Episode 163: HotDoc Sale Bonanza, Corporate Travel Management Survives for now, Albo Kinda Cuts Business Class, Why Consumer Businesses Shouldn't Shut During Christmas and Busiest Airline Routes
The guys discuss HotDoc's $250M sale to Potentia, Corporate Travel Management, Albanese family travel rules, why smart businesses don't shut during Christmas, and the world's busiest airline routes.
The Contrarians catchup
Adir continues to up-skill The Contrarians audience, this time through the origin of the phrase “turn over a new leaf”: where “leaf” referred to a page in a book, symbolising starting fresh by writing a new chapter in life.
The guys discuss the economics of airlines operating on Christmas Day, taking into consideration marketing costs, lounge access, the cost of labour, and the many religions who don’t celebrate the holiday.
In case you didn’t notice, The Contrarians don’t take a break over Christmas, but that’s not true for a growing number of Australian businesses. Adam: “I’ve never understood why they shut over this time. Business owners don’t understand the brand damage caused by not serving your customers, but you’re also sending a customer to a competitor, who is taking your customers with a free CPA.”
Adir quizzes Adam on the most-travelled airline routes, which are all domestic, and most are within Asia. Listen in to find out where the Melbourne-Sydney route is ranked.
Adam returned serve with his own quiz: the world’s most popular e-commerce sites (with the caveat being Amazon’s regional domains are considered separate entities). It’s no surprise that the US Amazon website is number one, with around 2.7B visits per month, but the rest of the list is a surprise.
The third and final quiz: most popular movies based on number of tickets sold. Despite claiming to know nothing about movies, Adir guessed #2 out of the box.
Albo kinda cuts business class
Anthony Albanese proposed tightening MPs’ family travel entitlements after expense controversies, forcing economy flights, limiting destinations to Canberra or electorates, and restricting partner travel to official events. The changes aim to meet community standards and will be reviewed by the remuneration tribunal in January.
Adam: “I think there should be a cash limit. They should say you’ve got ten grand, or whatever it is, and you can spend it however you’d like. If you want 10 business class tickets, or 40 economy tickets, it’s up to you. Everyone should get a certain amount, maybe based on level.”
Corporate Travel Management survives for now
Corporate Travel Management secured lender support, extending bank guarantees and credit facilities, holding $177M cash despite a $160M overcharging scandal. Reporting deadlines were pushed to June 30 as investigations continue. Shares remain suspended, investors wary, but funding stability allows operations to continue while forensic reviews progress nationwide globally.
Adam: “I get these travel agent publications daily and every 2-3 months, you see Johnny Smith, travel agent in Manly, is going to jail because someone got a refund and took it to their own bank account. CTM is a big public company but they’re doing the exact same thing, they’re stealing money that should’ve been paid back to the customers.”
Adir: “It’s got a name in business. It’s called ‘too big to fail’. All of these investors, they don’t want this to go to zero. It’s not the same as banking, so it’s not going to bring the whole system down, but this will cause enough damage to enough people with vested interests that they want to keep it going almost at any cost.”
HotDoc sale bonanza
Potentia Capital has agreed to acquire HotDoc, Australia’s leading GP booking platform, outbidding Pacific Equity Partners in a $250–300M deal. HotDoc handles 25M appointments annually, serves 13 million Australians, and holds about 70% market share.
Adir: “It takes special founders to find a way to merge with a competitor for the benefit of everyone when they’ve dedicated so much of their life to trying to destroy that other competitor. It’s always been clear to many people that HotDoc and Healthengine belonged together, and the fact it wouldn’t happen, I thought would’ve been value-damaging for those two businesses.”
Adir: “You’ve got a business here that is sub-scale. The core business isn’t growing like a rocket. It’s got a competitor that’s equally as large and well run. I think good private equity operators with a strong track record like Potentia, they figure out ways to make money. But, it’ll be very interesting watching them make money here.”
Five other stories worth following:
AI startups attracted $192.7B in VC funding through September 2025, largely flowing to giants like Anthropic and xAI, fueling over 1,300 $100M+ firms and 500 unicorns, raising questions about bubble risk and infrastructure investments.
Trump said Ukraine and Russia are closer to peace after talks with Zelensky, but his plan requires territorial concessions without a referendum; Putin rejects a ceasefire as U.S. and Ukraine plan negotiations next month.
Nvidia and Groq signed a licensing deal to speed up and lower AI costs by improving inference, a bottleneck for Nvidia; investors see inference chips as crucial to moving AI from experiments into applications.
Gold is the strongest-trending asset, holding above its 200-day average since November 2023, while bitcoin trades 20% below. The bitcoin-gold ratio peaked after inauguration and has since fallen sharply, highlighting diverging market sentiment trends.
SpaceX is expected to go public eventually, with banks competing to lead its IPO. Traders assign Morgan Stanley the highest odds, followed by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, reflecting Elon Musk’s longstanding banking relationships historically.
What’s with the bikini?