Sold the Printer

This is part two. Part one, Pawning the Silver, set the 2020 scheme booklet beside the accounts. The booklet has not aged gracefully.

There is a number in TPG’s history that explains more about its present than anything the company has volunteered since.

It was last printed in 2019. The company has taken some care not to print it again.

Forty-eight per cent.

That was the EBITDA margin on the old Corporate division in FY19: the enterprise, government and wholesale business, running on fibre the company owned outright. Not a gross margin. Not a segment contribution struck conveniently before the awkward bits. EBITDA. Forty-eight cents of every dollar, kept.

It did not arrive by accident, or by promotional campaign. $643 million of revenue and $242 million of EBITDA in FY15. $754 million and $330 million by FY18, the margin climbing from thirty-eight per cent to forty-four. Then $367 million, and forty-eight.

Most companies would frame that. Some would name a floor at Barangaroo after it.

It printed money.

So, naturally, they sold it.

The numbers

The company stopped publishing this table in 2020. It has been put back together here from what it left behind.

Three rows come from annual reports that predate Barangaroo. One comes from a note the accounting standards obliged it to write. The last two are what it kept.

The segment boundaries were redrawn at the merger, as segment boundaries tend to be. Nobody redrew the margins.