Latest news with #CobramEstateOlives
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Discover Cobram Estate Olives And 2 Other ASX Penny Stock Gems
The Australian sharemarket is poised for a positive start, with ASX 200 futures indicating a potential rise amid ongoing global trade tensions between China and the U.S. Despite these international headwinds, the local market appears resilient, presenting opportunities for investors to explore. Penny stocks, though an older term, continue to highlight smaller or emerging companies that might offer significant value when backed by strong financials and growth potential. In this article, we explore three penny stocks that stand out for their solid fundamentals and intriguing prospects in the current market landscape. Name Share Price Market Cap Financial Health Rating Lindsay Australia (ASX:LAU) A$0.69 A$218.85M ★★★★☆☆ CTI Logistics (ASX:CLX) A$1.87 A$150.62M ★★★★☆☆ Accent Group (ASX:AX1) A$1.85 A$1.11B ★★★★☆☆ EZZ Life Science Holdings (ASX:EZZ) A$1.54 A$72.65M ★★★★★★ IVE Group (ASX:IGL) A$2.54 A$391.62M ★★★★★☆ GTN (ASX:GTN) A$0.65 A$124.05M ★★★★★★ Bisalloy Steel Group (ASX:BIS) A$3.35 A$158.96M ★★★★★★ Regal Partners (ASX:RPL) A$2.29 A$769.82M ★★★★★★ Tasmea (ASX:TEA) A$2.90 A$678.71M ★★★★★☆ Southern Cross Electrical Engineering (ASX:SXE) A$1.73 A$457.43M ★★★★★★ Click here to see the full list of 1,002 stocks from our ASX Penny Stocks screener. Let's review some notable picks from our screened stocks. Simply Wall St Financial Health Rating: ★★★★☆☆ Overview: Cobram Estate Olives Limited is involved in olive farming and the production and marketing of olive oil across Australia, the United States, and international markets, with a market cap of A$837.89 million. Operations: The company's revenue is primarily derived from its US operation, which generated A$67.16 million. Market Cap: A$837.89M Cobram Estate Olives has demonstrated robust earnings growth, with a significant 104.8% increase over the past year, surpassing both its 5-year average and industry trends. Despite having a high net debt to equity ratio of 78.3%, the company's interest payments are well covered by EBIT, indicating manageable debt levels. Short-term assets exceed short-term liabilities, providing some financial stability; however, long-term liabilities remain uncovered by these assets. The management team is experienced and the board seasoned, contributing to stable operations without shareholder dilution in the past year. Trading significantly below estimated fair value suggests potential for revaluation. Jump into the full analysis health report here for a deeper understanding of Cobram Estate Olives. Examine Cobram Estate Olives' earnings growth report to understand how analysts expect it to perform. Simply Wall St Financial Health Rating: ★★★★★☆ Overview: Genesis Minerals Limited focuses on the exploration, production, and development of gold deposits in Western Australia, with a market cap of A$5.38 billion. Operations: The company generates revenue of A$561.40 million from its activities in mineral production, exploration, and development. Market Cap: A$5.38B Genesis Minerals has shown promising developments with its profitable status and a market cap of A$5.38 billion, supported by substantial cash reserves exceeding its total debt. Recent updates on Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves underpin the ASPIRE 400 growth strategy, with significant reserves at Gwalia and Tower Hill. The company's operational focus is on high-grade deposits, utilizing low-cost mining strategies to enhance production efficiency. Despite a relatively new board, Genesis maintains financial stability with short-term assets covering liabilities and no recent shareholder dilution. Trading below fair value suggests potential for revaluation amidst ongoing resource expansion efforts. Get an in-depth perspective on Genesis Minerals' performance by reading our balance sheet health report here. Review our growth performance report to gain insights into Genesis Minerals' future. Simply Wall St Financial Health Rating: ★★★★★☆ Overview: Omni Bridgeway Limited, with a market cap of A$447.07 million, provides dispute and litigation finance services across regions including Australia, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, New Zealand, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Operations: The company generates revenue of A$132.66 million from funding and services related to legal dispute resolution. Market Cap: A$447.07M Omni Bridgeway Limited, with a market cap of A$447.07 million, remains unprofitable but possesses strong financial resilience due to its substantial short-term assets of A$915.8 million, which cover both short and long-term liabilities. Despite increasing debt levels over the past five years, the company's net debt to equity