The earnings avalanche rolls on, here’s a roundup of today’s reporters, updated throughout the day as the results come in, then collated here for the week:
Qantas – QAN
Covered here.
Adelaide Brighton – ABC
The cement and lime producer Adelaide Brighton (ABC) announced full year results to the market today, coming up with a 2% drop in net profit over last year, even though revenue and earnings (before interest and tax) increased by around 3%, the effect was mainly due to a higher tax rate.
The company was able to offset broad weakness in the residential construction sector with mining project work in SA and WA, and was buoyed by the high AUD on import margins.
The presentation had an interesting graph of concrete demand in Australia, showing a downturn of 15% over the last 15 months:
The final dividend was unchanged on last year at 9 cents per share, equating to a 5.6% fully franked yield at today’s closing price of $2.94 per share only down 0.3% compared to the market.
Compare the concrete price to the share price over the same period:
AMP Ltd – AMP
Financial services giant AMP reported a 11% drop in net profit, even though underlying profit was up over 20%, it was hammered by the digesting of its merger with AXA and the correction in risk markets throughout 2011.
This merger is so far proving to be a poor performer for shareholders, as Return on Equity (ROE) has slumped from a very good 26% to an average 15.1%, although this is early days and does include the absorption/transaction costs.
AMP announced a change in its dividend policy, with a reduction in its payout ratio from 75-85% to 70-80%, with only half franking for its final dividend which was cut slightly. At 14 cents per share, the current yield based on todays closing price of $4.29 (a fall of over 2%) is a sturdy 6.7%
AMP is facing short term resistance at its current share price and remains in a dominant downtrend:
ASX Ltd – ASX
The bourse bored the benevolent brokers with a broad result today, with profit up 2.1% over the previous half year period, on a modest increase in revenue.
ASX provided a very interesting chart in its presentation, calling the previous 30 or so months “GFC2”:
This goes some way to explain the reduction in listing revenue whilst structured products (CFD’s etc) and derivatives absorbed the loss, with daily average traded value continuing to fall.
The ASX declared an interim dividend of 92.8 cents per share, up nearly 3%, with a very large 90% payout ratio, equating to a 6.1% yield on today’s closing price, where the company finished slightly up.
