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Speaker 1: Right now. Fitcher Building is in the red again, the

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Speaker 1: company today announcing it made one hundred and thirty four

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Speaker 1: million dollar net loss after tacks for the half year

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Speaker 1: two December. That's down one hundred from one hundred and

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Speaker 1: twenty million dollars last year. It's a tough result for

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Speaker 1: the entire business with the clients basically across all of

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Speaker 1: the different business units. Andrew Readings, which as chief executive Andrew.

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Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, nice to meet your own.

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Speaker 1: Nice to talk to you too. So you're not selling

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Speaker 1: enough stuff Basically.

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Speaker 2: It's a bit difficult to when the market isn't there

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Speaker 2: to buy it.

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Speaker 1: Do you know, do you think the market has bottomed out?

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Speaker 2: Look, I mean that's a question on everybody's lips. And

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Speaker 2: we hear some people saying there are green shoots. We're

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Speaker 2: a bit more nervous about that. There are some businesses

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Speaker 2: that are seeing early signs of recovery and others aren't

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Speaker 2: seeing much change in volumes at all. And Rember, I'm

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Speaker 2: thinking about both Australia and New Zealand when I say that.

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Speaker 2: So with some of the interest rate cuts around October

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Speaker 2: last year, we did see a small pickup in our

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Speaker 2: residential and development business about a seventeen percent increasing sales

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Speaker 2: in September to December period versus the July and August.

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Speaker 2: But it's not boom times yet. And I think what

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Speaker 2: people forget is that even if you start dropping interest rates,

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Speaker 2: there's a period between in thinking about a house and

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Speaker 2: it getting built and that period anywhere between six and

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Speaker 2: nine months. Sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: We've just had Adrian or announce, say another fifty basis

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Speaker 1: point cut to the ICI. He's talking about another fifty

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Speaker 1: by midyear, getting down to three by the end of

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Speaker 1: the year. That'll obviously be good news to your ears.

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Speaker 1: Welcome news for you.

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Speaker 2: I assume it has just brought a smile to my fay,

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Speaker 2: so we'll have to admit. I think what we have

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Speaker 2: to remember is that it will take time to feed through.

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Speaker 2: But it does underline that it's not a case of

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Speaker 2: when the market changed, sorry if the market changes, but

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Speaker 2: when it changes. So I have no doubts in my mind.

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Speaker 2: At some stage or other we will start to see

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Speaker 2: demand taking off of a lot of what we're doing

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Speaker 2: at the moment in the cost out exercise we've been

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Speaker 2: carrying it out, is the right size of our business

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Speaker 2: and get it prepared and ready for any uplift in

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Speaker 2: the market that might happen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you've been cutting costs and you're actually a head

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Speaker 1: of schedule. What have you been cutting?

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Speaker 2: So we've got ninety one million out for the half year,

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Speaker 2: sixty million of which is in overheads and thirty million

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Speaker 2: is in cogs. So the COGS is the sort of

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Speaker 2: variable cost that you might have in supplying product, and

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Speaker 2: the overhead has been a whole variety of activities, including

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Speaker 2: some heads out, some facilities being shuttle mothboard, so it's

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Speaker 2: a whole range of activities.

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Speaker 1: Obviously, you're going to wait for the market to pick

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Speaker 1: up again, but you can't just sit on your hands

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Speaker 1: while you do that. So I note that you're going

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Speaker 1: to review the business parts of the business, including Placemakers,

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Speaker 1: Why placemakers and what are you planning.

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Speaker 2: I think that that was taken slightly out of context.

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Speaker 2: Placemakers is one of our leading businesses. But what we're

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Speaker 2: doing there is historically the number of branches that were

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Speaker 2: managed by JV partners has been reduced, and what we're

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Speaker 2: going to do now is actually increase the number of

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Speaker 2: JV partners that we have, especially in the rural branches,

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Speaker 2: and we find that if you have somebody who is

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Speaker 2: as skin in the game, then they pay absolute attention

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Speaker 2: to the branch's profit loss account and they give excellent

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Speaker 2: customer service. So we're just going to tweak the model

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Speaker 2: rather than review it.

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Speaker 1: Right, So having someone local, actually he makes a big

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Speaker 1: difference to a business.

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Speaker 2: Huge, huge difference.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting, Andrew, thank you very much for that. Really

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Speaker 1: appreciate your.

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Speaker 2: Time, no problem at all. Likes to talk to you.

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Speaker 1: That's Andrew Reading, chief executive atwitcherre building with us tonight

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Speaker 1: for more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive, listen live to

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Speaker 1: news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow

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Speaker 1: the podcast on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: O