ratio is satisfactory at 6.1%. Omni Bridgeway forecasts significant earnings growth at 80.14% per year and maintains a cash runway exceeding three years even as free cash flow shrinks slightly by 5.7% annually. Recent leadership changes include appointing David Breeney as Global CFO, potentially strengthening their financial management team further. Click here to discover the nuances of Omni Bridgeway with our detailed analytical financial health report. Explore Omni Bridgeway's analyst forecasts in our growth report. Discover the full array of 1,002 ASX Penny Stocks right here. Searching for a Fresh Perspective? The latest GPUs need a type of rare earth metal called Dysprosium and there are only 24 companies in the world exploring or producing it. Find the list for free. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include ASX:CBO ASX:GMD and ASX:OBL. This article was originally published by Simply Wall St. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? with us directly. 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Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
What shortage? Australia's bumper olive oil season – and one company's American dream
This story is part of the May 24 edition of Good Weekend. See all 17 stories. The most eagerly anticipated moment of harvest time has arrived. Dressed in high-vis vests and grandma hairnets, we focus intensely on a machine's wide spout as the first drops of extra virgin olive oil from Australia's 2025 olive harvest appear. In his 27 years of running the country's largest olive oil producer, Cobram Estate Olives, co-founder Rob McGavin has never witnessed this moment. His general manager, Ruth Sutherland, hands us small, blue plastic cups for tasting; it's throat-grippingly peppery and pungent, with hints of green banana. Once we slosh the oil onto some swiftly produced sourdough, the camo-green juice becomes truly delicious. As we tuck into morning tea in the factory kitchen, I ask McGavin if he is relieved to start picking his 40 billion (you read that correctly) olives this year. 'I won't be happy until the $150 million crop swinging out there in the breeze is off the trees and into tanks,' he says. Supermarket shoppers will welcome this early autumn harvest almost as much as McGavin and the shareholders in his nearly $800 million listed company. Hours earlier, we had walked into Cobram's main storage and delivery depot on the fringe of Geelong – only to see the cavernous space almost empty. McGavin was shocked. 'We are really scrounging for stock,' one of the warehouse workers explains to him. The full harvest of the 2.6 million trees from Cobram's two main groves in Boundary Bend and Boort, and the smaller Wemen grove, all near the NSW border in northern Victoria, is still three weeks away. When the tides of oil start properly flowing, they will be rushed onto shelves just before an Australia-wide shortage sets in. Our demand for olive oil has surged in the past 25 years. In 2001, Australians consumed one litre per person a year, with 95 per cent of it imported from European countries, particularly Spain and Italy. Today it's two litres per head, with 50 per cent produced in Australia. Cobram supplies 70 per cent of our locally grown oil. 'There is Cobram Estate and then there is daylight as far as the next biggest producer is concerned,' says Australian Olive Association CEO Michael Southan. It will be a bumper olive-oil harvest in Australia this year, powered partly by a warm and stable growing season and the fact that olive trees have an 'on year, off year' fruiting pattern. This year, it's all on. Three hundred pickers will converge on Cobram's groves, harvesting day and night for 10 weeks. By mid-June, more than 14 million litres of oil will have been picked, crushed and bottled in Australia, at least 12 million litres of it coming from Cobram. As soon as the Geelong warehouse brims with oil again, McGavin and Cobram co-chief executive Leandro Ravetti will turn their attention to another harvest across the globe – specifically, in the Sacramento Valley in California. The company owns 1000 hectares east of the grapevine-lush Napa Valley, and is in the process of adding another 1500. After 11 years of planting olive seedlings, Ravetti claims Cobram is poised to become the biggest producer of US olive oil in the next two to three years. Probably the darkest moment in McGavin's career came in 2009, the year Cobram nearly collapsed, and when he succumbed to swine flu. Over the previous decade, he and co-founder Paul Riordan, a mate from Geelong's Marcus Oldham College, had slowly built the business through a process he jokingly refers to as 'trial and terror'. They had asked friends and family to pitch in to help them raise the $7 million needed to plant trees on the upper banks of the Murray at Boundary Bend. Near a now-dilapidated Telstra phone booth surrounded by wild asparagus, they had spotted an old olive tree. 