Ayres Rock Resort sale swells | Day questions Perpetual-KKR | NAOS shaves COG stake | Enlitic raise

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Two famed pieces of Australian tourism, the Ayers Rock Resort and the Mossman Gorge Cultural Centre, have come up for sale as the sector rebounds to near pre-pandemic levels.

The federal government’s Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation (ILSC) has launched a formal sale process for the operational assets of its subsidiary Voyages Indigenous Tourism Australia. Voyages is the operator of the 100-square-kilometre iconic Ayers Rock Resort – the only major resort property near the World Heritage-listed Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

Also on the block is Voyages-operated Mossman Gorge Cultural Centre (MGCC), an eco-tourism and cultural centre inland of Port Douglass which offers its 300,000 annual visitors access and guided tours of the Mossman Gorge World Heritage area. The centre, which includes a gift shop and cafe, was built by the ILSC in collaboration with the Mossman Gorge Aboriginal Community and Kuku Yalanji elders and is a major employer of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The decision to sell comes six months after the corporation tapped Greenhill & Co and Gilbert + Tobin to run a strategic review for its subsidiary Voyages, as revealed by Street Talk.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

Australia public M&A total deal value of $49.2 billion for the 2024 financial year was well below $75.6 billion for FY23 and $123.7 billion the year prior, according to Freehills’ annual report. The previous five years’ average stands at $60.6 billion.

The sharemarket had its steepest decline in three weeks on Thursday, tracking a weak lead from Wall Street and a sharp fall in Nvidia’s stock in after-hours trading.

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.