Background: Seek is the Australian heavyweight champ in online job listings across having been around since 1997. Last financial year alone, it processed more than 58 million job applications every single month, which is about ten timesthe population of Sydney. But Seek isn’t just a job board, it’s also a global investor in employment platforms. It has invested in Chinese jobs portal Zhaopin, Brazilian jobs portal Brasil Online as well as South East Asia's JobsDB.

What happened: While Seek previously held a stake over 61% of Chinese jobs portal Zhaopin, it has progressively sold down over the past few years, after underwhelming results. Two years ago, Seek took a $141 million write-down on the Zhaopin investment. Now, it’s taken another hit, slashing $365 million off Zhaopin’s value.

What else: All up, more than two thirds of Seek's original investment value in Zhaopin has now evaporated. These repeated impairments are a painful signal that the challenges facing Zhaopin aren't short-term bumps, but deeper structural problems tied to China's sluggish jobs market.

What's the key learning?

💡An impairment is when a company reduces the reported value of an asset because it's worth less than what's on the books. It's essentially a financial reality check, and that's exactly what's happening with Zhaopin.

💡When the same asset keeps getting impaired again and again, it usually points to long-term problems, not temporary setbacks. Repeated write-downs suggest the business environment or competitive position isn't improving.

💡We've seen this movie before: Telstra's Sensis was once expected to be worth up to $10 billion, but repeated impairments followed as Google replaced its core business. Telstra eventually exited for just over $450 million, a fraction of expectations. If China's conditions don't improve, Zhaopin could become a similarly painful lesson for Seek.