'We thought, 'Well, if that can grow well here, we can plant more,' ' McGavin says. Starting in 1999, they planted, ripped up, replanted, tended and harvested different types of olive trees, including picual, hojiblanca, arbequina and coratina, to see which suited the climate and conditions best. But in 2009, a partner they relied on heavily for business, Timbercorp, went bankrupt. Cobram took over Timbercorp's properties, including its olive groves and processing plants. This takeover pushed Cobram to the brink of collapse and it ended up in court fighting to harvest $30 million worth of olives. It was eventually able to do so – and recover – but 'for 10 months it was grim,' McGavin says. 'It was next-level stress. I ended up getting swine flu, then pneumonia, and I just could not get over it. My doctor told me that if I did not take time off, he would stop treating me because there was no point,' McGavin says. 'I could not lose hope, though. There were too many friends and family who had invested in us, trusted us with their money.' Grit was ingrained in McGavin very early in life. He grew up on a farm called Jubilee Park, a 13-hour drive inland from Brisbane in a tiny town called Barcaldine. His dad, Bob McGavin, farmed 8900 hectares, working at least 12 hours a day, even on Christmas Day, to make money from the sheep and cattle they ran. 'There were no holidays, no sport, no TV,' McGavin says. 'We would not really see any other people much. We were either asleep or working.' School was an optional extra. 'One term, I missed 36 days. Dad would say, 'You learn more from mustering anyway.' ' It sounds brutal, but it wasn't, says McGavin. 'I honestly think if you grow up on a farm you've won the Lotto in life. You learn to solve your own problems, and you learn how to create your own fun.' Fun for McGavin, his older sister Sue and younger brother Tim, came often in the form of a cockatoo, creatively named Cocky. 'We had him for years. He would somehow know when we were returning home from a day mustering, and he'd fly two kilometres out to meet us, then hitch a ride home on our heads.' When McGavin was seven, his mother died of breast cancer. 'I remember her empathy and kindness. She was a Christian and every Sunday would pack us into our Kingswood station wagon, and we'd go to church.' McGavin's dad, already a workaholic, coped with her death by working even harder. 'When you lose one parent, it makes you anxious about the other. I used to spend a lot of nights by the front fence waiting for dad's ute.' When Bob was 48, he was diagnosed with a type of bone cancer and given two years to live. But he lasted another 13 years. 'For the last three years, he walked around with a morphine syringe in his pocket and would inject himself if the pain got too much. He had a catheter as well. One day in the yards, a ram ripped it out. He just washed it and reinserted it back into his old fella himself.' Losing both parents to cancer contributed to the evangelical zeal McGavin has about the health benefits of olive oil. 'Mum didn't drink or smoke, but she died at 39. We ate meat; we grew on the farm, had vegetables from the vegie patch. But we had a lot of seed oil, refined oil and oils that were probably rancid.' Dietitian Susie Burrell says there is some evidence that rancid oil may lead to cellular damage over time, but 'the primary issue is that the flavour of the oil is unpleasant and nutritional benefits are depleted'. 'Health officials ... still want to penalise olive oil for containing some saturated fat.' Rob McGavin Over the past decade, there has been a revolution in our understanding of a food that's been on humanity's menu since 5000BC. Not surprisingly, McGavin and his senior executives frequently tout the benefits of olive oil, especially fresh extra virgin olive oil, and in this they have scientific backing. 'The diet that many in the scientific community agree is the best for disease prevention is the Mediterranean diet, of which extra virgin olive oil is a staple. It should be the main added fat we use in our cooking,' says Professor Catherine Itsiopoulos, associate deputy vice-chancellor of RMIT University and an olive oil expert. But she warns, 'olive oil is not a drug you can just take on its own; take a couple of tablespoons and everything will be OK. It is not enough. You need to change your diet.' Loading What makes olive oil different from seed oils such as vegetable, canola and sunflower is that it contains polyphenols. These polyphenols (often detected as the 'throat-gripping' bitterness in oil) act as antioxidants and, importantly, contain anti-inflammatory properties, Itsiopoulos says. The growing acceptance that olive oil can reduce cholesterol and inflammation, along with the risk of cancer and heart disease, has encouraged Cobram to fund research, establish the Olive Wellness Institute, and lobby the government to change the current food health-star rating system, which rates olive oil as 3.5 stars. 