Ross Taylor has done a month's quarantine. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Fletcher Building's boss is keen not to see the inside of another hotel room for quite some time.
Ross Taylor, an Australian, has now done a month in Covid isolation: first in Rotorua during the winter, then more recently in Sydney and he indicated he had had enough of the lags after his unfortunate double-dose.
"It gets a bit long in the tooth by day 10," Taylor confessed yesterday on a media call after the company posted a healthy first four months of trading from July 1.
Fletcher says it employs 16,000 people, with around 5000 in Australia so Taylor said he had no choice but to return to Sydney when quarantine restrictions were in place.
"I've lost four weeks of my life now in quarantine and I don't need any more," he said yesterday.
In June, the Sydneysider was sent for a fortnight's stay at the three-star Ibis Rotorua Hotel, having returned from Sydney where his family home is to come back to work in Penrose.
He didn't get the bus back to Auckland at the end, instead hiring a car to return.
But in September, he crossed the Tasman again for work, so was forced to do a further fortnight, this time in the 4.5 star 558-room Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park.
"It's a spiffier hotel but you could not get out and exercise. At least at the Ibis, you could walk around in the carpark for some fresh air."
During late March, all of April and May and 20 days in June, he remained in Sydney where he was based before late 2017 when he officially took over running the company from ex-CEO Mark Adamson.
It was not until June 20 that he flew back to New Zealand, arriving in Auckland and being sent by authorities directly under security to the Rotorua hotel to sit out the two weeks.
Taylor was last year New Zealand's highest-paid chief executive.
He earned $5.3m, putting him ahead of Fonterra's Theo Spierings, who appeared on the Herald's pay survey with $4.6m, ex-Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon with $4.2m and SkyCity's Graeme Stephens at $3.9m.
In July, Taylor told the Herald of his Ibis quarantine stay: "I've got a ceremony every morning where I do my workout, have a cup of tea and I've got my little chart on the wall and I cross off each day. It was pretty grim at the start."
Did he do the red crosses again in Sydney? Of course. "It's part of my process to stay sane."
Taylor is not a keen television watcher, instead choosing to work during his month-long quarantine stay which he said helped the time to go much faster.
"I just work, it's not that bad. You just keep yourself busy on the weekends, a little busier than I'd like," he said.
He will spend Christmas with his family in Sydney, then return here in January when he hopes he won't have to do a third lag.
Pre-Covid, Taylor was spending one week out of four in Australia. Fletcher had a substantial part of its business there although the core was in New Zealand, he says.
The markets certainly like what he has been doing lately, regardless of where he's based.
Grant Swanepoel, Grant Lowe and Luan Nguyen of Jarden Equity Research today released an analysis of Fletcher's performance yesterday.
They praised EBIT of $227m for this financial year's first four months, up $80m on the previous corresponding period.
"This is well above our ahead of market expectation as cost out programme has been more successful and demand growth being more robust. We are now forecasting 1H21 EBIT of $302m, FY21 EBIT of $527m, up from $435m previously,"
The expect Fletcher's current momentum to continue although they retained their neutral rating.
Fletcher will make net profit after tax of $217m in the year to June 30, 2021, a big turnaround on the previous year's $196m loss. Its NPAT will then rise to $262m for the 2022 year and be the same by 2023, the analysts forecast.
Fletcher shares are trading today around $5.19 on the NZX, giving a market cap of $4.2b.