Business confidence continues to fall, according to the latest survey from the National Australia Bank of monthly business conditions.
While that’s gloomy news, there were a couple of other worrying portents from the NAB survey and from other announcements yesterday.
Residential property prices are looking stretched and the NAB and Merrill Lynch see falls of 5% to 10% coming over the next couple of years, and not much joy after that.
That will be bad news for the likes of Boral, Wattyl, Brickworks, the banks, especially Suncorp and the CBA, and for retailers like Harvey Norman.
Retailing is definitely hurting more than it seems from the outside: even the likes of Billabong, a big name locally and internationally for high margin, very successful sportswear, is seeing fewer items sold, although the slumping Australian dollar is helping offset the slowdown.
Mining companies are reviewing operations because of sliding metal prices, and importers like McPhersons Ltd, are doing the same because of the sliding currency, which bounced around 60 USc after a third successive day of Reserve Bank intervention. (It got up to just under 63 US cents overnight).
Furniture retailer, Nick Scali cut its earnings forecast yesterday because of slumping demand.
According to the NAB, the slump in activity next year will see a surge in unemployment and a blow-out in the federal budget by a massive $30 billion "over the next couple of years", and force residential house prices to fall by 5% to 10% over the next two years, according to the forecast from the bank, and from analysts at Merrill Lynch (See story below).
And while interest rates will fall further and inflation will follow next year, the slide in house prices will see them stagnating for three to five years: up to 2013 or longer, according to one of those forecasts.
The NAB reckons the Australian economy has slowed to 2001 levels (when we almost tipped into recession after the GST boost and the US slump). It sees the Reserve Bank cutting interest rates to 4.5% next year, but has forecast a $10 billion budget deficit for the 2010 financial year.
"While the Government’s Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook is due in a couple of weeks, fiscal expansion together with the negative impacts of slower economic growth may well see the Federal Budget turn to small deficit of say around $10bn during the next couple of years.”
It was around $21.7 billion in the year to June 2008, so the turnaround would be of the order of $30 billion.
The NAB also forecast the unemployment rate to rise to 6% during 2009/10) compared with the current rate 4.3%) and "core inflation will return to the RBA’s 2%-3% range’ despite another "near term surprise", and then fall further in 2010.
The NAB’s forecasts, contained in its latest survey of monthly business conditions, comes as analysts at Merrill Lynch in Sydney have forecast a 10% fall in house prices over the next two years, followed by three to five years of flat or no growth.
The NAB supported the Merrill Lynch contention that residential property prices will fall, but not by quiet as much as 10%.
"Our macro forecasts suggest that as the unemployment rate rises sharply through late 2009, the residential property market may deteriorate further into 2010 – notwithstanding improved affordability associated with significantly lower interest rates. Our forecasts are broadly based on unchanged housing prices in 2009 with a moderate further fall of around 5 per cent into 2010."
And leading retailer, Harvey Norman, revealed for a third week in a row that it is experiencing ‘negative’ same store sales growth: in the seven days to Sunday October 26, same store sales across Harvey Norman’s Australian stores fell 3.6%, after falls of 5.7% and 4.8% in the preceding three weeks.
Harvey Norman’s experience was supported by an update from a smaller Melbourne-based competitor, Clive Peeters, which told the market last Friday that same store sales were off 10% to 14% in the three months of the September quarter and things are not improving. The company will provide a fuller update at its AGM later in the week.
And Nick Scali’s annual meeting in Sydney heard yesterday that the company first half sales and profit for 2009 will be affected by the slowing economy and weakening Australian dollar.
CEO, Anthony Scali said while there been encouraging signs over the past three months in "sales order intake", sales for the first half were expected to be about $2 million below the corresponding period last year.
"The recent weakening of the Australian dollar in a very short period will cause a substantial one-off decline in our gross profit for the first half of 2008/09 and is expected to reduce earnings by $0.9 million to $1.4 million," Mr Scali told the AGM.
"Our net profit after tax for the first half of the current financial year is now likely to be between $2.3 million to $2.8 million, against the $4.62 million earned in the December half of 2007."
Harvey Norman has already revealed an 18% drop in earnings for the first two months of this financial year because of a slump in Ireland. But it hasn’t upgraded that forecast because of the slump over the past month to six weeks in Australia.
The NAB said it expects Australian economic growth to slow to 1.25% next year as the " full effects of falls in share and key commodity prices fall and slow global growth weigh on prospects, notwithstanding expectations of stimulatory policy responses from both Governments and RBA.’
It said its l