'I feel so let down by the health officials in this country who still want to penalise olive oil for containing some saturated fat while ignoring the health benefits of it,' McGavin says. Helicopters and light planes are to McGavin what Ubers are to city dwellers. He spends considerable time flying between the Boort and Boundary Bend groves, and the farm he lives on with his wife, Kate, and three adult sons in western Victoria. We fly in to Boundary Bend just as giant trucks are bringing the first lot of olives in from the groves. McGavin explains the oil-making process as the olives are sent jostling along a belt where they are stripped of leaves, stems and dud specimens. In a three-step 'crush, mix, spin' process, olives are pulverised into a paste, the flesh ripped and torn to release the oil, stored in sacs. This crude tapenade is then churned for 30 minutes to bond the tiny oil droplets together. The mix is then funnelled into a centrifuge that separates the oil from the water and flesh of the olive. The first drops of oil we capture come from coratina and picual olives, two of the 30 varieties Cobram grows. They will go into specifically labelled First Harvest bottles. The aim is to pick most of the 40 billion olives at what McGavin calls 'peak oil accumulation'. This is still three weeks off. The First Harvest olives have a lower oil-accumulation ratio but are very high in polyphenols, and picking them is a way to test the machinery before the army of contractor pickers converge on the groves. Many of the incoming pickers are 'grey nomads' – older, retired couples who arrive in their camper vans to set up home near the Boort and Boundary Bend groves. Their job is to operate the 28 apartment-sized picking machines, reverently referred to as either Colossus or Optimus, for 12-hour shifts. McGavin, Ruth Sutherland and I walk behind a lumbering Colossus as it pushes along a row of arbequina trees at a top speed of 400 metres per hour. A column of plastic claws shakes each tree to strip it of olives and feeds them onto a conveyor belt and into a waiting truck which, once full, will head straight to the nearby mill. Loading Company policy dictates it must take no longer than six hours from tree to tank – from the olives being plucked then crushed and pumped into storage vats ready to be bottled. 'The faster the process is, the more health benefits are kept in the oil,' McGavin says. 'If you leave the olives sitting around off the trees, they start to ferment.' McGavin's aim is to make the healthiest oil – with the highest content of polyphenols – for the cheapest price. A 750ml bottle of Cobram Estate oil cost $20 two years ago. Today it is $25, a hike blamed on higher production costs. At the same time, the price of imported olive oil has risen by 70 per cent; this is attributed to severe droughts in Europe causing a global undersupply of oil, according to the Australian Olive Association's Southan. 'But we are not seeing demand drop,' he says. 'It seems we are still willing to pay for olive oil even while prices rise.' Demand is expected to rise 5 per cent a year over the next five years, with the total value of the Australian market forecast to reach more than $500 million by 2030. This may seem massive, but is a thimble compared to the size of the American market, currently worth $US3.1 billion ($4.8 billion) and predicted to grow by 7 per cent a year to 2030. This explains why Cobram is looking to the US with a confidence not shared by many other Australian companies now, especially in light of the US-imposed tariffs. Ravetti, who was born in Argentina, says Americans still largely think, as Australians did 20 years ago, that the best olive oil comes from Europe. The US produces only five per cent of the olive oil it consumes, mostly in California, which has textbook-ideal growing conditions for olives. The rest is brought in from places like Spain and Italy. It has not been an easy ride for Cobram since it started planting groves in California in 2014. 'American retailers didn't want to know about a little Australian company, even if it was making the oil locally,' says Ravetti. But by 2022, the business began ramping up its operations, and has planted 200 to 400 hectares of olive trees every year since then. Ravetti predicts that in five years' time, Cobram's revenue will be higher in the US than in Australia. McGavin aims to supply 'locally grown, high-quality extra virgin olive oil to retail outlets across the USA'. It's a bold ambition. But the boy from Barcaldine is on a mission.
