Former Ariadne company director Murray Boyte has taken over as chairman after the rental village operator’s largest shareholder Cooper Investors moved against Mr Levison ahead of the company’s recent annual general meeting.
Cooper had sent around a letter to other shareholders expressing concern with the company and the board’s performance.
As we reported here, Eureka’s profits dropped 37.5% to $6.5M this year from the previous FY results.
In response, Mr Levison wrote an impassioned four-and-a-half page response to investors to dispute its “unfair assessment” of the company’s position.
Mr Levison points out that at the time he joined the board in December 2013, the company had a market capitalization of around $5M and was “at best breaking even”.
“It quickly became clear to me that this model was not sustainable and would not attract high quality long term investors. With the support of the Board, I introduced the Eureka ‘Buy and Build’ strategy whereby Eureka transitioned away from ‘operator’ only to ‘owner operator’.”
This enabled the company to build its portfolio which now includes over $100M in retirement village assets.
Mr Levison also pointed to the benefits of Eureka’s partnership with in-home care provider Blue Care and its low-cost model for its 2,500 residents.
“We are achieving success in circumstances where successive governments have shown an inability to deal with the growing problem of residential care for independent retirees without savings.”
You can read the full letter here.
Mr Levison will stay on as a non-executive director.
