Baby Bunting (BBN):
Baby Bunting shares have surged 22pc to a 3-week high of $2.42 on improved profit guidance this morning. Macquarie Equities says Baby Bunting’s latest guidance - where its FY19 EBITDA forecast range was lifted to $25m-$27m vs $24m-$27m previuosly -shows “management have a reasonable degree of confidence in the outlook with trends to date in line with our expectations”. But the broker has kept its Neutral rating and unchanged $2.25 target price on the retailer as it’s trading “at a material premium to discretionary retail peers”. “While acknowledging a stronger growth profile, it reflects weak comps and we remain cautious on the outlook for the discretionary retail sector in general given broader sector headwinds,” the broker says. BBN shares last up 18pc at $2.35.
Blue Sky Alternative Investments Ltd (BLA):
Blue Sky Alternative Asset Management has named Andrew Day, the former boss of Hastings Funds Management, as chairman ahead of a vote to conclude its rescue deal with Oaktree Capital Management. Brisbane-based Blue Sky was the target of the now defunct activist short-seller Glaucus in March, setting off a chain of events that led to the exit of the firm's former managing director, and the unravelling of the group's growth which was fuelled by seeding new funds in unlisted markets.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA):
Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn has acknowledged that the bank has been in a vicious cycle of putting out spot fires and repaying customers because it hadn't properly invested in its systems and processes. Mr Comyn said the bank had been unable to learn from the lessons of the past because it was focused on the wrong things including "collaboration" which had distracted it from looking after customers.
Fairfax Media:
Fairfax Media shareholders have voted in favour of its $4 billion merger with Nine Entertainment after former Domain Group boss and one-time senior Fairfax executive Antony Catalano attempted to block the deal by buying a controlling stake in the newspaper publisher. In the final vote, 81.49 per cent of Fairfax (FXJ) shareholders voted in favour of the deal and 18.51 per cent against Nine shareholders don’t need to vote on the merger as the company will own 51.1 per cent of the enlarged group, with Fairfax shareholdings holding the remaining 48.9 per cent.
Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund (FSF):
Fonterra is believed to be weighing a sale of its South American operations as well as its ice cream company, Tip Top, amid a strategic review aimed at boosting its returns. Moreover, It is understood that investment bank Macquarie Capital has been hired to sell Tip Top, a well-known brand in New Zealand, thought to be worth about $NZ400 million ($375m).
Myer (MYR):
Myer’s strategy to revive profitability is under pressure after the retailer flagged that first-quarter sales were falling faster than expected and analysts are starting to cut the department store’s full-year earnings forecasts. Myer’s sales for the first three months of the current financial year were down 4.8 per cent compared to the same time last year and were off 4.3 per cent on a comparable store basis. In a statement to the ASX on Friday, the department store said its total online sales grew by 3.6 per cent during the period.
National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB):
NAB has become the first of the big four banks to go live with Chinese payments powerhouse Alipay’s platform, with the service to be made available to NAB’s business customers early next year. With an initial pilot set to start this month, NAB’s executive general manager of deposit and transaction services, Shane Conway, said he was expecting a strong uptake from businesses once the service was made available more broadly. “We have looked at the modelling and I think it will be quite dynamic,” he told The Australian. He added that the bank’s merchant customers had been clamouring to get Alipay integrated into their point-of-sales terminals. “We’ve listened to our customers. We will be the first major bank to go live and the most critical piece to this is we received lots of feedback … there is huge demand.” The integration will allow businesses with a NAB merchant terminal to offer Chinese tourists the option to pay with Alipay, which serves over 700 million active users in China.