The Age
23-05-2025
- Business
- The Age
What shortage? Australia's bumper olive oil season – and one company's American dream
This story is part of the May 24 edition of Good Weekend. See all 17 stories. The most eagerly anticipated moment of harvest time has arrived. Dressed in high-vis vests and grandma hairnets, we focus intensely on a machine's wide spout as the first drops of extra virgin olive oil from Australia's 2025 olive harvest appear. In his 27 years of running the country's largest olive oil producer, Cobram Estate Olives, co-founder Rob McGavin has never witnessed this moment. His general manager, Ruth Sutherland, hands us small, blue plastic cups for tasting; it's throat-grippingly peppery and pungent, with hints of green banana. Once we slosh the oil onto some swiftly produced sourdough, the camo-green juice becomes truly delicious. As we tuck into morning tea in the factory kitchen, I ask McGavin if he is relieved to start picking his 40 billion (you read that correctly) olives this year. 'I won't be happy until the $150 million crop swinging out there in the breeze is off the trees and into tanks,' he says. Supermarket shoppers will welcome this early autumn harvest almost as much as McGavin and the shareholders in his nearly $800 million listed company. Hours earlier, we had walked into Cobram's main storage and delivery depot on the fringe of Geelong – only to see the cavernous space almost empty. McGavin was shocked. 'We are really scrounging for stock,' one of the warehouse workers explains to him. The full harvest of the 2.6 million trees from Cobram's two main groves in Boundary Bend and Boort, and the smaller Wemen grove, all near the NSW border in northern Victoria, is still three weeks away. When the tides of oil start properly flowing, they will be rushed onto shelves just before an Australia-wide shortage sets in. Our demand for olive oil has surged in the past 25 years. In 2001, Australians consumed one litre per person a year, with 95 per cent of it imported from European countries, particularly Spain and Italy. Today it's two litres per head, with 50 per cent produced in Australia. Cobram supplies 70 per cent of our locally grown oil. 'There is Cobram Estate and then there is daylight as far as the next biggest producer is concerned,' says Australian Olive Association CEO Michael Southan. It will be a bumper olive-oil harvest in Australia this year, powered partly by a warm and stable growing season and the fact that olive trees have an 'on year, off year' fruiting pattern. This year, it's all on. Three hundred pickers will converge on Cobram's groves, harvesting day and night for 10 weeks. By mid-June, more than 14 million litres of oil will have been picked, crushed and bottled in Australia, at least 12 million litres of it coming from Cobram. As soon as the Geelong warehouse brims with oil again, McGavin and Cobram co-chief executive Leandro Ravetti will turn their attention to another harvest across the globe – specifically, in the Sacramento Valley in California. The company owns 1000 hectares east of the grapevine-lush Napa Valley, and is in the process of adding another 1500. After 11 years of planting olive seedlings, Ravetti claims Cobram is poised to become the biggest producer of US olive oil in the next two to three years. Probably the darkest moment in McGavin's career came in 2009, the year Cobram nearly collapsed, and when he succumbed to swine flu. Over the previous decade, he and co-founder Paul Riordan, a mate from Geelong's Marcus Oldham College, had slowly built the business through a process he jokingly refers to as 'trial and terror'. They had asked friends and family to pitch in to help them raise the $7 million needed to plant trees on the upper banks of the Murray at Boundary Bend. Near a now-dilapidated Telstra phone booth surrounded by wild asparagus, they had spotted an old olive tree. 'We thought, 'Well, if that can grow well here, we can plant more,' ' McGavin says. Starting in 1999, they planted, ripped up, replanted, tended and harvested different types of olive trees, including picual, hojiblanca, arbequina and coratina, to see which suited the climate and conditions best. But in 2009, a partner they relied on heavily for business, Timbercorp, went bankrupt. Cobram took over Timbercorp's properties, including its olive groves and processing plants. This takeover pushed Cobram to the brink of collapse and it ended up in court fighting to harvest $30 million worth of olives. It was eventually able to do so – and recover – but 'for 10 months it was grim,' McGavin says. 'It was next-level stress. I ended up getting swine flu, then pneumonia, and I just could not get over it. My doctor told me that if I did not take time off, he would stop treating me because there was no point,' McGavin says. 'I could not lose hope, though. There were too many friends and family who had invested in us, trusted us with their money.' Grit was ingrained in McGavin very early in life. He grew up on a farm called Jubilee Park, a 13-hour drive inland from Brisbane in a tiny town called Barcaldine. His dad, Bob McGavin, farmed 8900 hectares, working at least 12 hours a day, even on Christmas Day, to make money from the sheep and cattle they ran. 'There were no holidays, no sport, no TV,' McGavin says. 'We would not really see any other people much. We were either asleep or working.' School was an optional extra. 'One term, I missed 36 days. Dad would say, 'You learn more from mustering anyway.' ' It sounds brutal, but it wasn't, says McGavin. 