The ASX has trimmed its half year payout to shareholders by 3% to 112.4 cents a share after missing the benefits of the big market recovery in the six months to December.
The 4 cents a share (or 3.4%) followed a 3.4% fall in net profit after tax to $241.8 million, which the company said was driven by lower interest earnings in the half (when the RBA again cut interest rates).
EBIT though rose 1.3% and revenue rose 3.4% in the half, but the “materially lower” interest earnings, due to the very low level of interest rates, saw net earnings dip.
The ASX said that the decline in its derivatives and OTC Markets, with lower short-term interest rate futures volumes, was offset by growth in listings and equity activities.
The 85 new listings over the half-year were up more than 50% from the previous half. The almost $52 billion in total capital raised represented a 24% increase. Most of that growth came from new company floats. A total of $60 billion in new capital was raised in 2020 by listed companies.
Chief executive Dominic Stevens acknowledged the November 16 outage in the ASX, which he said was the first major outage since 2016.
“The incident overshadows the significant improvements we have made to operational resilience via our Building Stronger Foundations program in recent years,” Mr Stevens said.
“While we are deeply sorry for the disruption, it is in the interests of our stakeholders that we continue to contemporise our technology.”
The stock exchange operator has also appointed a new chairman, with director Damian Roche to take over from Rick Holliday-Smith. Mr Holliday-Smith, who has been chairman since 2012, previously said this would be his final three-year term in 2018.
ASX shares eased 1.7% to $70.05 yesterday, underperforming the weaker wider market.
