Iron Ore Price Powers To Six-Year High
Iron ore prices leapt to multi-year highs on Tuesday as an explosion of demand from Chinese mills and strong rises on futures market pushed prices higher.
Read MoreIron ore prices leapt to multi-year highs on Tuesday as an explosion of demand from Chinese mills and strong rises on futures market pushed prices higher.
Read MoreAnother to company benefit from panic buying was Asaleo Care’ where profits more than doubled in the six months to June. The company on Tuesday said net profit for the half was $18.8 million, more than double the $7.8 million for the first half of 2019, thanks to solid revenue growth triggered by the consumer stampede.
Read MoreA loss for metal recycling business Sims Metal in the year to June – a big loss of $265.3 million for the full financial year on a statutory basis after COVID-19 lockdowns across the globe slashed its scrap metal intake and profit margins.
Read MoreAs widely expected supermarket chain, Coles Group has had a very profitable COVID-19 crisis and so will its shareholders. Coles’ said on Tuesday that earnings before interest and tax (EBIT), excluding a range of significant items, rose 4.7% to $1.76 billion, much better and stronger than 2018-19’s 8.3% dip (which was complicated by the spin-off from Wesfarmers in November 2018).
Read MoreCochlear’s annus horribilis caught up with it on Tuesday when the financial cost of the turbulent year was laid open for all to see.
Read MoreBHP has trimmed its sales heading into 2020-21 thanks to the weak global economy, uncertain recovery, the continuing blight of COVID-19 and a restructuring of its minerals portfolio to be done.
Read MoreWestpac has joined its smaller rival in Bendigo and Adelaide in dropping dividend for the 2019-20 financial year. After Westpac suspended its interim dividend in May, the board decided it is prudent not to pay a first-half dividend at all, as the bank faces a highly uncertain outlook due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Read MoreAustralia’s largest steelmaker, BlueScope, has matched a warning of lower earnings for the year to June with news yesterday that statutory earnings fell a massive 91%. The fall came amid weak profits for steel products in Australia, Asia, the US, and New Zealand.
Read MoreAnother company to follow previous downgraded guidance for the year to June (like BlueScope) was Lendlease which on Monday reported a $310 million full-year loss for the year to June.
Read MoreOnline retailer Kogan was yet another to confirm changed guidance for the year to June – this time on the upside (compared with the downgrades for BlueScope and loss for Lendlease).
Read MoreCovid-19 and the various lockdowns across Australia have destroyed earnings of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, with the major regional lender revealing that profits for 2019-20 nearly halved.
Read MoreJB Hi-Fi has been one of the biggest benefactors of Australia’s coronavirus lockdowns, with thousands of Australians buying new TVs, monitors, laptops, phones, watches, and keyboards to help work from home throughout March and April.
Read MoreShares in GWA Group fell sharply yesterday after the bathrooms and kitchens group revealed a COVID19 – powered sales slump in the year to June saw sales fall short of forecasts.
Read MoreJuly’s slump in Australian iron ore exports to China from the world’s largest export port at Port Hedland has passed without too much comment, so was it a one-off or was it something deeper?
Read MoreOil also lost ground on Friday as analysts downgraded their demand forecasts for this year because of the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on major economies.
Read MoreA weak start to trading on the ASX today after a big slide in futures trading on Friday night. The ASX futures platform saw a slump of 58 points or 1% after a mixed end to the week on Wall Street. That comes after a week when major global share markets rose – with the exception of Chinese shares.
Read MoreGold futures ended lower Friday, falling after two days of gains as the US dollar and US bond yields bounced higher. The dip and those earlier in the week were enough to give gold its first weekly loss in 10 weeks.
Read MoreThe Australian June profit reporting season peaks this week with some high-quality corporates reporting. Reports are expected from at least 40 ASX 200 companies.
Read MoreBerkshire’s quarterly fund manager 13F filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that for the first time ever, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has gone heavily into shares of a gold miner.