'I honestly think if you grow up on a farm you've won the Lotto in life. You learn to solve your own problems, and you learn how to create your own fun.' Fun for McGavin, his older sister Sue and younger brother Tim, came often in the form of a cockatoo, creatively named Cocky. 'We had him for years. He would somehow know when we were returning home from a day mustering, and he'd fly two kilometres out to meet us, then hitch a ride home on our heads.' When McGavin was seven, his mother died of breast cancer. 'I remember her empathy and kindness. She was a Christian and every Sunday would pack us into our Kingswood station wagon, and we'd go to church.' McGavin's dad, already a workaholic, coped with her death by working even harder. 'When you lose one parent, it makes you anxious about the other. I used to spend a lot of nights by the front fence waiting for dad's ute.' When Bob was 48, he was diagnosed with a type of bone cancer and given two years to live. But he lasted another 13 years. 'For the last three years, he walked around with a morphine syringe in his pocket and would inject himself if the pain got too much. He had a catheter as well. One day in the yards, a ram ripped it out. He just washed it and reinserted it back into his old fella himself.' Losing both parents to cancer contributed to the evangelical zeal McGavin has about the health benefits of olive oil. 'Mum didn't drink or smoke, but she died at 39. We ate meat; we grew on the farm, had vegetables from the vegie patch. But we had a lot of seed oil, refined oil and oils that were probably rancid.' Dietitian Susie Burrell says there is some evidence that rancid oil may lead to cellular damage over time, but 'the primary issue is that the flavour of the oil is unpleasant and nutritional benefits are depleted'. 'Health officials ... still want to penalise olive oil for containing some saturated fat.' Rob McGavin Over the past decade, there has been a revolution in our understanding of a food that's been on humanity's menu since 5000BC. Not surprisingly, McGavin and his senior executives frequently tout the benefits of olive oil, especially fresh extra virgin olive oil, and in this they have scientific backing. 'The diet that many in the scientific community agree is the best for disease prevention is the Mediterranean diet, of which extra virgin olive oil is a staple. It should be the main added fat we use in our cooking,' says Professor Catherine Itsiopoulos, associate deputy vice-chancellor of RMIT University and an olive oil expert. But she warns, 'olive oil is not a drug you can just take on its own; take a couple of tablespoons and everything will be OK. It is not enough. You need to change your diet.' Loading What makes olive oil different from seed oils such as vegetable, canola and sunflower is that it contains polyphenols. These polyphenols (often detected as the 'throat-gripping' bitterness in oil) act as antioxidants and, importantly, contain anti-inflammatory properties, Itsiopoulos says. The growing acceptance that olive oil can reduce cholesterol and inflammation, along with the risk of cancer and heart disease, has encouraged Cobram to fund research, establish the Olive Wellness Institute, and lobby the government to change the current food health-star rating system, which rates olive oil as 3.5 stars. 'I feel so let down by the health officials in this country who still want to penalise olive oil for containing some saturated fat while ignoring the health benefits of it,' McGavin says. Helicopters and light planes are to McGavin what Ubers are to city dwellers. He spends considerable time flying between the Boort and Boundary Bend groves, and the farm he lives on with his wife, Kate, and three adult sons in western Victoria. We fly in to Boundary Bend just as giant trucks are bringing the first lot of olives in from the groves. McGavin explains the oil-making process as the olives are sent jostling along a belt where they are stripped of leaves, stems and dud specimens. In a three-step 'crush, mix, spin' process, olives are pulverised into a paste, the flesh ripped and torn to release the oil, stored in sacs. This crude tapenade is then churned for 30 minutes to bond the tiny oil droplets together. The mix is then funnelled into a centrifuge that separates the oil from the water and flesh of the olive. The first drops of oil we capture come from coratina and picual olives, two of the 30 varieties Cobram grows. They will go into specifically labelled First Harvest bottles. The aim is to pick most of the 40 billion olives at what McGavin calls 'peak oil accumulation'. This is still three weeks off. The First Harvest olives have a lower oil-accumulation ratio but are very high in polyphenols, and picking them is a way to test the machinery before the army of contractor pickers converge on the groves. Many of the incoming pickers are 'grey nomads' – older, retired couples who arrive in their camper vans to set up home near the Boort and Boundary Bend groves. Their job is to operate the 28 apartment-sized picking machines, reverently referred to as either Colossus or Optimus, for 12-hour shifts. McGavin, Ruth Sutherland and I walk behind a lumbering Colossus as it pushes along a row of arbequina trees at a top speed of 400 metres per hour. A column of plastic claws shakes each tree to strip it of olives and feeds them onto a conveyor belt and into a waiting truck which, once full, will head straight to the nearby mill. Loading Company policy dictates it must take no longer than six hours from tree to tank – from the olives being plucked then crushed and pumped into storage vats ready to be bottled. 