FNArena’s Weekly Insights – August 23 2021
In this week’s Weekly Insights
BHP, Dividends, And Breville Group
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor FNArena
So far, so good. Eight days from the end of the domestic corporate results season (six trading sessions plus one weekend) and genuine ‘beats’ are outnumbering disappointing ‘misses’ by almost a factor of two-to-one.
More companies feel comfortable enough to provide some kind of guidance, though that is to be read as ‘more than feared’ beforehand, not a reference to the majority. Many companies are quite literally swimming in cash, and they have not hesitated to reward shareholders through increased payouts, special dividends, share buybacks, and M&A.
The share market as a whole is up for the month and local indices would have performed a lot better if not for the global growth scare that is unfolding in the background, which is partially why specific price charts for the likes of Fortescue Metals look like a fall-off-the-cliff experience -suddenly, quickly and savagely- but this also explains why AUDUSD is now below 72c instead of nearer to 80c.
Also typically for Australia, the FNArena Corporate Results Monitor still only comprises of 140 reports, or an estimated 40% of the total number of individual companies. This goes a long way in explaining why most stockbrokerages are no longer publishing intermediate updates on the running season.
We still await more than 50% of financial results from the companies scheduled to report in August. Apparently, it’s the bottleneck in accountants domestically we should blame for this out-of-kilter, heavy skew.