Read MoreApart from the ongoing global focus on the coronavirus pandemic, the coming week looks like being relatively quiet so far as economic news is concerned. The Australian June 30 reporting season will be the big business news locally, along with preliminary retail sales data for July.
Read MoreMixed news about the strength of China’s economic recovery on Friday which do not support the idea that the economy is recovering strongly.
Read MoreLike its larger foreign rival, Barrick, Australia’s largest gold and copper miner, Newcrest, lifted its profit in the year to June by 15%, despite gold output falling 13%.
Read MoreThe update showed that the NAB’s third-quarter cash earnings fell 7% to $1.55 billion from a year ago thanks to what the bank said were early signs of deterioration in credit quality.
Read MoreBetter news from July’s Labour Force report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday. But for the first time ever more than one million people out of work, available to work and actively looking for work.
Read MoreAs expected Woodside Petroleum reported a massive half-year loss, thanks to the billions of dollars of impairments announced earlier this year and the impact of the collapse in oil and LNG prices.
Read MoreHave investors forgiven Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) after the poor updates and other headwinds in the first six months of 2020? The surge in the share price yesterday in the wake of the 2019-20 annual results suggest it might now be returning to the market’s good books, especially with hints of an upturn in demand in China.
Read MoreInsurer, QBE Group will defy an interim loss and give shareholders a surprise (but small) dividend for the six months to June 30. The global insurer revealed a US$712 million ($A993.6 million) net loss for the June half, slightly better than the $US750 million estimate in a late July update.
Read MoreWoohoo, investors loved the AMP’s loss-strewn June half-year report yesterday. The reason? The decision to return of capital to shareholders by way of a special dividend from the sale of AMP Life and a $200 million share buyback (subject to stability in the market).
Read MoreA big thumbs down from investors to what seems to have been a very solid 2019-20 set of figures from appliance distributor, Breville Group.
Read MoreFlight Centre shareholders have been warned to expect a loss of more than $800 million when it reports its full-year results later this month as the travel group continues to battle the impact of COVID-19 on its core travel agency business here and offshore.
Read MoreTelstra will pay a final unchanged dividend of 8 cents a share to shareholders. That makes a steady 16 cents a share payout for 2019-20. But that didn’t impress the market which instead focused on forecasts for sharp falls in revenue and earnings.
Read MoreGold’s big slump steadied in regular trading on Wednesday but then re-emerged in after-hours electronic trading. Equities settled higher at the close of the session, oil futures rose again to new post-March highs while iron ore prices were modestly firmer.
Read MoreToll road operator Transurban swung to a $111 million loss for the year to June 30 after the COVID-19 pandemic ’ate’ traffic volumes on its network of toll roads in Australia and the US.
Read MoreOnline recruitment group Seek was another leading company (like IAG last Friday and Downer EDI, also yesterday) to confirm previously announced write-downs, losses, and impairments, and no final dividend.
Read MoreDowner EDI expects to resume paying dividends this financial year, after re-confirming on Wednesday that it won’t be paying a final dividend for 2019-20 after write-downs and other charges pushed it to a statutory net loss of $155.7 million.
Read MoreThe Reserve Bank of New Zealand left its key interest rate unchanged at 0.25% yesterday, but markedly increased its quantitative easing target to $NZ100 billion and hinted at the possible introduction of negative interest rates.
Read MoreThe Commonwealth Bank has slashed final dividend for the 2019-20 financial year by more than 50% in the wake of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.
Read MoreIs there a sell-off in gold emerging after Comex futures suffered their biggest daily loss for more than seven years, while silver had its biggest slump in 9 years?
Read MoreA decision to drop its final dividend tells us all we want to know about the outlook for Challenger Ltd, the Sydney-based annuities giant. The company revealed the decision in its full-year results announcement yesterday.
Read MoreMore confirmation of the toll Victoria’s lockdowns are having on the economy with the July jobs report tomorrow looking to take a hit from the new tighter approach to community movement across Melbourne in particular.
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