Austal Limited

It deconstructs a lot of people.

Anyway, the company holds $5 million of contracts under a strategic shipbuilding agreement with Canberra, a shipbuilding agreement with Canberra, etc., But at the bottom of the story, it does point out that, or it does also point out, by the way, Andrew Forrest, who claims to be such a great environmentalist, is one of the biggest shareholders in Oslo, which is interesting to note.

Interesting.

And he's, and Nicola, of course, whom we said a couple of weeks ago, wants to have this little fund that will... address social cohesion or address social unfairness.

Thank you.

Said, Sean, Austal is being sold to South Korea.

How is that even possible? Yeah, they came up with the...

You got to remember, Austal is Australian, right? So, not an American company, but building a lot of contract work for the United States.

I don't know if...

I mean, they came up with the money.

I remember hearing about the deal.

It wasn't going to go through, that it was going to go through.

So we haven't been without success.

You know, you look at Austal and the work they do in the United States as an example of how Australian companies can do a lot overseas.

And there'll be a lot of people listening that have their own examples of that too.

But for us to, I think, really escalate or for Australia's domestic industry to really strengthen and build that sovereign capability and export overseas, it has to be built on the foundation of regular, steady domestic demand signals from the Department of Defence, which, as I said before, I think requires a cultural shift, a willingness to take risks on Australian companies, but also significant institutional power in what is now our own defence delivery agency.

Whether that agency has received that mandate from the federal government remains to be seen.

But if anyone's looking at South Korea as a model of what we might be able to achieve, the DDA has to be very powerful.

Could the new engagement with Austal as the lead ship company that then farms out to other companies be a step towards that?

It could be, but it would take a long time.

No, I mean, Eastern, I think we saw that at Fincantary with or we were going to see it with the Constellation.

I think we've seen it at Austal as, you know, even this handle.

I mean, so I mean, there's competition is great, except when you run when you run the competitors out of the market because of competition, right? Exactly.

If you

look at the shipbuilding as an industrial base in the whole country, you really got to look at, you know, and every one of us, every shipyard will say, oh yeah, finding the workers is no problem.

We'll find them the workers is a problem, you know, but we'll say we can find the workers.

If you, you know, probably the most of the yards I've worked with or around all the yards, I worked with Austal on LCS and, I've worked at Avondale and then Ingalls through the destroyer program and the LPD.

I spent a year and a half on TAKE and a sister shipyard at NASCO from GD.

Officially, these war preparations account for $600 million, or nearly 30% of the just over $2 billion the National Reconstruction Fund has disbursed or committed in the two years and change since it commenced operations.

By an honest accounting that includes all the other sectors of the economy over which the Albanese government has explicitly or implicitly handed control to the American war machine, the real figure is closer to three quarters and growing, including somewhat ironically its latest and largest single outlay, to Australian shipbuilder Austal, which has recently fallen out of favour with the United States Navy whence it used to get most of its work and has now been brought home to help turn the Australian Army into a facsimile and auxiliary of the US Marine Corps.

The National Reconstruction Fund was announced in the Albanese government's first annual budget in 2022-23, ostensibly to help the economy recover from the self-imposed dysfunction of the COVID years.

It is administered by the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, the NRFC, a Commonwealth corporate entity established by the passage of the eponymous National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Act in September 2023-21.

Taking all those into account, the NRFC's actual investment into military and military-related projects in 2024-25 was $250.5 million, or 42.8% of the total.

And whilst its 2025-26 annual report has not yet been released, it is scheduled for publication later today, as this issue of the alert goes to print, The fund's own monthly updates and mainstream media reporting indicate that the same may be said of most of its $1.67 billion of commitments in financial 2025-26 and almost everything since.

The latest of which, and its single biggest outlay ever, the Australian Financial Review reported 23 October is a $245 million debt investment loan in Austal for a new factory and assembly plant with attached warehouse at the expanded Henderson Defence Precinct on the southern outskirts of Perth.

Across the Coburn Sound from the HMAS Stirling Naval Base on Garden Island, that from next year, the Albanese government is handing over to the US Navy to be its new Indian Ocean HQ for nuclear-powered and, from 2032, nuclear-armed attack submarines.

Speaking of data, Data3's share price surged on commentary coming from its AGM.

Austal also held its AGM today, shares up by about 8%.

Deep Yellow Quarterly's report moved its share price close to 7.5%, let's say that, to $0.80 per share.

4D Medical held its AGM, but shares down significantly off by more than 5%, $3.44. And SightMinder, SightMinder got no love on the call yesterday, came out and updated its growth target.

Visit longview.com.au.

Second half of the show, we're going to take a look at Pinnacle Investments Group, The Star Entertainment Group, Austal, Nick Scali, Treasury Wine Estates.

So let's then begin with Pinnacle Investment Management.

Corey asked about this.

That seems to be the case as far as Star Entertainment Group's concerned.

All right.

Let's go to something a little more solid then, shall we, in terms of Austal the shipbuilder.

Now, having just in the past week, in fact, secured $245 million in in funding from the federal government's National Reconstruction Fund Corporation.