'The faster the process is, the more health benefits are kept in the oil,' McGavin says. 'If you leave the olives sitting around off the trees, they start to ferment.' McGavin's aim is to make the healthiest oil – with the highest content of polyphenols – for the cheapest price. A 750ml bottle of Cobram Estate oil cost $20 two years ago. Today it is $25, a hike blamed on higher production costs. At the same time, the price of imported olive oil has risen by 70 per cent; this is attributed to severe droughts in Europe causing a global undersupply of oil, according to the Australian Olive Association's Southan. 'But we are not seeing demand drop,' he says. 'It seems we are still willing to pay for olive oil even while prices rise.' Demand is expected to rise 5 per cent a year over the next five years, with the total value of the Australian market forecast to reach more than $500 million by 2030. This may seem massive, but is a thimble compared to the size of the American market, currently worth $US3.1 billion ($4.8 billion) and predicted to grow by 7 per cent a year to 2030. This explains why Cobram is looking to the US with a confidence not shared by many other Australian companies now, especially in light of the US-imposed tariffs. Ravetti, who was born in Argentina, says Americans still largely think, as Australians did 20 years ago, that the best olive oil comes from Europe. The US produces only five per cent of the olive oil it consumes, mostly in California, which has textbook-ideal growing conditions for olives. The rest is brought in from places like Spain and Italy. It has not been an easy ride for Cobram since it started planting groves in California in 2014. 'American retailers didn't want to know about a little Australian company, even if it was making the oil locally,' says Ravetti. But by 2022, the business began ramping up its operations, and has planted 200 to 400 hectares of olive trees every year since then. Ravetti predicts that in five years' time, Cobram's revenue will be higher in the US than in Australia. McGavin aims to supply 'locally grown, high-quality extra virgin olive oil to retail outlets across the USA'. It's a bold ambition. But the boy from Barcaldine is on a mission.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cobram Estate Olives Among 3 ASX Penny Stocks To Consider
The Australian market recently experienced a downturn, with the ASX200 closing down 0.94%, driven by declines in IT, Energy, and Materials sectors. Despite these broader market challenges, there remains potential for growth within specific segments like penny stocks. Although the term "penny stocks" may seem outdated, it still captures the essence of smaller or emerging companies that can offer significant value when backed by strong financials and clear growth potential. Name Share Price Market Cap Financial Health Rating CTI Logistics (ASX:CLX) A$1.545 A$120.53M ★★★★☆☆ Accent Group (ASX:AX1) A$1.805 A$1.02B ★★★★☆☆ EZZ Life Science Holdings (ASX:EZZ) A$1.48 A$69.82M ★★★★★★ IVE Group (ASX:IGL) A$2.40 A$370.78M ★★★★★☆ GTN (ASX:GTN) A$0.585 A$114.88M ★★★★★★ Bisalloy Steel Group (ASX:BIS) A$3.24 A$153.74M ★★★★★★ Regal Partners (ASX:RPL) A$2.16 A$724.46M ★★★★★★ Southern Cross Electrical Engineering (ASX:SXE) A$1.73 A$457.19M ★★★★★★ NRW Holdings (ASX:NWH) A$2.71 A$1.24B ★★★★★☆ LaserBond (ASX:LBL) A$0.39 A$45.76M ★★★★★★ Click here to see the full list of 971 stocks from our ASX Penny Stocks screener. Here we highlight a subset of our preferred stocks from the screener. Simply Wall St Financial Health Rating: ★★★★☆☆ Overview: Cobram Estate Olives Limited is involved in olive farming and the production and marketing of olive oil across Australia, the United States, and internationally, with a market cap of A$791.80 million. Operations: The company's revenue is primarily generated from its US operation, which accounts for A$67.16 million. Market Cap: A$791.8M Cobram Estate Olives, with a market cap of A$791.80 million, is trading significantly below its estimated fair value and has shown robust earnings growth of 104.8% over the past year, surpassing industry averages. Despite high net debt to equity ratio at 78.3%, its interest payments are well covered by EBIT (4.6x), and operating cash flow covers debt effectively at 24%. The company reported improved profit margins and reduced net losses for the recent half-year period compared to last year, indicating financial progress despite challenges in long-term liabilities coverage by short-term assets (A$123M vs A$341.1M). Jump into the full analysis health report here for a deeper understanding of Cobram Estate Olives. Gain insights into Cobram Estate Olives' future direction by reviewing our growth report. Simply Wall St Financial Health Rating: ★★★★★☆ Overview: Plenti Group Limited operates as a fintech company specializing in lending and investment services in Australia, with a market capitalization of A$150.28 million. Operations: The company generates revenue of A$83.84 million from its financial services segment. Market Cap: A$150.28M Plenti Group, with a market capitalization of A$150.28 million, operates as a fintech company in Australia. Despite being unprofitable and having a high net debt to equity ratio of 11,169.4%, the company maintains strong liquidity with short-term assets of A$2.4 billion exceeding both its short-term and long-term liabilities. The management team is experienced, averaging six years in tenure, which provides stability amidst financial challenges. Plenti has not diluted shareholder value recently and benefits from a positive cash flow runway for over three years due to growing free cash flow, positioning it for