Harvey Norman boss Gerry Harvey has slammed online-only retailers, saying Wesfarmers were conned when they bought the Catch Group.

In a wide-ranging interview with the AFR, following yesterday’s release of Harvey Norman’s lacklustre financials, Harvey argued the company’s shares, currently sitting at $3.78, were in fact worth “six to eight bucks”.

He even suggested the journalist should “sell your house, sell your boat, sell your car, put the lot into Harvey Norman and then ring me in three or four years, and you won’t need to be a journalist any more,” to which the writer replied that Harvey had made a similar claim five years ago.

Harvey Norman shares have since moved from $3.65 in February 2018 to $3.78 this afternoon. Not exactly retirement money.

Harvey argues Harvey Norman’s property portfolio are badly underestimated — in the books at $3.9 billion and up $107 million during the half after external valuers reappraised the properties.

“There is no value attributed to that whatsoever. In fact, it works a bit the opposite way, where they start to question the value of our property,” he told the paper.

The AFR points out that, with a market value of $4.8 billion for the entire company, these properties are clearly undervalued by the market — or else, Harvey Norman is worth just $800 million, despite turning over $3.5 billion in the Australian market in just six months.

Harvey says his 30-strong property department told him if the properties were sold off individually, they would net $5 billion alone.

“The property is more valuable than platinum and gold – but it’s not regarded as that.”

Harvey also pointed to the return to physical shopping as a sign of his company’s success, before noting the fall of online-only retailers who were “crowing out there a year or two ago about how they were going to take over our business.”

“If you’re an online-only retailer now your chances of survival are slim – it doesn’t matter who you are,” Harvey said.

“[Wesfarmers] were conned,” he declared.

“Catch has cost them half a billion, and it will cost them another half a billion before they close it down.”

Catch recently reported losses of $108 million for the first half of FY23.

“The disappointing financial performance in Catch reflected operational and execution challenges in addition to the broader decline in online retail demand during the period,” Wesfarmers CEO Rob Scott said of the result.