G8 Education, one of Australia’s biggest listed early learning providers with about 400 centres, is navigating a brutal period where trust, demand and money are all under pressure at the same time. The group had already been contending with rising costs and softer demand when allegations of serious child abuse by a former employee at one of its sites came to light in mid-2025, triggering intense public scrutiny and rattling families who rely on long day care.
By mid-February, even with families largely back from summer holidays, only 54.4% of available places were filled across G8 centres, about 7.5 percentage points lower than the same time a year earlier and well below historic levels that typically sat above 60% even during the pandemic. That weak attendance fed into a net loss of about $303 million for the year to 31 December, a result heavily shaped by a $350 million write-down linked to lower occupancy and limits on how far fees can be pushed without driving more families away. Over the year, average occupancy was 65.8%, down almost 5 percentage points on 2024, while revenue slipped 7% to roughly $948 million and underlying net profit fell 18% to about $59 million.
The scandal also prompted a strong regulatory response. State and federal authorities rolled out tougher child safety rules, including compulsory staff training, more frequent compliance checks and CCTV trials in centres, moves that G8 publicly supports but says add complexity and cost to an already stretched operating model. The company has been selling underperforming sites, exiting leases and investing in service quality, and now reports that about 95% of its centres meet or exceed national quality standards. At the same time it is contending with broader headwinds like cost-of-living pressures on families, stubborn inflation, a flattening in female workforce participation, lower birth rates and rising competition in the childcare market.
All of this appears to be reshaping G8’s future options. The balance sheet has taken a hit, a planned share buyback is on hold, no final dividend has been paid and the market has marked the stock down more than 70% over the past year, with another 17% slide taking the share price to about 38 cents. The sector appears to be entering a new normal where safety standards are higher, regulatory oversight is tighter and parents are more cautious, and G8 now has to show it can recover occupancy and rebuild trust while managing costs and adapting to shifting demand patterns. How effectively it does that is likely to influence not just its own fortunes but expectations across the wider early learning industry.
