Adelaide Brighton Limited (ABC):
The chief executive of cement maker Adelaide Brighton, Martin Brydon, is furious over the ‘‘blame game’’ on electricity reliability and wants politicians and operators to fix it after suffering a $13 million hit from the power crisis. ‘‘Forget the blame game. Let’s just find a solution,’’ he said after the electricity imposts from the big September blackout in South Australia and other outages helped drag the company’s net profit down by 10 per cent to $186.2 million. ‘‘All markets need reliability.’’ Mr Brydon said demand for cement and other products was very strong in construction markets in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, and improving in its home state of SA. But demand for cement had dropped in WA and the Northern Territory as the mining downturn hit.
Australia And New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ):
The head of home loans at ANZ Banking Group said banks need touse better data to more accurately assess the risk of borrowers defaulting, as the prudential regulator reinforced calls for bank vigilance over mortgage lending standards. Will Ranken, general manager of home loans and retail lending practices at ANZ, told a mortgage summit in Sydney that banks had ‘‘relatively blunt data measures at the moment’’ on their customers’ ability to repay, and should be gathering more information to predict behaviour of individual customers. ‘‘What we can start doing with data is not just [examining] the ability to service [a loan], but also their intention to service as well,’’ he told RFi Group’s Australian Mortgage Innovation Summit.
Crown Resorts Limited (CWN):
Crown Resorts chairman John Alexander says he will make ‘‘no apologies’’ for a bumper dividend payment that will deliver more than $387 million to major shareholder James Packer, describing it as a win for all investors. Despite delivering an operating result that Deutsche Bank described as ‘‘weaker than expected’’ Crown shares surged 7.9 per cent yesterday to close at $12.29. Investors cheered the 83¢ special dividend and plans for $500 million share buyback funded by its exit from Macau.
Flight Centre Travel Group Limited (FLT):
Travel group Flight Centre has downgraded full-year earnings guidance for the fourth time in two years after record bookings were offset by fierce international airfare discounting and adverse foreign exchange movements. Flight Centre said it expected underlying pre-tax earnings of $300 million to $330 million for the year ending June 30 compared with $320 million and $355 million previously. The company reported a first-half underlying pre-tax profit of $113.2 million, which was within its targeted range. Underlying net profit fell to $78.2 million in the six months ended December 31 from $105.7 million in the year-earlier period and revenue edged 0.6 per cent lower to $1.251 billion from $1.258 billion.
Investa Office Fund (IOF) & Cromwell Property Group (CMW):
Investa Office Fund chairman Richard Longes fired a broadside at suitor Cromwell Property Group for wanting access to sensitive company information without making a proper takeover bid. The $2.8 billion office landlord is in a stand-off with Brisbane-based Cromwell which approached its peer with a privatisation plan last year. Since then the two sides have failed to strike a confidentiality agreement, sparking a series of claims and counter claims on why Cromwell’s approach was going nowhere.
Macquarie Atlas Roads Group (MQA):
Macquarie Atlas Roads has deepened its foothold in the US after spending $US445 million ($577 million) to gain full ownership of Virginia tollroad Dulles Greenway. The company, which already owned 50 per cent of the 22-kilometre tollroad, will exercise its preemptive rights to buy out the other 50 per cent from Macquarie Infrastructure Partners. The acquisition lifts the amount of proportional earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) that Macquarie Atlas receives from its US tollroads to 16 per cent from 9 per cent.
OZ Minerals Limited (OZL):
OZ Minerals has budgeted for power prices at its flagship Prominent Hill copper mine to rise 30 per cent in 2017 and 60 per cent in following years, as it seeks to protect its profits from further power supply shocks. While those estimates are deliberately conservative, OZ chief executive Andrew Cole said they had been assumed ahead of the expiry of a major power contract this year. ‘‘Higher power costs, to be conservative, are already baked in to all of the guidance numbers we have issued,’’ he said on Thursday.
Qantas Airways Limited (QAN):
Qantas Airway chief executive Alan Joyce says his $2 billion turnaround program has been vindicated after cost cuts and fuel hedging helped the airline to weather the impact of fierce international competition and a declining resources sector and beat first-half earnings forecasts. The airline could not top last year’s record profit but the 7.5 per cent decline in first-half underlying earnings beat analysts’ forecasts. Qantas Airways has signalled improved conditions in the second half after an international airfare price war sent earnings growth backwards in the first half but was cushioned by cost cuts and fuel hedging, which helped the airline beat expectations and outperform other airlines in the region. Unprecedented international competition meant the airline could not top last year’s record profit but the 7.5 per cent decline in first-half underlying earnings beat analysts’ forecasts and sent the airline’s shares 5.3 per cent higher. Qantas said it remained profitable despite stiff competition because it now had the best margins of any other airline in the region. ‘‘The structure of our business and what we have done with the transformation has given us that advantage,’’ chief executive Alan Joyce said.
Ramsay Health Care Limited (RHC):
Ramsay Health Care chairman Michael Siddle has come under fire over the company’s failure to name a successor to chief executive Chris Rex who said he would step down this year. Mr Rex is retiring from the nation’s largest private hospital operator after 22 years. The company posted a 14 per cent rise in interim net profit to $255 million and lifted guidance. The lack of a plan ‘‘overshadowed what was a strong operational result,’’ analyst Nick Cameron said. Ramsay Health Care chairman Michael Siddle has come under fire over the company’s failure to name a successor to chief executive Chris Rex, who said he would step down this year. Mr Rex flagged his retirement from the nation’s largest private hospital operator, after 22 years with the company, on Thursday while delivering an upgrade to full-year guidance, and now expects net profit growth of 12 per cent to 14 per cent for 2016-17, up from 10 per cent to 12 per cent previously stated.
Westfield Corporation (WFD):
Global shopping centre giant Westfield Corporation has issued softer earnings guidance than some analysts had expected, reflecting slower growth, but has delivered a strong full-year result with its key earnings metric – funds from operations up 3.8 per cent to $US700 million. While the full-year result was in line, it was at the lower end of the group’s recently downgraded guidance range of 33.7-34¢ per share, leaving Westfield stock down 1.4 per cent on Thursday at $8.89. Westfield Corporation co-chief executives Peter and Steven Lowy said the year was a significant one for Westfield, ‘‘which saw the continued execution of our strategy to transform our assets into the pre-eminent global shopping centre portfolio’’. They said while there were constant reports of traditional department stores closing, Westfield was still attracting them and the big online retailers into its shopping centres.
(Source： AIMS)
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