CEO INSIGHTS – Week Ending 20 February 2026

Weight Loss Drugs

"It’s an absolute game changer. We’ve seen the adoption of GLP1s around the world, and the impact it has on healthcare, human behaviour, eating habits, and that is going to continue." Vikesh Ramsunder, CEO, Sigma Healthcare Ltd

Job Seekers

"Looking ahead, economic indicators are mixed across APAC. In Australia, expectations of more restrictive monetary policy are likely to weigh on employment growth and labour demand. New Zealand has a more positive outlook, with monetary policy supporting economic growth and a more active labour market." Ian Narev, CEO, Seek Ltd

Business Credit & SMEs

"Demand for business credit remains solid, with growth stable at around 9%. Looking ahead, further improvement in SME trading conditions is expected to be gradual, with the pace of economic growth constrained by capacity shortfalls, including skilled labour shortages." Market Statement, Judo Capital Holdings Ltd

Household Appliances

“Small appliances, the momentum in this category remains really strong with coffee, robotic vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances all performing well.” Nick Wells, CEO, JB Hi-Fi Ltd

Inflation

“We haven't seen it in the first half, but at the moment, we're definitely seeing suppliers starting to push price increases through in the PC category. The major driver of that now is cost increases for suppliers in memory and storage. And those price increases are likely to be on average around 20%. They haven't hit yet.” Nick Wells, CEO, JB Hi-Fi Ltd

“The construction costs, we're not seeing the continued ramp-up of construction costs.” Steven Sewell, CEO, Abacus Storage King Ltd

Rail Crossings

“Level crossings continue to be a safety issue for the rail industry…Collectively, we must step up efforts and investment to improve safety at level crossings. This includes the rail and road industries, all levels of government enforcement and road safety agencies and the general community.” Andrew Harding, CEO, Aurizon Holdings Ltd

Mortgages

“Looking forward, key considerations for the second half of '26. We think it is likely that a further cash rate increase will happen later this financial year…We also continue to see customers rolling off fixed rates and mostly favouring variable rate mortgages.” Richard Fennell, CEO, Bendigo & Adelaide Bank Ltd’

Advertising

“The way brands earn attention is shifting and increasingly, Out of Home is moving to the center of the media plan for marketers as they build out their creative and advertising strategies.” James Taylor, CEO, oOh!media Ltd

Property Transactions

“Transaction activity has been slow for a number of years, and there's a lot of people in the market that want and need to transact, and that's starting to turn into revenues for Colliers. So that's really what we're seeing.” Christian Mayer, CEO, Colliers International Group Inc.

Flooring

“Across our markets, commercial demand remained stable during the quarter, though continued weakness in housing turnover and sluggish home construction in the U.S. impacted our volume.” Jeff Lorberbaum, CEO, Mohawk Industries Inc [world’s largest flooring company]

Marine Infrastructure

"When you think about marine infrastructure, its critical sovereign infrastructure. Its critical for their trade, our economy and its very capital intensive and aging in nature...What that means is we've had multi-decade levels of increases in output, particularity in the energy and resources space. And that's placed more demand on port infrastructure, requiring more upgrades, expansion and our ongoing increasing maintenance spend. And that will only continue as we move into the future." David Macgeorge, CEO, SRG Global Ltd

Housing Supply

“Look, I just can't stress enough, there is a chronic undersupply of housing in Australia, and that chronic undersupply is gonna be there for a while. And there is a lot of pent-up demand that is looking to find a solution to this housing problem. So to a certain extent, one interest rate movement is probably not enough to move the needle. We certainly haven't seen any evidence on the ground.” Campbell Hanan, CEO, Mirvac Group Ltd

Machinery

“Then on the construction side, again, if you look around the world…Non-residential construction has been very strong.” Andrew Bonfield, CFO, Caterpillar Inc.

Hydration

“The 2 trends that we plan to capture at scale are fibre and hydration. Fibre is the #1 deficiency really in our diet…And as I said, hydration is a big opportunity. We're all dehydrated. We need to drink from the moment we wake up to the end of the day, we need much more liquid in our bodies and not any liquid. We need certain levels of functionality, electrolytes and some other solutions throughout the day, depending on the activity we're performing…We're going to take the science of sports into the science of every day and this will be another multiyear growth opportunity for us.” Ramon Laguarta, CEO, PepsiCo Inc.

SaaSmageddon

Now, because if an AI agent can do the work inside your systems, why do you need 15 different SaaS companies or providers with pretty dashboards sitting on top? If AI agents can do the work of employees, you don't need hundreds of SaaS subscriptions. And in our well, that's commonly known as seats. So if AI agents don't kill the software directly, it kills the head count that uses the software, which kills the per seat revenue model, which kills that software business.” Edward Chung, CEO, TechnologyOne Ltd