McMillan Shakespeare slumps on FBT fears

Carbon tax or emissions trading scheme?

Investors in McMillan Shakespeare clearly would prefer the former. For the accelerated move to a trading scheme and floating price appears to have come at a significant cost to the business.

Its shares were slammed this morning, dropping 14.7% to $15.36 before the company requested the stock exchange suspend trading in the stock.

The shares began to slide as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Chris Bowen outlined the cost savings at a press conference in Townsville to compensate for the loss of revenue from the carbon tax.

The vast bulk of the $3.9 billion in savings will come from changes to the fringe benefits tax for vehicles used by companies and individuals, particularly around salary sacrificing. Those changes are expected to save $1.9 billion over the forward estimates.

Novated leasing for company cars and salary packaging forms the major part of McMillan Shakespeare’s business.

Of its five divisions, four relate to motor vehicle leasing and fleet management.

Interleasing is a fleet management specialist that runs FBT management, salary packaging and leasing of commercial and passenger vehicles.

Holden Leasing caters to commercial, small- to medium-sized enterprises and public sector leasing for General Motors vehicles.

While the division specialises in Holden, it also sources other vehicles. RemServe and Maxxia are also novated vehicle lease operations.

McMillan Shakespeare is part of the Uncapped 100.