydney Morning Herald
44 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
What the RBA governor's struggle to get a room to focus on rates says about the economy
Low inflation and official interest rates through the 2010s, then COVID, the post-pandemic inflation explosion, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and more recently the war in Gaza all diverted attention away from the productivity slowdown. But with inflation subsiding and Donald Trump upending the global trading order, most governments – including the freshly re-elected administration of Anthony Albanese – are revisiting ways to get their economies back to health. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who will sit through all roundtable sessions, and whose department will be driving much of the analysis of the various proposals put up by participants, has cautioned that those looking for instant results on Thursday evening will be disappointed. '[The point of] this economic reform roundtable is not to make decisions, it's to inform the government's decisions,' Chalmers told ABC Radio National Breakfast on Wednesday. 'And that's the point that we have made all along.' The roundtable has attracted almost 900 submissions, although some proposals appear dead on arrival. There seems little appetite, for instance, to support the ACTU's ambit claim for a four-day working week without a cut in pay. Loading The Productivity Commission has, through five papers canvassing everything from tax to AI, made more than 40 separate recommendations of its own. The government has held a series of industry-specific roundtables in areas such as mining, agriculture and housing, where a host of ideas have surfaced. Chalmers sat down with business leaders and lobby groups ahead of the roundtable, as have other ministers. 'I think it has been a very worthwhile thing that we are shaking the tree for ideas, and the prime minister and I are aligned in the way we go about that,' Chalmers told Ratio National. The reason for so many ideas bubbling up is twofold. The first is that it has been a long, long time since a government has asked all and sundry to produce a shopping list of suggestions. The second is that there is no single bullet solution to a productivity problem that has afflicted every nation and almost every corner of the economy. In housing, for instance, the average time in Australia to complete a block of apartments has soared since 2008 from around 17 months to 28 months. Building a house has increased from seven months to 10. But in comparison to other countries, the Australian construction sector is almost a beacon of hope. The Productivity Commission found building productivity in Australia is outperforming the US, Britain and Sweden. Explaining its reason for lowering its productivity assumption, the Reserve Bank suggested a number of reasons. They include declining dynamism among businesses and across the labour market, slower rollout of technological breakthroughs, falling competition, regulatory red tape, a slowdown in the growth of skills among workers, and a drop in trade linkages across the world. Even measuring productivity can be difficult. Some pundits have blamed the increase in financial resources and people in the care sectors of the economy (aged care, childcare, health, disability) for the slowdown in productivity. Measuring productivity in these sectors, where relatively low-paid people provide intense services to the frail, sick, old or young, is notoriously difficult. The Productivity Commission this week reported that by a traditional measure of productivity, it had grown at just 0.1 per cent a year across the nation's hospitals between 2008-09 and 2018-19. By contrast, productivity across the entire economy grew by 0.7 per cent per annum. Yet that doesn't consider the huge improvements in the quality of care or patient outcomes. Cancer treatments, the commission said, are far more effective today than they were a few years ago. When you account for quality, healthcare productivity grew at 3 per cent per year through much of the past decade, dwarfing the rest of the economy. 'Simply put, Australians are getting better outcomes, but not necessarily more care services, per dollar spent,' the commission noted. Loading Another issue is that productivity in the mining sector – the nation's most productive based on the value of its outputs – has fallen off a cliff over the past five years. It has tumbled by 20 per cent, largely because miners are now tapping lower-value deposits while facing a string of natural disasters that have flooded coal mines or shut down key production sites. No matter the varied causes, it's clear the government and most participants want to target a productivity bugbear: red tape and bureaucracy. The battle to get bike helmets into the economy is a small-scale example. While the nation's cyclists protect their heads with imported helmets, the safety standards governing the headwear differs. It costs importers about $14 million a year to comply with those different standards. Loading The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission started a process to align the European and American standards governing helmets sold domestically in 2016. It was only completed last year, but it has yet to be signed off by all states and territories. 'The net result is that eight years after realising the value of harmonisation, most Australians are yet to see benefits,' the Productivity Commission reported earlier this month. Productivity is not just red tape or new machines or tax. The skills of the workforce are also a vital component. The Smith Family says there are 3.3 million people living in poverty in Australia, including 761,000 children. Loading It's pinning its hopes on the roundtable coming up with ways to lift school completion rates and overall education outcomes, given their strong connection to improved wages and incomes. 'We know children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more susceptible to falling behind in the classroom, disengaging with school, not finishing year 12 and not being able to fully participate in the workforce,' the charity's chief executive officer, Doug Taylor, says. 'To boost the pool of talent in the nation's workforce, we must plug the holes to stop students experiencing disadvantage from falling through the cracks.' Despite the reticence of the government to deal with the multitude of issues with the nation's tax system, many people believe the purpose of next week is to put tax reform squarely at the centre of Anthony Albanese's second-term agenda. Independent MP Allegra Spender, who has a seat around at the roundtable, is looking for a shift to a dual income tax system. Investors would lose the ability to offset their taxable income through losses on their property holdings, with the revenue used to reduce personal income tax rates. 'You should be rewarded for investing in yourself, not for expanding your property portfolio,' she said. Ben Phillips, from the ANU's Centre for Social Policy Research, has proposed a major simplification of the entire system that includes axing the Medicare levy and the low-income tax offset, removing Family Tax Benefit B (while substantially lifting Family Tax Benefit A), and making changes to JobSeeker and the parenting payment. He says that over the years, the tax and welfare system has been subject to changes that often appear ad hoc, politically motivated or driven by short-term budget goals. 'Many of these changes lack a clear rationale and, arguably, are unnecessary and have themselves added to complexity,' he says. From family payments to suburban housing blocks to helmet standards, productivity – and its slowdown – permeates the economy. Without any concrete proposals out of next week, Michele Bullock will be joined by a prime minister and treasurer with concern etched on their collective faces.
