The country’s biggest investor, Australian Super, has ignored all the poor publicity around supermarket giant Woolworths (ASX:WOW) and its claimed price-gouging activities. It has spent close to half a billion dollars since late March boosting its already major position in the company’s share register.
It’s a move that ignores all the criticism from politicians on both sides of parliament, as well as trade union and consumer groups and regulators like the ACCC, the key competition overseer.
Aussie Super in fact ignored the most dramatic controversy last month when the ACCC claimed Woolies and rival Coles (ASX:COL) were engaging in a form of fraud by claiming fake price discounts when in fact prices had been raised before the discounts.
Instead, Australian Super continued mopping up million of shares in Woolies. Its single largest purchase in the six-month campaign came a week after the ACCC’s claims, on Monday 30 September, when it bought 1.824 million shares at $34.83 each, for a total cost of around $63.5m.
There is an irony here that underlines the way Australia’s version of a market economy is evolving. Consumers are rightly upset with the antics of Woolies and Coles, and politicians and others, eager to tap that anger, have been jumping up and down on the spot for months.
And yet the biggest manager of employee super savings (it controls nearly 9% of the total super assets of $3.9 trillion) thinks so little of the claims that it runs a buying splurge in the chief offender at a pace we have rarely seen.
It knows the longer-term view is that Australians will continue to shop in big chains such as Woolies, and the retirement savings of consumers and others complaining now about the practices of Woolies (and others) can be ignored for the long-term good.
Interestingly, Aussie Super is not a major shareholder in Coles, seeming to prefer to stick all its eggs in this market sector into the leader, Woolies.
The boosting of its stake in Woolworths was a significant move for the $350bn fund. Australian Super said in its latest notice that it had lifted its stake in Woolworths from 5.00% to 6.02% on 30 September.
That represents a rise in the number of shares held from 60.88 million to more than 73.52 million. The change started on 24 March this year and ended on 30 September (last Monday).
The Woolies stake would have a market value of around $2.4bn.
Prices paid ranged from just over $30 each to more than $39 over the six-month period. The shares were purchased by Aussie Super’s US-owned broker, JPMorgan Chase, which holds the shares in its name.
Australian Super wasn’t the only major shareholder buying. State Street, the US-based custodian and services group, said on 3 September that it had lifted its stake in Woolies from 6.07% to 7.07% (meaning it is still the largest shareholder). That was an extra 12.2 million shares, with a similar value to that for Australian Super.
But unlike Australian Super, which bought and holds the shares in its own name via JPMorgan, most of the purchases registered to State Street were done by clients via banks and brokers offshore. One local investor revealed Aware Super held 3.420 million shares at August 30.
Australian Super’s buying was a single-client campaign, unlike State Street, which is merely holding the shares on behalf of other clients and brokers.