Already a subscriber?Lauren Bolster read the email from her four-year-old daughter’s childcare centre and was left exasperated, again. It was in January and ASX-listed G8 Education, which runs an Adelaide centre among 430 facilities with names like Penguin Childcare or Casa Bambini,G8 Education CEO Pejman Okhovat says staff retention is improving and that makes centres more stable.
G8’s email highlighted the inflationary demands on its business, and added that the federal government’s childcare subsidy absorbs most of the increase. Bolster was unmoved. “We are still paying for it because we all pay tax,” she says. Gold Coast-based G8 will be relying on keeping and attracting parents like Bolster and shareholders invested in its strategy as it tries restoring earnings growth at Australia’s biggest listed childcare operator.Challenges await. There’s balancing an influx of rival centres and retaining adequate staff in the heavily ratio-regulated industry, which restricts scale benefit