The Australian December half profit reporting season heads towards its conclusion this Friday with over 80 major companies reporting this week including BHP, QBE, Worley Parsons, Qantas, Westfield and Woolworths.
The reporting season ends officially late on Friday night, but in reality there will be (as always) a long line of stragglers with awful results whose reports won’t appear until next Monday.
Most companies will be reporting interims, with only a handful of full year figures to be lodged.
So far the reporting season hasn’t seen too many surprises – either on the upside or downside.
Companies expected to report (later today) are BlueScope Steel, Beach Energy, Brambles, Caltex (full year), GPT Group, Lend Lease, Spark Infrastructure Group, and UGL.
Tomorrow sees BHP Billiton, Oil Search (full year), and QBE Insurance (full year) are scheduled to issue results.
Also reporting are Patties Foods (with the tainted berries scandal in everyone’s thinking), Speciality Fashion and Flight Centre (both of whom have already downgraded their guidance). Scentre, the former Westfield Retail Trust, reports it full year figures as well, along with Hills, Spotless, Petsec (full year) and Healthscope.
On Wednesday its the turn of pipeline giant, APA Group and Westfield (full year) to lead the way, along with Southern Cross Media, Veda Group and WorleyParsons.
On Thursday Qantas and Ramsay Healthcare lead the way, with support from Atlas Iron and Sydney Airport, along with Ausdrill, Nine Entertainment, Transfield, Blackmores, Perpetual and Billabong.
And Woolworths issues its interim results on Friday, with the performance of the weak Masters hardware chain a major area of interest for analysts. Also reporting are Harvey Norman and Treasury Wine Estates.
And with the December half profit reporting season is now 60% done, and the AMP’s chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver says that while “we have seen the usual pattern of good results being released early resulting in some deterioration over the past week, overall results remain better than feared."
“Around 57% of results have beaten expectations against a norm of 45%, 68% have seen profits rise from a year ago, 54% have seen their share price outperform the day results were released and 62% have increased their dividends,” he wrote at the weekend.
"Key themes have been falling profits amongst resources and mining services companies, but continued strength for the banks, ongoing cost control and solid growth in dividends.
"With the share market now trading on an above average forward PE of 15.5 times, the market has become very sensitive to companies that under or over deliver relative to expectations and so we have seen some significant share price reactions.
“Through all the noise though consensus earnings expectations for this financial year and next are little changed from where they were before the results started to flow.
“The consensus is for earnings growth this financial year of 1% with resources – 25% but industrials +10% and banks +8%" Dr Oliver wrote.
Source: AMP Capital
Source: AMP Capital
Source: AMP Capital
