Hyperion’s great escape
You don’t have to eat at Domino’s to know when to leave.
When to sell a stock? Equity Mates has a podcast episode on that; probably several. The retail punter will find plenty of guidance: get out once the investment thesis breaks, particularly when management loses the plot. Sound advice. The tricky part, as any active manager will tell you, is the timing. Nobody had WiseTech flagged because Richard White's most sophisticated logistics problem turned out to be a ream of NDAs thick enough to insulate a warehouse. The lesson of Australian markets, repeated with depressing regularity, is that by the time the news is out, the damage is done and the clever money is gone. Especially if you are Hyperion Asset Management.
On June 26, 2025, Hyperion reported selling nearly five million Domino's Pizza shares – $88 million worth – in a single disclosed disposal. The sale represented more than 60 per cent of the position Hyperion had disclosed in Domino's annual report the previous year. Over the preceding ten months, Hyperion had been selling Domino's in drips so measured that an observer might have mistaken it for a fund manager that still believed in the stock. That single transaction was roughly nine times larger than any sale it had reported since August 2024. With it, they fell off the substantial shareholder register.
Days later, on July 2, Domino's told the Australian Securities Exchange that its chief executive, Mark van Dyck, the heir to pizza delivery driver-turned-prophet Don Meij, was leaving. He'd been in the role for just eight months or roughly the shelf life of a Domino's garlic bread.
