Top 100 CEO Interviews
Issue No. 37 - October/November 2007
Hills holds high groung
After a busy year that saw the sale of its long-time home base at Edwardstown and an intricate, strategic reshuffling of capital, production methods and priorities, SA manufacturing giant Hills Industries remains a success story.
Straight-talking MD David Simmons is very happy with the listed company’s performance against the background of extreme competitive pressure in its traditional markets — and the way the corporate ‘family’ is handling itself.
“The year to June 2007 was significant for the Hills Industries Group,” David says. “We achieved $1 billion in turnover for the first time.
“In addition, when our share price hit $5.71 during the fourth quarter of the year we achieved another billion-dollar milestone being our market capitalisation.
“The year was also the 15th year of successive profit increases for the Group.”
Corporate structure remains patterned on the family firm legacy.
“Although Hills has been listed on the Australian Stock Exchange for nearly 50 years we have sought to preserve a number of family values which we think are important,” David says.
“In particular we work in a collegiate way across all business units and certainly believe in the notion that ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’.
The structure delegates a lot of authority to managers within the group.
“Hills operates a portfolio of businesses each with their own General Manager or Managing Director,” David says.
“We encourage our managers to direct and operate their businesses with a high degree of autonomy and they understand that our overall objective is to grow revenue and earnings through a combination of organic growth and acquisition.”
Making this philosophy work depends on good people and like all larger firms Hills has begun to struggle in the area, with volatility a particular worry.
“The ability to attract and retain good people has really b...