Pact Group Holdings Ltd (PGH):
The nation’s largest manufacturer of rigid plastic packaging, billionaire Raphael Geminder’s Pact Group, says it will move more of its operations offshore to Asia because of the soaring cost of doing business in Australia. Pact has closed three local manufacturing sites over the past 12 months among more than 60 it runs in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the US after undertaking extensive work on establishing a reliable and cost-effective import supply chain for select product categories. Pact, which has more than 4000 staff, supplies a wide range of plastic and steel packaging to the food, household cleaning, pharmaceutical, personal care, agricultural, chemical and industrial markets. Mr Geminder said the company’s Asian platform and the many years of experience operating in the region were critical in helping Pact decide to make more product offshore, but he also blamed the soaring cost of manufacturing locally.
RIO TINTO LIMITED (RIO):
Rio Tinto’s rumoured copper discovery in a remote corner of Western Australia could trigger a fresh exploration rush and rewrite global geological opinion about the state’s exploration potential. The project, which has been christened Winu, sits in the Paterson Range of WA, between the Pilbara and Kimberley regions. While Rio Tinto has had nothing to say about what it may have found, it has been aggressively pegging ground around the region and has established a sizeable exploration camp at the site. There has also been a flurry of activity among other companies in the region, with Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group snapping up a large collection of leases and mid-tier miner Independence Group securing a joint venture with Paterson Range explorer Encounter Resources.
Villa World Ltd (VLW):
Villa World chief executive Craig Treasure believes that by appealing to customers looking for affordable housing options, it is bracing the listed residential developer against the property downturn. Following the company’s annual general meeting on Friday, Mr Treasure told The Australian that developing properties that appeal to the lower end of the market had fortified the business. “That part of the market is much more resilient. It doesn’t go up as much in price, but it doesn’t go down as much. It is everyday housing that people live in,” Mr Treasure said.
Viva Energy (VEA):
Lower oil price margins have forced Viva Energy to cut profit forecasts just months after its $2.7 billion float earlier this year. The company said in a statement earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would be closer to $543 million against prospectus forecasts of $605.1 million. Net profit would be $280 million, against forecasts of $324.1 million. Viva (VEA) has a long term retail supply deal with supermarket giant Coles, which has resulted in the latter booking a sharp fall in fuel earnings from $190 million to $133 million.
(Source: AIMS)
Baby Bunting shares have surged 22pc to a 3-week high of $2.42 on improved profit guidance this morning. Macquarie Equities says Baby Bunting’s latest guidance - where its FY19 EBITDA forecast range was lifted to $25m-$27m vs $24m-$27m previuosly -shows “management have a reasonable degree of confidence in the outlook with trends to date in line with our expectations”. But the broker has kept its Neutral rating and unchanged $2.25 target price on the retailer as it’s trading “at a material premium to discretionary retail peers”. “While acknowledging a stronger growth profile, it reflects weak comps and we remain cautious on the outlook for the discretionary retail sector in general given broader sector headwinds,” the broker says. BBN shares last up 18pc at $2.35.
Blue Sky Alternative Investments Ltd (BLA):
Blue Sky Alternative Asset Management has named Andrew Day, the former boss of Hastings Funds Management, as chairman ahead of a vote to conclude its rescue deal with Oaktree Capital Management. Brisbane-based Blue Sky was the target of the now defunct activist short-seller Glaucus in March, setting off a chain of events that led to the exit of the firm's former managing director, and the unravelling of the group's growth which was fuelled by seeding new funds in unlisted markets.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA):
Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn has acknowledged that the bank has been in a vicious cycle of putting out spot fires and repaying customers because it hadn't properly invested in its systems and processes. Mr Comyn said the bank had been unable to learn from the lessons of the past because it was focused on the wrong things including "collaboration" which had distracted it from looking after customers.
Fairfax Media:
Fairfax Media shareholders have voted in favour of its $4 billion merger with Nine Entertainment after former Domain Group boss and one-time senior Fairfax executive Antony Catalano attempted to block the deal by buying a controlling stake in the newspaper publisher. In the final vote, 81.49 per cent of Fairfax (FXJ) shareholders voted in favour of the deal and 18.51 per cent against Nine shareholders don’t need to vote on the merger as the company will own 51.1 per cent of the enlarged group, with Fairfax shareholdings holding the remaining 48.9 per cent.
Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund (FSF):
Fonterra is believed to be weighing a sale of its South American operations as well as its ice cream company, Tip Top, amid a strategic review aimed at boosting its returns. Moreover, It is understood that investment bank Macquarie Capital has been hired to sell Tip Top, a well-known brand in New Zealand, thought to be worth about $NZ400 million ($375m).
Myer (MYR):
Myer’s strategy to revive profitability is under pressure after the retailer flagged that first-quarter sales were falling faster than expected and analysts are starting to cut the department store’s full-year earnings forecasts. Myer’s sales for the first three months of the current financial year were down 4.8 per cent compared to the same time last year and were off 4.3 per cent on a comparable store basis. In a statement to the ASX on Friday, the department store said its total online sales grew by 3.6 per cent during the period.
National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB):
NAB has become the first of the big four banks to go live with Chinese payments powerhouse Alipay’s platform, with the service to be made available to NAB’s business customers early next year. With an initial pilot set to start this month, NAB’s executive general manager of deposit and transaction services, Shane Conway, said he was expecting a strong uptake from businesses once the service was made available more broadly. “We have looked at the modelling and I think it will be quite dynamic,” he told The Australian. He added that the bank’s merchant customers had been clamouring to get Alipay integrated into their point-of-sales terminals. “We’ve listened to our customers. We will be the first major bank to go live and the most critical piece to this is we received lots of feedback … there is huge demand.” The integration will allow businesses with a NAB merchant terminal to offer Chinese tourists the option to pay with Alipay, which serves over 700 million active users in China.
Pact Group Holdings Ltd (PGH):
The nation’s largest manufacturer of rigid plastic packaging, billionaire Raphael Geminder’s Pact Group, says it will move more of its operations offshore to Asia because of the soaring cost of doing business in Australia. Pact has closed three local manufacturing sites over the past 12 months among more than 60 it runs in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the US after undertaking extensive work on establishing a reliable and cost-effective import supply chain for select product categories. Pact, which has more than 4000 staff, supplies a wide range of plastic and steel packaging to the food, household cleaning, pharmaceutical, personal care, agricultural, chemical and industrial markets. Mr Geminder said the company’s Asian platform and the many years of experience operating in the region were critical in helping Pact decide to make more product offshore, but he also blamed the soaring cost of manufacturing locally.
RIO TINTO LIMITED (RIO):
Rio Tinto’s rumoured copper discovery in a remote corner of Western Australia could trigger a fresh exploration rush and rewrite global geological opinion about the state’s exploration potential. The project, which has been christened Winu, sits in the Paterson Range of WA, between the Pilbara and Kimberley regions. While Rio Tinto has had nothing to say about what it may have found, it has been aggressively pegging ground around the region and has established a sizeable exploration camp at the site. There has also been a flurry of activity among other companies in the region, with Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group snapping up a large collection of leases and mid-tier miner Independence Group securing a joint venture with Paterson Range explorer Encounter Resources.
Villa World Ltd (VLW):
Villa World chief executive Craig Treasure believes that by appealing to customers looking for affordable housing options, it is bracing the listed residential developer against the property downturn. Following the company’s annual general meeting on Friday, Mr Treasure told The Australian that developing properties that appeal to the lower end of the market had fortified the business. “That part of the market is much more resilient. It doesn’t go up as much in price, but it doesn’t go down as much. It is everyday housing that people live in,” Mr Treasure said.
Viva Energy (VEA):
Lower oil price margins have forced Viva Energy to cut profit forecasts just months after its $2.7 billion float earlier this year. The company said in a statement earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization would be closer to $543 million against prospectus forecasts of $605.1 million. Net profit would be $280 million, against forecasts of $324.1 million. Viva (VEA) has a long term retail supply deal with supermarket giant Coles, which has resulted in the latter booking a sharp fall in fuel earnings from $190 million to $133 million.
(Source: AIMS)
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