If you’re looking for tension, drama and a fierce intellectual contest, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal’s public hearing into electronic lodgment network operator service fees is an unlikely place to find it.
But the emotions, and the financial stakes, at that Microsoft-Teams-enabled meeting on July 21 were running high. The management and shareholders of ASX-listed Property Exchange Australia, better known as PEXA, were still in a state of shock after the regulator’s interim ruling had obliterated $400 million of its market value.
The public hearing was a chance for them to state their case that the findings, which would force them to cut prices by 20 per cent and halve their profits, were overly harsh and should be reconsidered.
The odds of that are looking slim and PEXA, the property settlement monopolist, has few friends. The investors who were caught out by the ruling, which include industry super funds and the Commonwealth Bank, are wondering: how did it get to this point?
How did they find themselves holding the bag after a near decade-long stoush ended in emphatic defeat? They’re at a loss, but in trying to make sense of PEXA’s predicament they’ve come to realise that the goodwill used to create this vital digital infrastructure has been entirely offset by the bad blood that has festered ever since.
Source: https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-markets/pexa-faces-a-steep-price-cut-and-investors-a-hard-reality-check-20260730-p60k41