And finally, miles away from retailing, but still in a tough sector – mining services – contract driller and services group Ausdrill (ASL) produced a surprise profit warning yesterday and the shares slumped.
They dropped 11.2% to 86.5c, heading back to the lows of two months ago as it warned that problems in Africa were behind the warning.
Ausdrill warned that profit for the year to June would be around $25-30 million, well short of its earlier forecast of a $35 million net profit.
It blamed problems at a joint venture in Africa, but also pointing to the fact that the downturn in the resources sector for services and drilling (look at Boart Longyear) had not yet bottomed.
And the company said that when the slowdown stopped, any recovery will be slow (as many other sectors of the economy are currently finding).
ASL 1Y – Ausdrill cuts profit forecast
However the final impact of the problems on earnings might be larger than yesterday’s forecast because the lowered forecast does not take into account any prospective write-downs.
"Provided there is not a significant downturn in commodity prices from current levels, the mining downturn may have bottomed out or be close to bottoming," it said.
"However any recovery will be slow with challenging market and mining industry conditions continuing in fiscal 2015, with subdued activity particularly in the Australian market," the company said in its statement yesterday.
