Alex Waislitz Quotes
102 Alex Waislitz Quotes (Heloise Pratt, Thorney Investment Group, Thorney Properties)
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Your success is as much a function of the deals you say no to as it is to the ones you proceed with.
Alex Waislitz
The more you roll up your sleeves and get involved, the more you will ensure success.
Alex Waislitz
Investing is not a static game. It is dynamic. You must adapt to uncertainty or problems.
Alex Waislitz
Look for the value-add that might change or unlock a situation.
Alex Waislitz
From a young age we were taught the importance of educating ourselves…
Alex Waislitz
With a mate, we used to go around to houses that were being renovated in the area and try to find all the scrap metal we could from all of the projects. We would go to a scrap metal dealer and make money selling copper pipes and brass fittings and things like that.
Alex Waislitz
When I was asked what sort of gifts I’d like for my bar mitzvah, I surprised everyone by saying I didn’t want any gifts but I would like some shares. Of course, none of mum and dad’s friends, who were the people giving the gifts, knew anything about shares either. I was told later they just went and looked at what the largest company was at the time and gave me BHP shares. I was given a few hundred I think. That was my first experience with shares.
Alex Waislitz
[As a child] I was thrilled to get my first dividend cheque. I thought, what a great way to make money.
Alex Waislitz
You can’t get away from the basics…
Alex Waislitz
I didn’t want to document or be part of the process of a deal. I wanted to be the one who was driving the deal.
Alex Waislitz
I developed a very strong philosophy that you need to buy well and the entry point needs to be at a good price.
Alex Waislitz
I couldn’t afford to get it wrong. I had to be convinced that there was value there and there was strong upside potential.
Alex Waislitz
Maintain your discipline in terms of value and performance. Keep watching the real operations of the business.
Alex Waislitz
There’s no such thing as a bad business, just bad managers.
Alex Waislitz
We don’t try to invest where we can’t see what’s going on.
Alex Waislitz
No business is static.
Alex Waislitz
Thorney and I have probably been directly responsible for making 20 or 30, maybe 40, people into millionaires. I am very happy to do that and support companies growing. We are very proud of a lot of companies we have supported; but, of course, we want to make a dollar on the way through.
Alex Waislitz
We look for companies which have good people, good cash controls and ambitions for growth…
Alex Waislitz
My parents… came to Australia with nothing. They had to pursue what we now call the immigrant story, which is working long hours, seven days a week, in multiple jobs to try to make ends meet with two young kids.
Alex Waislitz
[In August 2003 on growing up and his parents.] It was very tough, living in shared houses or very small apartments with no furniture. Eventually, they [his parents] got their first house, which was in South Caulfield. I remember most of my early years growing up were in Ormond. We had a very small three bedroom place – which, by the way, I still drive past every now and then just to make me refect on the changes that can happen in the course of a generation.
Alex Waislitz
[At the dinner table as a child.] There was a lot of talk about business and the value of a dollar – how to make it and how to save it. As my father started to get into the real estate game and became more successful, there were constant meetings at home and discussions about business-related matters. We talked about buying, right, how to extract value from a situation that someone else couldn’t see in the same light, and trying to think outside of the box and develop something with no capital.
Alex Waislitz
[On his father] He was a school chess champion when he was younger. He was able to parlay that intellectual ability into comprehensive business skills.
Alex Waislitz
[More on his father] He has somewhat of a Midas touch in real estate.
Alex Waislitz
I saw dividends as important but, more fundamentally, I am attracted to growth and expansion.
Alex Waislitz
I… was encouraged to work on weekends and after school. I had a newspaper run at the age of 11 and a half, riding a bike around the area.
Alex Waislitz
My first real investment came when my father decided to put some cattle on some rural land while he waited to subdivide it. I took my savings of $500 and bought some cattle. I think we bought five cows. Two died but they had calves and we made good money from the calves. I was about 15 or 16. I recall making about $1,800 in profit. That was enough to pay for the first overseas trip I went on by myself to the United States when I was 17 or 18.
Alex Waislitz
I became quite attracted to business at an early age.
Alex Waislitz
[On working in the international department of a stock broking business.] That was like being a child in a candy store, because really I was being paid to be educated in something I didn’t know anything about, but was interested in.
Alex Waislitz
I learnt… fairly quickly was that I was not suited to the selling side of the business. I preferred to be on the principal buying side or the deal origination.
Alex Waislitz
[Robert] Holmes a Court would encourage me to transact in the market. He would give me lots of tips like, ‘Be brave, show courage and don’t let the brokers intimidate you.’
[On things that Robert Holmes a Court taught him.] He said things like don’t worry about your age differential, concentrate on the objective of the deal, listen where you can and don’t offer any information [in negotiations] you don’t need to.
Alex Waislitz
[Robert] Holmes a Court was someone I had enormous respect for and was somewhat in awe of… He didn’t worry about which country he was active in. He thought the laws of business were the same.
Alex Waislitz
[On Robert Holmes a Court] He always thought there were opportunities in long-established companies – those with brand names that he would describe as being run by the establishment, whether that was in England or Australia. He felt they were lazy companies with numerous hidden assets that you would find once you got in there.
Alex Waislitz
[More on Robert Holmes a Court] He was conscious of needing to generate cash flow to keep things going. He was a master of leverage – taking large positions from a very small base. I think what it showed me was that from humble small beginnings, companies you think are well out of your reach can still be looked at.
Alex Waislitz
I was quite keen on pursuing the investment game. I really got to enjoy the challenges and the creativity of it. I wanted to again try to team up with someone who had an entrepreneurial flair, so I approach the offices of
Richard Pratt, was interviewed and got a job there. That was in 1989.
Alex Waislitz
I started dating Heloise Pratt, Richard Pratt’s oldest daughter. As that got more serious, I felt it was improper for me to both date her and work for the company. I decided to leave Pratt Group and did a bit of consulting work in the UK. Eventually, we got engaged and married and I was invited to rejoin the group.
Alex Waislitz
[On the name Thorney Investments] Thorney was just the name of the shelf company in the group but I chose it because it was quite appropriate, considering the negative reaction from the manufacturing side of the company to the idea of an investment company. I thought it was a name that was likely to irritate them. [Laughs.]
Alex Waislitz
[On Thorney after he had turned the capital from $1.15 million to $4 million to then $7 million.] I was focusing on the small end of the market because we didn’t have enough capital to look at anything else.
Alex Waislitz
I quickly realised we were too small to play at the big end of the market. Small caps were not as well researched and not well covered by brokers.
Alex Waislitz
We have a saying that is ‘people, product, place’. We have to have at least two out of three before we make an investment.
Alex Waislitz
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