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Earnings season

This ASX earnings season was actually pretty good

Australia’s biggest companies delivered one of the strongest reporting seasons in decades — with earnings up and dividends rising. But it was overshadowed by the SaaS-pocalypse AI narrative.

Hugo Mathers and Brandon How
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Market information boards inside the new Australian Stock Exchange headquarters in Sydney. Dean Lewins/AAP Image.

For an earnings season defined by AI-related gloom and mass layoffs, indiscriminate poundings for tech firms and shock walk-outs by multiple blue-chip CEOs — the results have been surprisingly solid.

So solid in fact, that this earnings season ended as the second best in the last 51, with the percentage of earnings upgrades across ASX 200 companies trailing only to the post-Covid reporting period in February 2021, according to MST Marquee data.

“In FY24 and FY25, the ASX 100 had negative earnings growth, so for the past few years Aussie earnings have actually been going backwards,” Betashares investment strategist Tom Wickenden told Capital Brief.

“But after the reports this season, it looks like we’re on track for a double-digit earnings for FY26, so a huge turnaround.”