potential future growth despite current losses. Dive into the specifics of Plenti Group here with our thorough balance sheet health report. Review our growth performance report to gain insights into Plenti Group's future. Simply Wall St Financial Health Rating: ★★★★★★ Overview: Sheffield Resources Limited is an Australian company focused on the evaluation and development of mineral sands, with a market capitalization of A$84.88 million. Operations: Sheffield Resources Limited has not reported any specific revenue segments. Market Cap: A$84.88M Sheffield Resources Limited, with a market capitalization of A$84.88 million, operates in the mineral sands sector and is currently pre-revenue with earnings forecasted to grow significantly at 79.71% annually. Despite being unprofitable and reporting an increased net loss of A$25.45 million for the half-year ended December 2024, Sheffield remains debt-free and has sufficient cash runway for over a year based on current free cash flow trends. The company recently dropped from the S&P/ASX All Ordinaries Index, reflecting its volatile share price performance amidst financial challenges but benefits from experienced board oversight. Unlock comprehensive insights into our analysis of Sheffield Resources stock in this financial health report. Gain insights into Sheffield Resources' outlook and expected performance with our report on the company's earnings estimates. Click here to access our complete index of 971 ASX Penny Stocks. Seeking Other Investments? Uncover 12 companies that survived and thrived after COVID and have the right ingredients to survive Trump's tariffs. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include ASX:CBO ASX:PLT and ASX:SFX. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Retail investors account for 57% of Cobram Estate Olives Limited's (ASX:CBO) ownership, while insiders account for 18%
Significant control over Cobram Estate Olives by retail investors implies that the general public has more power to influence management and governance-related decisions 43% of the business is held by the top 25 shareholders 18% of Cobram Estate Olives is held by insiders AI is about to change healthcare. These 20 stocks are working on everything from early diagnostics to drug discovery. The best part - they are all under $10bn in marketcap - there is still time to get in early. If you want to know who really controls Cobram Estate Olives Limited (ASX:CBO), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. We can see that retail investors own the lion's share in the company with 57% ownership. That is, the group stands to benefit the most if the stock rises (or lose the most if there is a downturn). Meanwhile, individual insiders make up 18% of the company's shareholders. Insiders often own a large chunk of younger, smaller, companies while huge companies tend to have institutions as shareholders. In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Cobram Estate Olives. Check out our latest analysis for Cobram Estate Olives Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing. Cobram Estate Olives already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Cobram Estate Olives, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too. Cobram Estate Olives is not owned by hedge funds. Because actions speak louder than words, we consider it a good sign when insiders own a significant stake in a company. In Cobram Estate Olives' case, its Top Key Executive, Robert McGavin, is the largest shareholder, holding 7.7% of shares outstanding. In comparison, the second and third largest shareholders hold about 6.7% and 4.2% of the stock. Furthermore, CEO Leandro Ravetti is the owner of 1.3% of the company's shares. Our studies suggest that the top 25 shareholders collectively control less than half of the company's shares, meaning that the company's shares are widely disseminated and there is no dominant shareholder. Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future. While the precise definition of an insider can be subjective, almost everyone considers board members to be insiders. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group. Our information suggests that insiders maintain a significant holding in Cobram Estate Olives Limited. Insiders own AU$144m worth of shares in the AU$788m company. We would say this shows alignment with shareholders, but it is worth noting that the company is still quite small; some insiders may have founded the business. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling. The general public -- including retail investors -- own 57% of Cobram Estate Olives. With this amount of ownership, retail investors can collectively play a role in decisions that affect shareholder returns, such as dividend policies and the appointment of directors. They can also exercise the power to vote on acquisitions or mergers that may not improve profitability. We can see that Private Companies own 15%, of the shares on issue. It's hard to draw any conclusions from this fact alone, so its worth looking into who owns those private companies. Sometimes insiders or other related parties have an interest in shares in a public company through a separate private company. While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Cobram Estate Olives . But ultimately it is the future, not the past, that will determine how well the owners of this business will do. Therefore we think it advisable to take a look at this free report showing whether analysts are predicting a brighter future. NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Sign in to access your portfolio
